Sermons at St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Pentecost Sermons 2009

November 22, 2009

Last Sunday After Pentecost (Christ the Kind), Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm 132:1-13, (14-19)
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

The Reverend Arthur Holder

About twenty years ago, the English hymn writer Brian Wren analyzed the language used to refer to God in a contemporary British Methodist hymnal. What he found was that “King” was the third most popular name for God, right after “Lord” and “Father.” “King” was the second most popular name used to refer to Jesus Christ, right after “Lord.” I expect the results would be similar for our Episcopal hymnal.

I’m sure we can all think of many, many hymns about God as King:

“Praise my soul, the King of heaven.”
“The King of love my shepherd is.”
“Christ is the King! O friends upraise.”
“Come, thou almighty King.”
“All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine.”
“All creatures of our God and King.”
“God the omnipotent! King who ordainest.”

In fact there are 160 hymns in our hymnal that refer to God or Christ as “king.”1 So divine kingship is something we sing about quite often, including today on this feast of Christ the King.

But this is a bit of a problem because most of us—apart from a few who have lived in Britain or Canada or some other Commonwealth country—don’t really have any personal experience with royalty. And in modern times even the Brits don’t think of their beloved Queen as an all-powerful ruler but as a kindly if slightly dowdy grandmother who is more of a symbolic figurehead. When Christians in America today say “Christ is King,” what does it really mean?

Throughout most of Christian history, it meant that Christ was the true king, or “King of kings” in a very literal way: there are many kings, but Christ is greater than them all. The same was true of the title “Lord” or Kyrios in Greek. The Roman emperors styled themselves as kings, lords, and sons of God. So the earliest Christian confession that “Jesus is Lord” was a direct challenge to the power and authority of Rome. There could only be one “King of kings and Lord of lords.” Was it Christ or Caesar?

As time went on and the emperors themselves became Christian, the emphasis shifted. Now Christ was not king instead of the emperor, but the king who ruled by means of the imperial power. Think of the mosaics on the walls of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/istanbul-hagia-sophia) or San Vitale in Ravenna (http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/ravenna-san-vitale) where Christ is depicted along with the emperors and empresses of the Byzantine empire. Sometimes he is blessing them; sometimes they are offering him gifts. But it is always clear that Christ and the emperors have a special relationship as part of the same royal system.

How can any of this make sense for us today? We don’t have to choose between Christ and Caesar, and we don’t have leaders who claim to speak for God. Or do we? Recently some New Testament scholars like John Dominic Crossan have argued that we shouldn’t get hung up on the fact that the Roman Empire attributed divine status to individual emperors. What defined the imperial system, says Crossan, was its grand vision of “Peace through Victory.” The Romans wanted peace and harmony—they really did—but they believed they would have to engage in some pretty unpeaceful things along the way: things like war, torture, and ruthless domination of the weak. The end would justify the means, so a little cruelty and oppression would be worth it.

This mentality is still very much with us, even if it goes by the name of “spreading democratic principles around the world.” As Crossan says:

Rome was not the evil empire of its ancient time. . . . Rome was simply the normalcy of civilization within first-century options and the inevitability of globalization within first-century limits. . . . We are, at the start of the twenty-first century, what the Roman empire was at the start of the first century. Put succinctly: Rome and the East there, America and the West here. Put more succinctly: they then, we now.2

The Jewish and early Christian alternative to “Peace through Victory” was “Peace through Justice,” based on the principle that God brings peace by teaching us to act peacefully and treat everyone with fairness and respect. So we cannot confess Jesus as Lord and King without pledging ourselves to live this radically counter-cultural lifestyle. We cannot praise Jesus for who he is unless we are willing to do what he does.

Forty years ago I met Millard Fuller, who later became the founder of Habitat for Humanity. When people asked him why he gave up a high-powered corporate job to build houses for poor people, Fuller used to say that most people in the world are trying to climb their way up to the top of the heap. If everyone tries to get to the top, only one person will make it (that person would be the emperor, I guess) and there will be a lot of people crushed at the bottom of the pile. But what if everyone tried to get to the bottom? Then there would be room for everybody and plenty of resources to go around.

