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Sermons - Sundays after Pentecost 2011


First Sunday after Pentecost (Trinity Sunday) – June 19, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a
    Psalm 8
    2 Corinthians 13:11-13
    Matthew 28:16-20

When I was in seminary one of the main classrooms had a somewhat alarming feature. From time to time the furnace in that room would make this incredibly loud BOOM BOOM BOOM sound.

What was really unnerving for us generally confused and nervous seminarians was the fact that the furnace often seemed to sound off just when someone was taking the discussion into possibly heretical waters.

And given this was an Anglican seminary, where all things are open at least for discussion, the BOOM BOOM BOOM was not infrequent.

Imagine our surprise, then, when the furnace was uncharacteristically silent during our lectures on the theology of the Trinity.

Why, why was our mechanical guardian of the faith so silent? Perhaps the furnace was just as confused as everyone else is around the doctrine of the Trinity.

After all, even the words used in Trinitarian theology are Greek to everyone, including the Greeks: Homoousios, Heteroousios, Homoiousios, Perichoresis, Modalism, Adoptionism, Apollinarianism, Patripassianism, Nestorism, Eutychianism. I CANT EVEN PRONOUNCE THESE, much less remember which are the orthodoxies and which are the heresies.

Actually, my first foray in to trying to understand the Trinity, which is the interplay and relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was not in seminary but instead in my home parish of St. Paul’s Sacramento. There the discussion pretty much came to a standstill with this statement:

“The cheese is not the Father!”

This was my friend’s final word in a hilarious argument we got into during a theology study group. We had come up with a metaphor for the Trinity that cast it as being like a hamburger, with the burger as Jesus (the sacrificial cow?) and the bun as the Holy Spirit.  But then we asked, “Where did that leave the Father? Surly God the Father was not the cheese!”

That is just how stupid the whole discussion of the Trinity looked to us after reading classical Trinitarian theology. It just looked like the musings of a bunch of old dead guys who had too much time on their hands. As my priest finally said, “I just want to do ministry, I’m not really sure I care about this stuff.”

At the time, I agreed.

But, I have to say, I no longer feel that way. I do care about the Trinity. I care passionately. I care because I believe the Trinity describes how the entire universe functions.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell with and in each other. They are three and they are one. THE ARE A RELATIONSHIP, total interdependence, based soley on love.

Boiled down, I believe the Trinity shows us that absolutely the only reason we are alive on this earth is this: to learn to love as God loves, interdependently, in relationship with each other.

All those goofy-sounding Greek words are basically saying that the Trinity are three persons but share one essence. How this happens is a mystery and knowing exactly how this works is frankly none of our business, nor the seminary furnace’s business either it would seem.

But it IS our business to understand that the Trinity is relating in love.

This is not a new idea. Although not spelled out in the Bible, the relationality of the Trinity is implied. Jesus said about the Holy Spirit: “he will take what is mine and declare it to you." And earlier: “The Father and I are one.”

Jesus and the Father are one and the Spirit is one with Jesus and therefore with God. As early church father and mystic St. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote over 17 centuries ago: “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three, no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one...When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”

Personally I see the torch as the light of love that is God.

St. Augustine saw God’s love for us as a reflection of the life of love within the Trinity. As one Christian writer explains: Augustine “reflected …upon love as the ground of Trinitarian relating in community.  He made relationship the central issue of Christian life… All material things, all actions, and all natural knowledge are to be used in the service of love."

Love. Love between people. Love among us. That is the point. THE ONLY POINT.  But the point often gets lost in our living.

Even though love is the reason, we still have to live our lives. We have to eat, find shelter, bathe, and co-operate with one another in some kind of orderly fashion. I would also add that a spiritual life is also a basic necessity.  In modern life that means having a job, buying, renting or building a house for ourselves, learning how to read and write, engaging in religious worship and having a political system of government.

Those basics, as we all know, have grown to be extremely complex. It makes me to tired to even think about them. But you know what I am talking about. It is simply mind-boggling-- the number of industries, TV channels, internet sites, home ownership options and types of cereal at the supermarket.

We expend amazing amounts of energy sustaining all that stuff, those structures. So we are often too tired to relate to those we love. We actually confuse the structures of living with the real point of life. We become what we do, not who we are and how well we love.

Our jobs become more important than the people we work with, or our families. School becomes a venue for a ticket to college, which is a ticket to the better job, which is WHAT???? Obviously we have to eat and have shelter. But beyond that, what is the real point?

Our jobs, our homes, our educations, our politics, even our hobbies, are simply structures in which to live out our main task, the reason God created us—to learn to love, to be in relationships.

Father’s Day celebrates one  kind of human relationship. But there are many. Sisters, brothers, friends, colleagues, even people we pass on the street. We are made for relationships.

This fact often becomes painfully obvious when someone we love dies.

When people die people commonly feel terrible guilt. Usually, that guilt centers on feelings expressed as “I didn’t spend enough time with that person, or I wasn’t loving enough or understanding enough,” and so forth.

While much of that guilt is excessive and misplaced and is the expression of grief and depression, it does point to something key: our relationships really are all there is. At the core of our being, where the Trinity speaks to us, we know that is the Truth.

I don’t know whether the Trinity is more like a hamburger or a club sandwich. I don’t really care how it works and I don’t think anyone knows in any case.

But I do find guidance and truth in this: God as One in three, three in one, eternally bound together in love.


Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 26, 2011
Proper 8 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Genesis 22:1-14
    Psalm 13
    Romans 6:12-23
    Matthew 10:40-42

All righty then! Another totally and alarmingly weird story today. I am of course speaking of the Old Testament passage known as the “The Binding of Isaac.”

This story is so strange. It provokes us to ask, “How could God ask anyone to do such a thing?” And, on the flip side, “How could a father even contemplate sacrificing his own son, without even arguing with God about it first.”

After all, just previously in the story, Abraham had argued vehemently that God should spare the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, despite the fact that they were a really rotten, violent, bunch. And hey, where was Sarah?? She was hardly a quiet, shrinking violet. Why didn’t she try to stop this?

Before I begin to unpack this mess I want to emphasize just what this sacrifice would mean. Not only would it mean the loss of a beloved child, miraculously conceived when Sarah and Abraham were in their great old age, it would also mean the withdrawal of God’s promise. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, that would lead other nations to be just and holy and righteous. Killing Isaac would be the end of that promise.

This is such a vivid, dramatic and disturbing story that there are reams and reams of explanation, interpretation and justification, both in Jewish and Christian biblical studies.

The most common interpretation is that this was a great test of Abraham’s faith and obedience. It tells us that we must trust that God knows what God is doing and that if we just have patience, if we trust in Him completely, then God will provide. God will ultimately protect us.

Other interpreters put forth a very convincing argument that this was God’s way of asserting his opposition to child sacrifice. As one commentator explains: “It was not uncommon in the ancient world for parents to sacrifice a son in times of great need or illness to try to appease the gods. The Bible records several examples… All of these are looked upon with horror, and the story of Isaac certainly show how Yahweh forbade any human sacrifice...”  (Lawrence Boadt. Reading the Old Testament., p. 143)

Commentators point to the possibility that God hints from the beginning that he never intends to actually let Abraham go through with this horrific act. They point to the Hebrew words God uses in his command to Abraham. He says “offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” The only word is “offer”, with no further instructions.

These are the most common interpretations of the story. However I came across many more, a few of which I will share with you.

Several commentators pointed to the story as a reflection of Jewish pain over their repeated experience of near annihilation. One scholar persuasively argues that this text actually comes from the period of time when Israel had been conquered by the Persians and was heavily depopulated as a result. These oppressed and depressed people would have needed a story that told them that although it may feel as though God might be annihilating them by allowing them to be conquered, that actually God can be trusted.

In another fascinating article I discovered there is a variant of the story, well known in Jewish literature, where Abraham actually goes through with the sacrifice; Isaac is killed.

One commentator believes this variant throws into bold relief the reality that human beings do kill one another. That human violence is real. And that we often do nothing about it. Like Sarah, we do not protest.

He writes, “In the larger family of man, tragic instance after instance is recorded of man's culpability as accomplice and bystander to the ugliest evil.  The neighbors around Dachau and Auschwitz claimed they knew nothing. The United States government stalled and delayed and declined to accept pitiful handfuls of refugees who escaped from the Nazi continent in desperate efforts at life, and boats were turned back to the depths of the hell of waters below or to the waiting Nazi executioners.”  (And Abraham Went to Slay Isaac: A Parable of Killer, Victim, and Bystander in the Family of Man, by Israel W. Charny, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, March 1, 1973)

Finally, I came across a most unusual explanation of why Sarah remained silent. It was put forth in a little treatise written by the sister of a much-revered Rabbi in the twelfth century.  She relates that many have suggested that Sarah was silent because she was simply in shock over the whole thing. Others, she says, have put forth that Sarah didn’t object because she simply didn’t know about the plan. This would explain why Abraham sneaked out in the early hours of the morning.

But the rabbis’ sister has a different theory. She believes the story is actually one of Sarah’s dreams. A dream that takes place soon after Isaac’s circumsion ceremony. She writes, “I propose that the reason Sarah is silent … is because the events are unfolding in her dream in a delayed reaction to the circumcision…simply by her maternal response to the circumcision, which she felt as the sacrifice of her son. Sarah doesn't speak because in her dream she is working out her emotional reactions to the circumcision…. How many mothers,” she writes, “waiting nervously, anxiously, angrily in a back room, have experienced this act as the binding and sacrifice of their sons?! …Sarah is silent in the dream as she watches the circumcision-sacrifice take place, as many mothers have silently complied with an act which goes against their maternal instincts.”

I am just awed by her honesty and bravery in this countercultural analysis.

It is really amazing and wonderful how the Bible inspires us to delve into the deepest of human emotions and motivations.

So, you may be wondering what my take is on this story.

First, I want to say that I think all of the above is helpful. All of it. But I suppose I lean towards the more traditional explanations, the teaching on trusting and obeying God, and the prohibition of human sacrifice.

I am drawn to these because they match my sense of God as protector and liberator. I feel justified in this interpretation because of the cultural context in which the story took place and then later was set down to paper.

The cultural context of Abraham and Isaac was one of feudalism or better said, a feudal-like social system of patronage. This system, the norm in most ancient agrarian societies, basically goes like this: A powerful leader or warlord has several families or villages, or even larger groups under his control. He offers these peasants personal protection and the use of his land in exchange for the peasants’ total loyalty and obedience.

This is the way everyone lived and few ever questioned it. It is totally unlike the American viewpoint of personal freedom and personal responsibility. We don’t like the idea of being dependent on anyone and we are generally not loyal to leaders, we are loyal to country.

In the Old Testament God is the powerful patron, the Divine Warrior who protects his people, his dependents, his peasants if you will. In that culture, if your god didn’t fight for you there was no reason to worship him. An excellent example is the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. God destroys the oppressors and enslavers of his people, the Israelites. As Moses exclaims, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still” (Exodus 14:13-14)

In other words, you need only to trust in God, the one who fights for us, especially those of us who are weak, oppressed or enslaved.

God fights for us, protects us, even if it is not always obvious, as it was not obvious to Abraham in the beginning of his trial.

And this protector, this Divine Warrior deserves our total loyalty.

This is an alien concept for us. We resist the idea that we are not in total control of our destiny. We resist the idea of a king, no matter how benevolent.

But God is not a human king. No matter how offensive monarchial and kingly language may be to us modern Americans, we must remember that this is not the way this was understood at the time it was written.

I suspect the people who first heard this story would not have been offended by an all-powerful, demanding God, instead they would have been grateful for a patron, a lord, a Divine Warrior that made it clear that killing your children is unacceptable.

This would have been a story full of hope and reassurance, not a mysterious and weird incident that makes us reel in confusion and even horror.

So what can we get from all this? How can this story speak to us today?

First I think we can remember that the Bible is deeply complex, so complex that it can be understood in different ways at  different times by different people. This means it is a richer, deeper, more God-inspired document than simple literalism would allow.

Second, this particular story forces us to look at our own violent ways.

And finally, we can ask ourselves, who are our lords? Who do we give our undying allegiance to and why? What would we do for our faith? What would we do for the God who is our Lord, our Divine Warrior, our protector? How much do we trust Him to really care?

To get you started thinking about those questions I leave you with a joke:

At a church meeting, a very wealthy man rose to tell the rest of those present about his Christian faith. "I'm a millionaire," he said, "and I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life. I remember that turning point in my faith. I had just earned my first dollar and I went to a church meeting that night. The speaker was a missionary who told about his work. I knew that I only had a dollar bill and I had to either give it all to God's work or give nothing at all. So at that moment, I decided to give my whole dollar to God. I believe that God blessed that decision, and that is why I am a rich man today." When he finished and moved toward his seat, there was an awed silence As he sat down, a little old lady sitting in the same pew leaned over and said to him, "I dare you to do it again."


Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – July 10, 2011
Proper 10 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Isaiah 55:1-5, 10-13
    Psalm 65 or 65:9-14
    Romans 8:9-17
    Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

God is not efficient. God is not productive. God is wasteful.

Or so it would seem.

For example, take today’s Gospel.  Because we are not first century farmers living in Palestine we may not recognize the amazing behavior that is being discussed here.

The passage says that the sower, who is God, just flings the seed every which way, knowing full well that only some of it will take root. God does not ration the seed or pick and choose where it goes.

God is extravagant.

And even more amazing, this planting results in a ridiculous amount of food. The passage says: “But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

In the agriculture of the time of Jesus a normal harvest would yield five times what was sown, not thirty or sixty and certainly not one hundred times.

And, this is not the only place in the Gospels that God is shown as a wild, extravagant, abundant giver.

Let us not forget his first miracle in the Gospel of John. There he turned 120 gallons of water into 120 gallons of the very best quality wine. And in the Gospel of Luke Jesus told a parable that compared God to a woman who mixes yeast with three measures of flour—Three measures of flour is not three cups, it is about 50lbs of flour and would bake up enough bread for a hundred persons.