Maybe that is too simplistic, but it begins to get at the enormity of the paradigm shift involved in pledging allegiance to the kingdom of Christ or what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the beloved community.” Do I fight my way to the top so that once I get there I can help the little people below me, or do I first find solidarity with the people on the bottom and then work with them to make things better for everyone? This is a perennial question for all of us, whether on the school playground or in the office or in the classroom or on the parish vestry or in the realm of global politics. Will it be “Peace through Victory” or “Peace through Justice”?

There could be no clearer contrast between the two paradigms than the encounter between Jesus and Pontius Pilate. As the Roman governor, Pilate was thoroughly committed to the “Peace through Victory” strategy. He didn’t really care that much about the fine points of Jewish theology. For Pilate, there was only one question that mattered in this trial: did Jesus accept the authority of Rome, or did he claim to be a king? But however many times Pilate tried to ask his question, Jesus avoided a direct answer.

Pilate: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (That’s the direct approach.)
Jesus: “Why do you want to know?”
Pilate: “What have you been doing?” (That’s the indirect approach.)
Jesus: “My kingdom is not from this world.”
Pilate: “So you are a king?” (That’s the “gotcha” question.)
Jesus: “You are the one who keeps calling me a king. Now can we talk about the truth?”
And then, as we all know, Pilate said: “What is truth?”

It is all too easy for us, like Pilate, to get hung up on issues about power and control: Who is the boss here? What is my status here? How can I get things done here? But we never get satisfying answers because we are asking all the wrong questions. And if we ever stumble into the right question (What is truth?), we almost never wait for the answer.

If we do stop long enough to listen to Jesus in the silence, we see that the kingly crown he wears is made of thorns. We remember he was born in King David’s city, but in a humble stable. We sing his royal praises and welcome him with waving palms, but soon find ourselves walking in the way of the cross. We look for his coming again in glorious majesty, but the only way we will recognize the King of love is by the wounds he suffered for sinners’ sake.

Strange king from the grave
Come again your people save
Your life, all you gave
Strange King from the grave.3

1. Brian Wren, What Language Shall I Borrow?: A Male Response to Feminist Theology (Crossroad, 1989), 113-22.

2. John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 412.

November 15, 2009

Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

1 Samuel 1: 4-20
Canticle: The Song of Hannah
Hebrews 10: 11-25
Mark 13: 1-8

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Our collect bids us to take scripture seriously. So what do these reading tell us about how we are to wait upon the Lord, and with what should we come into God’s presence? Hannah was at the end of her tether. She was ready to totally lose it and snap. And no wonder. She was heartbroken at being unable to conceive a child. My hear goes out to the many couples today who experience the pain and sorrow and even, yes, today, the stigma of fertility problems: All those years of being careful, and for what? The clucking pity of friends (does Job come to mind?), the self-blame, the wrench in the relationship, all on top of desperately deep disappointment. And for Hannah, her personal pain was made much worse by a society that saw infertility, or as they so cruelly named it, ‘barrenness’, as a curse from God. Then there were the derision and the provocations of her husband’s other wife and her brood. At least Elkanah made clear his deep love and preference for her. But that didn’t stop him from being pretty insensitive to what she was going through. “Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons!” Well, no, not actually.

Even as she poured out her misery and supplication to God, she was maligned and misunderstood. Eli, the Temple priest (of whose failings we hear more in later chapters), accuses her of making a drunken spectacle of herself. I have to admire her courage and self-possession in the face of this gratuitous slur. She calmly explains her situation, and a perhaps repentant Eli offers his own plea/promise that God will grant her petition. Hope took hold of her and her sadness was lifted. She returned home in peace, perhaps even filled with confidence. Her trust in the promise was not misplaced. She was given a son, one who would be an exemplay servant to God.