God looks pretty extravagant, perhaps even pretty wasteful.

We too look pretty extravagant, pretty wasteful.

For most of us, even in the midst of an economic mess, our lives continue to be stuffed with an overabundance of material possessions and activities.

Have you really looked at the grocery store aisles lately? There are so many choices it is mind boggling. I think I have mentioned this before but, the cereal aisle, for example, has maybe a hundred types of cereal. Why do we need a hundred types of cereal?

And how about the fun of buying a TV.  I’m pretty technically savvy but I don’t relish trying to sort out the differences between LCD, HDTV, PLASMA OR LED.

AND why does it take 25 remote controls to turn it on???

And what about all the shopping centers?

My recent home was in the Central Valley. There what was once fertile farming land is now cluttered up by one strip mall after another with more stores than we can possibly need in 10 lifetimes. It is stunning to remember that 100 years ago all we needed in a small town was one general store. Now even small towns have several strip malls.

Selecting a car or a washing machine or a computer presents a nightmare of choices so overwhelming it makes one long for horses and buggies, the washboard and some nice paper and pens—even if they would slow down our crowded lives.

Even the poorest among us seem to collect endless unnecessary possessions.

And look at the way we spend our time. “What time?” you may ask. Exactly my point!

I think part of the reason we have no time is that we want to do too much, we have too many choices and want to do it all.

We have 100-300 TV channels to choose from, depending on your cable service or satellite network.

We have the Internet with literally the whole world of activities at our very fingertips.

Our children have so many activities they have no time to just sit and imagine. Instead they go from soccer to music lessons, to after-school programs, to karate, to God knows what else.

Our lives are bursting at the seams with abundance and yet it feels at times as though none of it really makes us feel happy, liberated, free or satisfied. Instead we are just tired out and stressed out.

Is this the kind of abundance that God wants us to have? Our parable gives us a strong message of “No.”

In this parable the seed God is sowing, and hopes we will be reaping, is not material wealth or endless activities. Instead what God is so extravagantly sprinkling about is God’s message of salvation, God’s liberating word, God’s seeds of love.

Now I want to be very clear about one thing: I do not believe God wants us to be without the basic necessities of life or even beyond. God truly created the world in all its glorious variety for us and for all of the creatures of creation to enjoy.

But without God’s Word, God’s guiding way, God’s liberation, we are unable to really enjoy this gift of life. If we close our ears to God’s word we have no guidelines for sorting out our choices; instead we simply grab all we can get.

We become bad soil.

It turns out that it is we, not God, who are wasteful, unproductive, and inefficient. We consume everything indiscriminately—everything but God’s liberating word.

As God says to the people of Israel in the lesson from Isaiah: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

The bread, the rich food is God’s message of love and liberation. It is the seeds, the word of God that will set us free to truly live abundant lives that are not crowded with activities and possessions we neither need nor really want.

Are you and I brave enough to do some serious tilling and pruning to become that good soil? Are we willing to trim our shopping lists, cut out the activities we don’t really care about, stop the endless cycle of spending and busyness?

It is a question worth asking, worth truly considering. Our lives are at stake here. Perhaps it’s time to take out those plows and pruning shears and get to work on making ourselves more than just rocky ground and thorny soil that leave no room for God’s seeds of extravagant love.

God is not wasteful, nor unproductive; God is simply offering God’s word to all of us.

We have the choice to be wasteful or to become productive, reaping the deep, rich life that God so lovingly, and freely, offers. Or we can keep wandering down the cereal aisle or sitting in front of the TV flipping the channels, wondering why life seems so pointless, exhausting,  and empty.


Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – August 7, 2011
Proper 14 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    1 Kings 19:9-18
    Psalm 85:8-13
    Romans 10:5-15
    Matthew 14:22-33

When the ocean rages, we pray.

I am always reminded of this at sailboat shows.

There are lots of cool things at those shows.

There are, of course, always boats.

And sailmakers, foul weather gear salesmen, navigation equipment saleswomen and more.

It is the usual orgy of consumerism, the vendors luring folks into pouring yet more cash into those money pits known as boats.

All told, a sailboat show then wouldn’t  seem like an atmosphere conducive to a spiritual teaching moment.

Still, God does work in mysterious ways.

I suspect God may have been at work at one show where I watched a demonstration by a lifeboat maker.

While the salesperson prepared to show the group gathered round how quickly the lifeboat would inflate, I began reading the list of things the lifeboat had in its storage pockets: seasickness meds, sunscreen, a salt water filter, flares, space blankets, fishing lines and hooks...AND…

The final item was a Bible.

It turns out that many lifeboats come with a Bible.

I have to tell you, this surprised me.

I am not sure why; perhaps because in my own experience, not many amateur sailors are Bible readers.

But of course, we all know there are no atheists in a foxhole – or in a lifeboat.

When the ocean rages, we pray.

We know we are not in control. Just one hour of high winds and high seas erases that illusion.

The rest of the time, when the winds are soft and the seas are gentle we are like Peter. We think we are in control. We think we can walk on water.

We want to be our own God, to do it by ourselves. But we are living an illusion. We are not God.

But Jesus is.

Jesus walks on water because he is divine.

Only a divine being can walk on water.

Jesus calms the waves.

Only a divine being can calm the winds and waves.

Jesus calms the sea and saves.

Only God saves.

God saves over and over.

God controls the waters of the Red Sea.

God saves the Israelites.

When the ocean rages, we pray.

And frankly, we want results.

We want Jesus to show up walking on water, leading the Coast Guard helicopter.

When the ocean rages we pray.

We pray when we are sick, when we are worried about our finances, or when we are being abused…

We want the pain or fear to stop instantly.

We want results like the disciples on the Sea of Galilee.

And when we don’t get those instant, miraculous results we start wondering if the problem is...that we don’t have enough faith.

Perhaps we are just not praying hard enough, or the right way.

But today’s gospel story makes it clear that Jesus saves us even if our faith is “little.”

He says, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" and then calms the wind.

He doesn’t say, “Your faith is so little I’m just going to let you drown.”

Jesus saves no matter how shaky our faith.

Still, we don’t always see the salvation.

Even when the ocean rages and we know we are not in control, even when we finally break down and pray, it is so easy to miss seeing the hand of God at work.

I remember a person who had been abused repeatedly by a close relative.

This little girl would pray constantly to God to stop the abuser.

The abuser went right on abusing.

That little girl, now an angry young woman, demands to know why God didn’t save her.

She wanted to see Jesus walking on the water.

She wanted God to strike the abuser dead or at least to change his heart.

Another little girl was also abused repeatedly.

She also prayed. The abuse didn’t stop in her case either.

But today she says that it was God who gave her the strength to survive.

That it was God who sent her a good therapist later on, that is was God who has sent her good friends to listen to her tale.

It is so easy, and so understandable and certainly so forgivable that unlike the second woman we find it difficult to see the hand of God.

The very trauma itself can cloud our vision.

Most of us are like Peter. In so many ways we are like Peter.

We are fearful.

Our faith is shaky.

We demand to see Jesus doing miracles.

"Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."

We want spectacular, miraculous results.

We want angels to take away the abuser, we want Jesus to literally walk to us on water when we are being tossed about by violent storms.

When the ocean rages we pray.

But then we fail to see God’s answer.

We fail to see the hand of God at work.

How does God work?

Sometimes through miracles. I believe in dramatic miracles.

But my experience is that God mostly works through our relationships.

God may not send winged angels to take away the abuser, but God instead usually works through the alert teacher who reports the abuse, or the therapist or the friend or the well-trained domestic violence worker.

I don’t pretend to know why help often takes so long to come but I do know that it does come.

God normally doesn’t drop money out of the sky to pay our credit card balance, but God may send us the credit counselor who helps us clean up our financial mess.

As a hospital chaplain I well know that not all cases of cancer are cured by prayer, but God always offers healing for our souls, hope for eternal life and strength to face the very worst.

Jesus is not often seen walking on water to save sailors from stormy weather, but he does give the sailor the inventor who made that nifty lifeboat with the Bible in it. And the common sense to purchase one for his boat!

God is working all the time to help save us from evil. But because we want to be in control, because we want to walk on water like Peter, or because we are expecting dramatic miracles, we sometimes actually reject God’s help.

We reject help from our friends, relatives, teachers, doctors, therapists. In rejecting their help, we are rejecting God’s help.

We go on rejecting that help until the crisis gets big enough, until we are in a raging sea-- and then we finally pray.

Gospel stories like this one today can be a major problem.

These sorts of stories can make us think that the only way that God works is through dramatic miracles.

If only we could see Jesus walking on the water, then we would believe.

But the truth is, we, like Peter, like all of the disciples, have just a “little” faith.

Even if we did see Jesus walking on water, we moderns would most likely suspect we were hallucinating.

Or, like the disciples, fear Jesus was a ghostly apparition.

And in our fear we would miss seeing the loving, saving, sustaining hand of God.

There is an old joke I am sure many of you have heard. Nevertheless, it bears repeating:

A man was in a terrible flood.

As the waters rose, he escaped to the top of his roof and began to pray.

A woman paddled by in her canoe and offered him a ride. “No thank you, said the man on the roof, “I am waiting for a miracle from God to save me.”

Then a teenager came by on a jet ski and tried to get the man to hop on.

The man refused, saying God would save him.

Finally, a helicopter flew over, with a ladder for the man to climb.

“No thank you,” he told the pilot, “I am waiting for God.”

In the end, he drowned when the waters engulfed the roof. When he came before God in Heaven, he demanded to know why God hadn’t saved him.

God said, “I tried, I sent you a canoe, a jet ski and a helicopter.”

When the ocean rages we pray.

And when the ocean rages, God saves.

Even with our little faith, as we are tossed about in our little lifeboat, God saves.

Today I pray that we all learn to see God’s saving grace in the small things as well as in the amazing things, in the ordinary people around us, as well as in the faces of angels, in our own courage, as well as that of our Savior and Redeemer.

AMEN.


Ninth Sunday after Pentecost – August 14, 2011
Proper 15 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Isaiah 56:1,6-8
    Psalm 67
    Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
    Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

This guy was climbing a tree when suddenly he slipped. He grabbed at a branch and was hanging in mid air. After an hour, he felt himself getting exhausted and looked up to the heavens and cried out: "God, help me! Please, help me!"

All of a sudden the clouds parted and a voice boomed out from on high. "Let Go!" said the voice.

The guy paused, looked up at heaven once more, and said: "Is there anyone else up there?"

That joke reminds me of the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel reading. Like the guy hanging from the tree she asks Jesus to help her.

And like the guy in the tree, she is less than satisfied with the answer he gives. She persists, even in the face of Jesus’ serious insults and rejections. She kneels and begs.

We don’t know what happened to our guy hanging from the branch, but we DO know that the Canaanite woman saw her demon-possessed daughter healed.

This dramatic scene is weird and it is pivotal. Jesus’ encounter with this woman changes the nature of his ministry and is part of the reason we are sitting here today—Gentiles worshiping the God of the Israelites, instead of perhaps Zeus or Thor or the spirit of a Celtic river or well.

Why is that?

Let’s zoom in and take a closer look.

The first thing that probably strikes us is Jesus’ rudeness. At first he simply ignores her. Then he calls her one of the biggest insults of his time—a dog. Finally he relents because she is both persistent and clever. She has taught him, she has changed his mind.

If this whole thing with Jesus being such a jerk here freaks you out, there is one fact that is not immediately apparent unless you are an expert on first century Palestine, which I am not.

Luckily it is my job to research these things and here is an interesting fact I dug up. This woman is not the typical poor and pathetic widow or other person living on the fringes of society who is usually healed by Jesus. In the same story as related in the Gospel of Mark, we are told that she is not only a Gentile woman, signaled by the fact that she is from the region of Tyre and Sidon, she is also a Greek. In Bible language, that means she is a person of position. She is probably rich, and part of a powerful class. She also probably viewed him as a freaky, wacky, witch doctor but wanted to try anything to help her daughter.

Upon his initial rejection, she is willing to kneel before him and beg.

This would be like a really well turned-out, fashionably dressed woman from Piedmont kneeling before some homeless, long-haired street preacher in Berkeley, begging for help.

She lowers herself to speak to him and he is stunned. So stunned he is able to move past his preconceived notions about which people he should be preaching to. He had thought he was sent only to the people of Israel.

He was wrong. And being Jesus, he was immediately able to cop to it and take action.

These two people show enormous courage. They are willing to step out of their comfort zones, move across strict social boundaries and be changed by the encounter.

Once again, let me emphasize: Jesus’ words are really insulting: he calls her a dog.  In that time dogs were not considered the cute family members we so enjoy today. They were at the bottom of the food chain, lucky to get a few scraps dropped under the table.

The Israelites considered all pagans to be far below them—like dogs. Jesus has the same attitude.

But she is, for some reason, convinced from the outset that she should put her faith in him. She calls him Lord. She does not give up and on the second go around she actually kneels before him and quite poignantly says, “Help me.”

In a sense she has called him on his hypocrisy. He has been willing to include everyone, the sick, the sinner, the outcast, the poor person, whomever, as long as they were of his own culture.

The Canaanite woman forces him to see that God is for everyone. Absolutely everyone.

So what can the Canaanite woman and her new best friend Jesus say to us today?

I would put forth this: As Christians we are called to do at least two things:

One, to have faith, like our heroine, that this weird guy from ancient history can offer us healing, liberation and love.

And two, to remember that Christianity is not about drawing lines to keep others out. Far, far from it. Instead it is about radical, earth-shattering inclusion. Of everyone who wants in. EVERYONE. Even people you cannot stand the sight of, people who you have been taught to avoid, people who freak you out.