Hannah exults in her blessedness in words very similar to those of another woman many centuries later who would herself be gifted by God with a special and unexpected son. Mary was young and taken by surprise, quite unlike Hannah, with her many years of disappointment and fervent prayer. But their songs sound the same themes. They praise God and give God the glory and credit for their blessed maternity. But they each take it further to hymn the power of God to turn things upside-down and inside-out and the compassion of God to lift up the lowly and oppressed and to right injustice. Unexpectedness and reversal loom large in these two women’s experience of God. And they are certainly not alone in that. Again and again in scripture we hear these themes. The younger prevails over the older- think Jacob and King David. The insignificant eclipses the prominent. It is a hugely important theme in Jesus’ preaching and teaching- lose your life to gain it; to be first, be the servant of all; become as a little child to inherit the kingdom. And Paul preached not only of his own weakness and troubles, but even of God’s foolishness and weakness, though he reminded us that even those go far beyond any human strength.

Today’s gospel reading begins with a major reversal, the prediction off the destruction of the Temple. Unlike John’s version of this prediction, Mark’s does not follow it up with an allusion to Jesus as the new center of prayer by speaking of rebuilding it in three days. Instead, the focus turns to the anxieties of the inner circle of disciples. They want the full story. They want to know when and how they’ll know that it’s about to happen. Instead, Jesus instructs them on attentiveness, discernment, perseverance, and persistent hope. These are the tools that will carry them through frightening and ambiguous times and cataclysmic events. Such happenings may be birth pangs of the new age, but we are cautioned to expect a very long labor.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews also has some advice for us as we await the new day. But he, because he is building on the gospel experience rather than narrating it, grounds his instruction in his understanding of the change wrought by Jesus in the Jewish pattern of worship. We have heard over the past several weeks the argument that Jesus, as the complete and ultimate High Priest, has changed forever the way we are to approach God.

In former times, sacrifice for sin was a central theme. Again and again, the priests, themselves mere sinful humans like the rest of the populace, offered their prayers and the blood of animals in a vain attempt to blot out sin as an impediment to our relationship with God. Not until Jesus was a pure and perfect offering made. His loving and obedient gift of himself on the cross serves for all times sacrifice for sin is no longer the issue. We never again need to justify ourselves before God. Has sin ceased? Not by my observation. Are all things accomplished? That’s a pretty clear “no” as well. The old Temple is down and we dwell amid the throes of the new One, the Living Christ, becoming all in all. Our discernment and knowledge are imperfect and many would lead us astray. We are beset by wars and disasters and unholy reversals. But we are no longer as Paul would put it, “dead in our sins”. Jesus has lifted that burden from us.

To be sure, we still need to note where we fall short of what God would have us be and do. And our sorrow over these things helps us to do better as we move forward. But God’s mercy and forgiveness are never in doubt. Cringing before God is a thing of the past. The Holy Spirit has come to us in testimony to this new reality. How then shall we come before God?
Primarily, the writer says, we are to come with confidence. Jesus has opened the door. We can enter in the assurance our faith has given us. We come as a community of the forgiven, born in baptism to a new and eternal life. We are asked to hold that covenant gift in our hearts and also to speak of it. We are asked to anchor our lives in hope, trusting in God’s promise to us. And we are to do all these together. It’s not enough to personally relate to God in this new and freeing way. We need to build up our community of faith by offering one another encouragement and by spending time together, both in worship and in fellowship. And we need to extend the larger community of faith by offering a word of hope to all in need of it, to those who do not yet dwell in the promise of mercy. They are all around us, seeking for solace and meaning. Through Christ, we have that to offer. The God who made us loves us and forgives us. All are welcome in God’s presence, God’s heart.
This is the message we are called to carry. And sometimes the folks who need most to hear it are right here among us, or even deep within us. Look at Peter, James, John and Andrew. These devoted disciples needed to push past their anxiety and persevere on the path. Jesus doesn’t pretend it is an easy journey, nor should we. But we engage it knowing the final destination is never in doubt.

How do we wait upon the Lord, and with what do we come into God’s presence?