Part of what you, the people of St. Giles, are doing during this interim time before calling a new permanent priest, is discerning how to be Christ’s hands and voice in this place at this time. I invite you to continue to pray for guidance in how to be a radically inclusive, radically loving and radically healing presence in the world, filled with the faithful courage of both the Canaanite woman and Jesus.

The stronger, louder and clearer your message of love and inclusion, the more people will want to be part of this wonderful community.

There is strong evidence garnered from recent research on what makes for vibrant, growing congregations that it is all about the mission. According to a piece written by our own national church,

“Essential to the mission of any religious congregation is creating a community  where  people encounter God. Otherwise, congregations often resemble inward-looking social clubs with little unique sense of purpose. Congregations who say they are willing to change to meet new challenges also tend to be growing congregations.”

I encourage you to be brave, like the Canaanite woman, like Jesus, to step outside your comfort zones, to go beyond what you thought possible.

The Christian faith began with a few terrified, oppressed, un-liberated people who suddenly had their lives upended by Jesus. The way they lived their lives, in love and sharing and inclusiveness drew people to them. The message of light caught fire the way no other message has, becoming a major religion in only a few hundred years.

That religion has at times strayed far from Jesus’ teachings, far from those inspired beginnings. But, still, whenever people really live the Gospel, really live according to Jesus’s demands for liberation, inclusiveness and love, folks respond and want to participate—just look at Mother Teresa or Bishop Desmond Tutu, or Martin Luther King.

We can all do what they did, in our own small way, right here, right now, one street corner at a time.


Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 21, 2011
Proper 16 Year A 2005

    Isaiah 51:1-6
    Psalm 138
    Romans 12:1-8
    Matthew 16:13-20

Sometimes when I am in churches here and abroad I sit very quietly and wonder what the people were like who came before us. I imagine them in their various fashions of the times—medieval women in their wimples and long dreses, men in tunics and high boots. Later, Elizabethan collars, doublets and hose. Later still the corsets and stiff collars of the Victorians. Later even still, flappers, men in soldiers’ uniforms, hippies in tie dye.

I can, if I am really quiet, almost hear them singing, in Latin, in Old English, in Gaelic, in Norman French, in medieval Spanish.

If I had ever been to Israel, I would have gone much further back, to where people gathered in homes, sometimes in secret and fear, to worship God through the vision of Jesus of Nazareth.

I often wonder what they would think of us today, here in this beautiful chapel, worshiping the same Jesus, in our own way.

I hope they would see that their traditions, their vision, changed and modified for the changing circumstances of this community and the times, are still being lived out here in this parish in Moraga-- perhaps in ways they could  not have dreamed of-- and yet nevertheless familiar.

That is because tradition is handed down generation after generation. That is the way of the church, the way it has been since the beginning when Jesus made Peter the keeper of the tradition, the founding rock upon which the church would be built.

Peter would probably be stunned at the changes the church has seen over the ages. He would no doubt find much of it incomprehensible, even alarming. But he would also see much that would be familiar.

He too would see the way of Jesus reflected here at St. Giles.

This handing down of church tradition is called apostolic succession. When we recite the Nicene Creed we say that we believe in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”

Why is our church apostolic? Our catechism (which you can find in the back of The Book of Common Prayer), says that the Church “is apostolic, because it continues in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles and is sent to carry out Christ’s mission to all people.”

Apostolic succession in its most formal sense, in the way we believe in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, is that Church tradition is passed down through bishops—each one passing on the faith established by the Apostles, one to the next, down through the ages.

Peter is usually viewed as the most important of these Apostles because Jesus seems to have singled him out in a couple of special ways. One of those instances is described today’s Gospel passage. Here Peter is made the founding Rock on which the church will be built.

Peter’s given name was Simon. The name Peter was probably a nickname as the word Peter is very close to the Greek word for rock: Petra. The nickname Rock or Rocky may give us a clue to what he was like.

Simon Peter certainly seems to have had a stony stubborn side, as well as a volatile, rocky side. He was not perfect, but we know he was able to own up to his mistakes easily and we know that he always wanted to be faithful even if he slipped off the path a one crucial point.

You may remember how Peter denied he knew Jesus in order to save his own behind when Jesus was arrested and tried.

Despite this cowardly denial, tradition tells us Peter eventually went on to be a great leader of the church and was eventually martyred in Rome for his belief.

In this passage Jesus also gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom.

Most biblical scholars do not think this is about Peter somehow being the gatekeeper of Heaven. So much for all the “St. Peter at the Pearly Gates” jokes.

Actually it is more likely that Jesus was making Peter a sort of super rabbi of the Kingdom, giving him the supreme teaching authority. His decisions on whether the actions and beliefs of the early church were on track or wandering too far afield were final. The buck was to stop with Peter.

And so the Church has tried to follow the faith the apostles founded, has tried to do what Peter would have done, what Peter would have approved.

So, what would Peter approve of in the Episcopal Church, in the Anglican Church worldwide?

Here are my guesses.

I think he would have been happy that we have continued the early church tradition of weekly communion.

I think he would be thrilled that we tell parts of God’s salvation story each week and try to make sense of it through sermons and hymns.

I think it would warm his heart to hear his Lord’s favorite prayer said each week.

But most important I believe, he would have been jumping up and down happy whenever he saw Anglicans living out Jesus’ commitment to those in need.

He would have loved, for example, the Episcopal Church’s commitment to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

In case you do not know, these are “eight goals agreed to in 2000 by 189 heads of state and government -- including the United States -- from around the world that address the deepest material brokenness in the world today.”

They are to
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief

We can be pretty sure Peter would approve of the Millennium Development Goals since he oversaw the earliest Christian community, where as Acts 2 tells us “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

He would be glad whenever he saw Christians sharing their blessings.

I think Peter would also deeply approve of the Anglican tradition of holding together Christian beliefs of many stripes, from evangelical Protestant to high Church Anglo-Catholic. I think he would have enjoyed how we have struggled to stay together despite serious differences.

I can imagine that our rows over the inclusion of the first African Americans and other minorities, then women and later gays and lesbians in ordained ministry would be confusing considering the huge cultural differences between first century Palestine and 21^st century America. But once he got it, no doubt our struggles would call to mind the differences he and St. Paul had over how to integrate Gentiles and Jews into one Body of Christ.

He would, I think, be very proud of how we have generally speaking, over time, come down on the side of inclusion and diversity.

After all, it was Peter who said, “‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him,” with ‘fear’ here meaning standing in awe, respecting, obeying. This statement is about as inclusive as you can get.

However, I also believe he might raise an eyebrow at how we fight over worship styles, music, artwork, the use of candles, bells, clergy clothes, which altar decorations are best for Christmas, etc., etc.

Surely Peter, who died a martyr’s death for Christ, would hope we might focus on what is really important: love and praising God for our very lives.

That would be the tradition I think Peter would most want us to continue to honor: loving God and loving each other.

That is the way of the church, of those who came before us, it is the way of the apostles, and it is the way Peter and Jesus would want it to be. AMEN.


Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 11, 2011
Proper 19 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Genesis 50:15-21
    Psalm 103
    Romans 14:1-12
    Matthew 18:21-35

Today is September 11. Ten years have passed since that awful day.

I was in seminary at the time. I remember how we all huddled together in the chapel, scared and confused. I remember too how we all kneeled throughout the whole of Morning Prayer, not our normal habit. I don’t know why we did it.  Kneeling, after all, is often a posture of repentance. Perhaps, without knowing it, we knew forgiveness was going to be a part of that story.

After those first hours, I was no longer really personally scared. It seemed contained on the East Coast. I had managed to get my friend Ned, who worked near the World Trade Center, on his cell phone.

And though I was saddened and shocked I was also weirdly hopeful. I hoped and prayed that out of the ashes and rubble real change would take place. I thought perhaps people around the world might realize that now they had to really talk to each other, understand each other, hear each others’ story in order to move forward in a new way.

I have zero idea why I felt that way. Really. But I did.
Boy, was I wrong!

Although at first it seemed like maybe my vision wasn’t a pie dream. People were nicer to each other. Even total strangers smiled at each other, helped each other.

Three days later that little utopian picture went dark. Very dark.

A Muslim family came to our church’s charity dinner because they hadn’t been shopping since that fateful Tuesday. They were afraid to go to the grocery store or a restaurant because of the insults and threats being hurled in their faces at every turn.

Fear had turned outward. We lashed out. Sometimes appropriately to stop more terrorist attacks, but also often irrationally, vengefully. In our fear we often resorted to violence as the first response, rather than the second or third or twentieth response.

Now I want to be clear: I don’t believe we should allow our enemies to destroy us or hurts us. I’m not a pacifist. I actually supported going after Bin Laudin in Afghanistan. But I have a friend, a Mennonite minister whose grandparents were Amish, who was a fellow GTU seminarian with me at the time. And she kept saying, “There is always another way. There is always another way.” I’m not sure I totally agree with her but I know I needed to hear her voice.

The voice of restraint, of humility, of the peace of Christ. The voice that speaks of forgiveness. Of forgiving not just seven times but seventy-seven. In other words, radical forgiveness.

Today’s readings focus on forgiveness. For instance, we hear about Joseph, whose brothers had grievously wronged him by selling him into slavery. Now they were afraid he would pay them back with violence. They were right to be afraid. Joseph was now a powerful man in Egypt. However, instead of vengeance he chose forgiveness.

Joseph was correctly responding to the mercy and forgiveness of God as spoken of in today’s Psalm:

    The Lord is merciful and gracious,
        slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
    He will not always accuse,
        nor will he keep his anger forever.
    He does not deal with us according to our sins,
        nor repay us according to our iniquities.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells Peter that our forgiveness must be radically expansive. Peter came and said to Jesus, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

You may argue that Jesus was speaking only of relations between church members. But the follow-up parable makes it clear that this forgiveness extends to everyone.

The king in the parable is a Gentile king, thus this story is meant to be universal. We know he is a Gentile because he uses torture. Torture was forbidden by Jewish law.

The parable tells us that God is ready to forgive our sins, no matter how huge. We know the debt or sin here is huge because repaying “Ten thousand talents would require more than 164,000 years of work, seven days a week.” (Pilch)

This is Good News. But it requires a response. We must turn around and pass on that same radical forgiveness. The evil slave did not. Jesus then says, alarmingly, that the king tortured the wicked ungrateful slave.

I don’t think God tortures: remember, Jesus never tortured, instead he got tortured.

But when we can’t forgive, when we seek vengeance, we can end up torturing ourselves.

How does that work?

First a word about what forgiveness really is. What does forgiveness mean?

It means not obsessing on what happened. It means not wishing the person harm. It means letting go of thoughts like, “I hope they go to Hell, crash their car and hit a tree, lose all their money, are unhappy forever--you fill in the blank.

Forgiveness does not mean you need to like those who hurt you or hang out with them. Some people must be forgiven from afar; it is just too dangerous to be in contact with them. I am thinking, for example of child molesters, or violent or emotionally abusive spouses.

Sometimes we can forgive and yet keep the person locked up so they can’t harm anyone else.

It does not mean saying “Its ok.” IT IS NEVER OK!! I never would have said, “Oh Mr. Bin Laudin, it’s ok, no problem.” Obviously that is idiocy.

But we could begin to let go of the mantra around Sept 11 that says, “Never forget.”

For me “never forget” is appropriate when there is a lesson of love to be learned. For instance, we should never forget the Holocaust because we do not want to make that kind of cruel mistake in the future.

Nor do we forget the individuals who died on 9/11, nor those who died trying to save them.

But “never forget” in the broader, political sense, can make us fearful. Never forget, never forgive can make us react with vengeance, and hate, instead of with love.

There are, for instance, continuing instances of anti-Muslim behavior in this country and in countries in Europe.

Remember the attacks in Norway? The bombing and the killing of 69 people, mostly teenage campers? As one writer points out: “The mass killer was clearly influenced by a post-9/11 theology that sees Christian Europe under attack from Muslim immigration. Variants of this idea animate political parties in many European countries…For them, Europe's Christian identity has become a sacred value.”

That same writer reports, “The same polarised reactions can be seen in secular ideologies. The new atheist movement was started by a group of writers who perceived Islam as an existential threat. ‘We are at war with Islam,’ argued one of its leaders, Sam Harris, who also called for the waterboarding of al-Qaida members. Meanwhile The God Delusion author, [atheist] Richard Dawkins, refers to Islam as the most evil religion in the world.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/10/911-religion-september-11)

Personally, I wonder , too, if our terrible political divisions and mutual demonizing in this country might come out of that same post-9/11 stance of fear and vengeance. The “never forget” response instead of the forgiveness response. We are so angry we can’t stop.

AND THIS WEEK WE HEARD THAT THERE IS A POTENTIAL THREAT FROM AN AL QUEDA ATTACK TODAY.

How will we react if it happens again?

Let me repeat, I do not think forgiveness should lead to well-intentioned but insipid stupidity. Obviously we have to prevent people from attacking us. And obviously it is not just we, but those bent on terror who must have a change of heart.

But what if our reactions and decisions were guided by less by vengeance and more by pragmatism? What if our feelings were less fearful, less angry, less violent, and instead more Christ-like, more loving, more forgiving?

Would the world be a better place? I like to think so.

Ten years ago, the bishop of the Diocese of Northern California, Bishop Jerry Lamb wrote in a note to clergy that could have been written today. He said: “God is crying. Maybe now we have heard God’s tears over injustice and hatred. Maybe now we will wake up and begin to deal with the problems that are afoot in this nation and the world. Maybe we will wake up and see Christ in the face of everyone else. Maybe we will wake up and realize that justice and peace must be shared in every nation and every community and in every home. Maybe we will wake up and understand that when we honor the dignity of every human being, we honor our own dignity and the dignity of God who is our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sanctifier.”

AMEN.


Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 18, 2011
Proper 20 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Jonah 3:10-4:11
    Psalm 145:1-8
    Philippians 1:21-30
    Matthew 20:1-16

There once was a minister who was very fond of pure, hot horseradish. He always kept a bottle of it on his dining room table. Once, at dinner, he offered some to a guest, who took a big spoonful. The guest let out a huge gasp. When he was finally able to speak, he choked out, "I've heard many ministers preach hellfire, but you are the first one I've met who passes out a sample of it."

Although an amusing joke, it actually creeps me out a bit. The bit that creeps me out is the hellfire part. You won’t ever hear me preach a hellfire sermon. Not now, not ever. And not just because it isn’t what you want to hear.

You all know me better. I am perfectly willing to preach stuff you all don’t want to hear. But hellfire isn’t one of them.

Why? Because I don’t believe God sends people to hell. I actually believe it is possible that all will eventually be saved, that all will accept God’s offer of love, all will be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

All, in the fullness of time.

If I didn’t believe that, I could not believe in God. I personally cannot love and worship a God that would fry, either literally or metaphorically, someone in hell for all eternity.

The only God I am able to worship and trust is the God of love and forgiveness.

Here is the deal. I would never do what so many Christians believe God does, torture a person for eternity. I could not do that, no matter what the person had done.

And I will only worship a God that is at least as compassionate as I am. Just like I want my doctor to be smarter than I am and my accountant to be better than I am at math, I want my God to be more loving than I.

But is my hope for universal salvation naïve, childish and unbiblical? Is it just plain wishful thinking? Is it unchristian?

I would argue that the idea of universal salvation is actually intensely Biblical and Christian.

The Jesus I read about in Scripture is the last person I can imagine throwing people into eternal torment. And I believe Jesus is God with us as man.

This man, who is also God, forgave Judas and Peter, BEFORE they sinned, befire they betrayed and denied him. You may remember that in the Gospel of John, Jesus washed all of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper. This was an act of radical forgiveness completely at odds with the image of the vengeful God the hellfire preachers love.

Jesus is also the one who told the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son who is forgiven by the father—ie, God, before he can even begin to grovel.

In parable, after parable, Jesus describes God as the one who goes after lost sheep, lost coins, and lost children.

Jesus even did some clever Bible editing to get across the point that God is not about vengeance. In the Gospel of Luke (4:14-19), Jesus announces to his hometown congregation the nature of his mission using a passage from Isaiah (61:1-2). But he leaves out the sentence in that passage that speaks of God's vengeance. He carefully and deliberately skips that bit. I believe he was sending a strong message that his mission was one of salvation, not wrathful destruction.

Finally, we must remember that Jesus forgave his own executioners, told us to love our enemies and taught us to pray to God as a Father.

I ask you, what kind of loving Father would eternally torture his children?

Jesus came to reconcile us to God, bring us back to God, not to be an agent of terrorism.

So then, if the hope for universal salvation is so prevalent in the Bible, what about Church teaching throughout the ages? Is this idea a legitimate expression of Apostolic faith? Was it present in the early church?

You bet it was! Not only present, but arguably dominant.

Let's look at a crucial sentence in the Apostles' Creed, the  one that we use in Evening Prayer and that predates the Nicene Creed. It has a sentence in it: "He descended to the dead." Older translations say, "he descended into hell."

Vitor Westhelle, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology writes: “As it is confessed in the Apostle’s Creed: God in Christ descended into hell. That [means] nothing is out of God’s reach, even the depths of hell, [it] is what affords hope, the promise of life. All hope has indeed been abandoned. But this hope that defies all hope becomes the gateway to heaven.”

Many of the very earliest church fathers preached the hope of universal salvation. St. Gregory of Nyssa, who lived in the fourth century taught the doctrine of Apocatastasis. This doctrine states that in the fullness of time, all free-willed creatures of God will be saved.

And St. Gregory was not alone in his belief in universal salvation. Other very prominent church fathers such as St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen, also preached similar beliefs.

The idea of a vengeful God that throws people into hell for eternity became thoroughly dominant only later, in the early Middle Ages.

What then does our Anglican tradition say? The Archbishop of Canterbury argues in his book Tokens of Trust, that God is trustworthy. On the topic of hell he writes: “The most truthful image we can have of hell is of God eternally knocking on a closed door that we are struggling to hold shut."

God doesn’t send us to hell, in a sense we send ourselves and we can walk out anytime we are willing to accept God's offer of love.

Another great Anglican theologian, C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia tales, has a similar take on how we get trapped in hell. He reflects this belief in fictional form in his book The Great Divorce One seminary professor describes Lewis' view this way: "The Great Divorce … does a masterful job of depicting with remarkable psychological realism the sort of choices that constitute the choice of hell. Ghosts from hell take a bus ride to heaven, but it is not heaven to them because of the current state of their character. The astonishing thing is that most of the ghosts prefer to return to hell rather than embrace the joy offered in heaven.”

OK. So let's say there is a good, strong case for my belief in the hope of universal salvation. What then of Justice?

We humans are not very happy when things don’t seem fair. Like the early crew of vineyard workers in today’s parable, we are shocked that God would let people into the Kingdom of Heaven who haven’t worked hard to get there.

Or we are like Jonah, who is offended and angry when God quickly and easily accepts the repentance of the people of Nineveh. Jonah even admits he tried to evade God’s mission for him to preach to the Ninevites because he knew God would be merciful.

At times I am reminded of children around ages seven to twelve who shout “IT’S NOT FAIR!!” every time they think the rules have been broken and the perpetrator isn’t being adequately punished.

But God is not a human being. Not on a daily basis. And the one time in history that he did come as a human being, Jesus, he made it clear that God operates on a different wavelength when it comes to justice.

God is just, God is righteous and God is angry at sin. No doubt about it. Nasty people just can't be in the Kingdom of Heaven because then it wouldn’t be heaven, it would just be nasty.

That is why I believe in some kind of purgatory, or better said, healing after death. St. Gregory of Nyssa taught that after death souls to greater and lesser degrees, had to go through a process of refining, like the refining of precious metals. He believed there were flames in hell, but that they were flames of healing that would separate out the evil from the good in each soul.

While I don’t personally believe in literal flames, and doubt that St. Gregory did either, I do think God continues to heal us until we are fit to be in his Kingdom. How that happens must remain a mystery. But I have faith that it will. Otherwise I have no faith at all.

As the amazing Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes: Jesus did not say “I, if I be lifted up, will draw some.” Jesus said, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all”.

All are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go.


Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 25, 2011
Proper 21 – Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Exodus 17:1-7
    Psalm 25:1-8
    Philippians 2:1-13
    Matthew 21:23-32

Change is hard.

When change is overwhelming we tend to become nostalgic for the olden days. Personally I am a champion at being nostalgic. So much so that I get nostalgic about other people’s pasts, pasts far, far earlier than any past I have ever lived in.

For example, I generally only read novels set in the Middle Ages. Recently I have made progress though and my current reading adventure takes place in the 18^th century.

So I do love nostalgia. The past always seems better than the present, and more concrete than the unknown future.

This tendency towards nostalgia may actually be a good thing, within limits. Research [http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/22/health/he-nostalgia22] reveals that nostalgia helps us cope with change by reducing feelings of loneliness.