We’ve learned from Hannah to pour out our hearts and to trust God’s promise. She shows us how to offer praise and to see our experience in the larger context of God’s activity. The anxious disciples remind us that we will never have all the answers, and that we must continually give ourselves to the discernment of what’s really what in life, and that the road goes on despite the many bumps and potholes in it. The writer of Hebrews teaches us confidence and community as the hallmarks of our life before God. These are tools we can use, given us in Holy Scripture, to help us “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life” that God has so graciously given us in Jesus.

November 8, 2009

Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

Ruth 3: 1-5; 4: 13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9: 24-28
Mark 12: 38-44

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Well, we’re right into it now. I went to a meeting in Walnut Creek on Friday and took the opportunity to wander over to the Macy’s there. The Christmas promotions were all around. Not that I didn’t expect it. At Costco, bellwether of such things, the racks of Halloween costumes and pallets of mini candy bars in giant bags had been playing against a backdrop of reindeer, wrapping paper and artificial trees (pre-lit!) for most of October. The final quarter of the year seems to have turned into a giant frenzy of promotions and purchasing. Many retailers count on making almost all of their year’s income in these months, which can be very scary for the small, individual mom-and-pop stores that just squeak by.

This pattern is not so dissimilar to the cycle of agriculture, where you work and plan and hope and extend yourself through tilling and sowing and growing seasons in hopes of a plentiful harvest that will make everything balance out. And, as with retail, the stakes are often quite different for the big and small players, for agribusiness versus the family farm, but that is to a certain extent, another story.

The thing is that this whole fourth quarter retail push is presented to us as the “giving season”. The business section has had several articles recently about how the economic downturn, now haunting the season for its second year, will affect giving patterns. And giving patterns are just what we ourselves are being asked to look at by our readings today, though from a rather different perspective.

Before you leap directly to the iconic story of “the widow’s mite”, let’s examine our other two readings. The Book of Ruth, somewhat like the Book of Esther that we encountered six weeks ago, tells the tale of a heroic woman of humble origins who does a great thing for God’s people. Esther saves her people from annihilation by a foreign power. Ruth, a foreigner herself, becomes great-grandmother to David, thus providing God’s people with their greatest monarch.

To recap Ruth’s story – she, a Moabitess, is widowed at a young age after marriage to a son of Naomi, who had fled to Moab with her husband to escape famine in Bethlehem. When Naomi decides to return to her own people, she encourages Ruth to return to her parents” house, but Ruth will not. She throws in her lot with Naomi and the two widows go to make a life on the margins of society in Bethlehem. To support them, Ruth goes gleaning, that is, gathering up what’s left after the main harvesting is done. She works the fields of Boaz, a prominent kinsman of Naomi’s late husband, who take an interest and sees that she is safe and gets enough grain to survive. This is the context of today’s story. Naomi has a daring plan to get Boaz to marry Ruth and give them the economic security and societal standing they lack as an elderly and foreign widow. Ruth is obedient to it and, after a bunch of negotiations that are skipped over in the reading, the plan is a rousing success. Ruth and Boaz are happily married. Naomi is thrilled to be a grandma and the stage is set for the birth of David.

So what are the giving patterns we see here in Naomi, Ruth and Boaz? The great commonality is that they spring from love and desire to do right in terms of another. Naomi feels she has nothing more to offer Ruth and doesn’t want to burden her, so she frees her of any obligation and encourages her to start over with her own people. Ruth, in her great love and loyalty to her mother-in-law, takes on the dubious status of a foreigner to follow her to Bethlehem and once there, works hard to support them both. She even complies unquestioningly with Naomi’s plan that she should offer herself to Boaz, an act which entailed great risk, even to banishment and death, if it was not accepted. And Boaz, from his position of strength, took compassion on a poor gleaner and then went to great lengths to secure her in marriage honorably.

All of these giving patterns show a willingness to extent oneself on behalf of another, which is, according to Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled, the essential behavior of love. They are patterns we can learn from in our own lives.