The research “shows that it helps people maintain their sense of identity. "Nostalgia is like looking in a rearview mirror," says one researcher. It helps us ask, "Do I still have the values and priorities I had before? It gives us stability when we live in a time of constant change."

Nostalgia also helps us feel connected socially. As the same researcher says, “…nostalgia works therapeutically. You are reliving your social connectedness. It's better than nothing. If you can't be home for Christmas, at least you have your dreams."

I think this is what was going on for the Israelites in the wilderness. Even though their previous life was one of brutal captivity and slavery in Egypt, it was familiar, it had been home. Whenever the wilderness tour started to get scary, they waxed nostalgic.

“The people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’" The implication here, of course, is that Egypt was better than death.

This was only one in a series of desert freak-outs that afflicted the Israelites. Earlier, when they didn’t have enough food to eat they said, “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…”

They were remembering the bread. Conveniently pushed from their minds were the beatings, the brutal work, and the total lack of freedom and dignity.

Still the nostalgia probably worked for a while, to keep them going, to help them stay calm.

But ultimately the past was swallowed up by the present. No amount of looking back was going to erase the reality of their current situation. They had to move on.

In the middle of the wilderness if we continually seek the safety of where we came from we are doomed.

Because “before” is gone. The Israelites could not go back. If they had, they would have been brutally punished or killed to set an example to other slaves.

Nostalgia is rampant these days in The Episcopal Church. Every time I go to a meeting, someone talks about the good old days of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when the pews were full and the Sunday schools overflowing, not to mention the church coffers.

Those were good times and many of you were responsible for making those churches the dynamic places they were. But times have changed. We are no longer in the presumed safety of Egypt. We are in the wilderness.

Families in suburban California, in fact in most of America, no longer see church membership as a mainstay of their lives. There are many reasons for this.

First, there is increasing competition from other activities. Even when I was a child in Orinda in the 60’s, there wasn’t anything else to do on a Sunday morning. No good cartoons on TV, no movies to pop into the DVD player, no soccer games, etc. We weren’t all scheduled to the max with zillions of options to fill every instant.

Second, God seems less urgent. Since the advent of antibiotics and vaccines, we live in what appears to be a far less lethal world. People often don’t see death face to face. Wars are fought in far off lands and very, very few suburban Americans have loved ones fighting in those wars. Death feels like something we can push away if we just eat right and exercise.

I have to tell you, as a hospital chaplain, I know that when people are faced with death, or a serious illness, God suddenly seems very interesting. I think one of the reasons people were more religious in centuries past is that they knew there was no escape from pain, or suffering or death. And knowing that, they went to God with tears, anger and a desire to understand.

Third, we live in a post-Christian country. That does not mean there are no longer any Christians, nor persons of faith; clearly that is not true. But the whole fabric of society no longer breathes the Christian story. Instead of Merry Christmas, it is Happy Holidays; Instead of Easter Break it is Spring break and it often no longer coincides with Easter, which for most people has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with bunnies and chocolate.

Most people in America cannot articulate even the simplest version of the Jesus story. This is pluralistic society in which many, many people are no longer comfortable with organized religion. This is especially true in California and in all upscale communities.

I may sound like I disapprove; actually I don’t. I don’t think everyone needs to be Christian. I will admit that I think everyone needs some kind of faith life and some kind of faith community, but it doesn’t have to be Christian. I also think perhaps this post-Christian reality is actually far healthier for the church.

You all who are here are here because you feel called by God to be here. You are not here because it is the socially expected thing to do or the only gig in town.

That is a good thing! Really. I firmly believe that a small group of committed Christians, trying to live out Jesus’ Good News of love, trying to bring light into the darkest corners of this desperately suffering world, is far, far, far better than a giant social club.

Now, I don’t think that everyone in church on Sundays in the 50s, 60s and 70s was just there to be seen socially, but there was a great deal of that. I know it. I was here. In church.

And the social club way of being church had its own slavery. The Good News of the transforming and liberating power of Jesus’ message of love and justice and hope for those who are suffering was muffled by all that success.

Suburban churches felt successful if there were lots of people there doing lots of fun things. We didn’t have to ask the hard questions about what our message was. We didn’t need to tell people about the wonders of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican way, or the love of Jesus because people came almost automatically.

We didn’t ever have to engage in the scary task of evangelizing. We left that to the fundamentalists.

Not such a good plan. The result is a society that believes the only way to be Christian is to be a rigid, homophobic rule-follower that thinks Jesus is the only way to avoid the fires of hell. This is now the dominant form of Christianity in the United States and we are partly to blame.

We may wax nostalgic about the past, but we often forget the slavery that lurks in that memory.

That slavery also included the not-so-wonderful fact that most suburban churches failed to address the deep problems that afflicted and still afflict this part of society.

Yes, things are horrible in the poorest parts of the inner city. I can attest to that having worked in those areas for several years.

But that does not negate the real pain right here in the prosperous parts of Contra Costa County.

I believe the Church, especially the Episcopal Church, still has something to offer the world. Even this world. In the seemingly safe suburbs, even the super upscale ones, there are many, many lost and suffering people.

There are teenagers who are struggling with their sexuality and concerns about their sexual orientation.

There are teens who are fighting drug or alcohol or mental health problems. Ditto for their parents.

Children here face terrible pressure to succeed academically or athletically. There is also significant bullying.

Many couples struggle with divorce or adultery. Many people have lost their jobs or their savings. Retirement now seems like a pipe dream.

Women in suburbia get breast cancer, ovarian cancer and suffer difficult treatments. Many do die. Men have heart attacks or strokes. Even more feel trapped in high-paying jobs they hate but don’t dare leave.

Many of you have parents or partners with dementia—a nightmare that has to be lived to be believed.

New moms who are used to going to work every day, surrounded by many friends and co-workers, feel isolated and depressed now that baby has arrived.

The suffering and loneliness and desperation are here, usually carefully shielded from the public eye with lovely clothes, spotless homes, and a cheery “I’m fine,” to the check-out person in the supermarket. I had a chaplain supervisor who used to say, “Fine is a four-letter word.”

Things are not fine. That doesn’t mean everything is horrible or dark, but things are not all fine. People in our towns are in the wilderness. A lovely, clean and prosperous wilderness, but a wilderness nevertheless.

So what are we, as Christians, as Episcopalians, to do? Do what Moses did. Offer people a way to connect with God, who lends us a cool drink, sustenance for the journey, a way out of the desert.

I don’t know what St. Giles is called to do to offer that cool drink, that food for the suffering of our neighbors. That is for you all to figure out.

But I do think this. Caring for others lost in the wilderness is our own path out as well. Offering the love—that is, the concrete, practical love-- of Jesus can be not only our mission as the Church; but also our roadmap to the Promised Land, a way to find meaning and vital life even when our pews are less than overflowing.

Perhaps then we won’t need to seek the comfort of nostalgia, to find social connectedness through memories of the past. Instead we can walk forward with hope, and strength and excitement about what it means to be a Christian today.