The ultimate exercise of this giving pattern is held up for us in our Epistle. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has spent several chapters elaborating the differences between Jesus as the true High Priest of God and the line of Levitical priests that had preceded him. What have been emphasized are his uniqueness and the once-for-all perfection of his self-offering. Here the writer points to Jesus’ readiness to save all “who are eagerly waiting for him.” It takes St. Paul, writing to the Philippians, to remind us of how he initially extended himself for our good in coming among us to live a human life in order to show us all that our own lives could aspire to and to teach us, heal us and bring us the good news of salvation. Here indeed is the definitive giving pattern of love and faithfulness.

It is against these background examples that we Jesus teaching and observing in the Temple. He has no good words for the ostentation of the prominent, who assume everything is their due and lord it over others. Then he notices two markedly different patterns of giving being enacted before him and calls his followers to him so they can learn from it. I want us to be sure to notice that the rich people making offerings are not identified with the scribes. Nor are they condemned. Our lectionary may be doing us a disservice in combining these two bits, which are both part of a larger unit.

What Jesus points out is that there is a real differing between giving out of such abundance that one will hardly notice it’s gone on the one hand, and giving to the point that one’s daily living is impacted on the other. To go back to the patterns of giving that we saw in the previous readings, only the gift of the poor widow requires her to extend herself to give it and thus meets the standard of love.

As we navigate this annual fourth-quarter season of giving, we do well to take these examples to heart. Although three of our models of good giving are impoverished widows, both Boaz and Jesus give out of abundance, but in a manner and to an extent that it changes their lives as well as the lives of others.

The impact of any gift can be felt in two places, in the life of the giver and in the life of the receiver. Personal stewardship deals with the impact on the giver. How does our giving change us for the better by helping us extend ourselves for the sake of another? Stewardship on a larger level, say of the church or of creation, deals with the impact on the receiver. How does what we do and give change the world or this community for the better? Both matter. This is never more true than in our own pledging of support for this parish. To be truly transformative, our giving needs to have an impact on both our own lives and our common life as a parish. We each need to give out of our poverty and out of our abundance, be it of Time, Talent or Treasure. Our giving needs to extend us, take us beyond what we thought we were capable of. St. Mark’s offers us an opportunity to practice this pattern of giving so we can implement it in all areas of our lives and thus imitate our Lord.

October 25, 2009

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

Job 42: 1-6, 10-17
Psalm 34: 1-8
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Mark 10: 46-52

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Oh, the majesty of God! Oh, the mercy of God!

These readings show us both in high relief. And they show us that the two are inseparable. Just as we heard Scott remind us last week that “Love Costs” and “Love Heals” are truths that must be taken together, if we are to know and live the way of Love.

The story of Job is familiar and all too true to life. Job is a good man, righteous and upright. He is also successful and prosperous. Suddenly everything goes wrong- first financial and family disaster and tragedy and then grievous and grotesque personal illness. The question is whether he will turn against God and curse God for all these reversals. He doesn’t quite go there, but he sure wants an explanation. He challenges God and God, addressing him out of a whirlwind, gives him an earful. Basically God tells Job, “I’m God and you’re not, and I don’t need to be accountable to your sense of fairness.” In our reading today, Job responds. He gets it. He repeats back God’s own questions to him and voices his assent. He accepts his status as God’s creature and feels sorry about his attempt to call God to account. God’s mercy overflows toward him and gives him as many and more blessings as he had enjoyed before. Walter Brueggemann makes the point that this is not some kind of pay-out for Job’s successful suit against God. That would be counter to the whole message of the book. That message is that God cannot be held accountable to our standards. Before God, all we can do is bow in awe and obedience and utter our praise and thanks.

Our reading from Hebrews also emphasizes the great gulf between who we are and who God is, this time using the example of Jesus as the great and eternal high priest. His majesty is not only greater, but of an entirely different sort than that accorded to the long line of human priests that serve God in the sanctuary. His mercy is, likewise, great and eternal, “since he always lives to make intercession” for us.

In our Gospel, we understand the majesty of God in Jesus’ ability to heal and make well. But here we are mostly struck by Jesus’ mercy, especially in contrast to the attitude of those around him. This incident is the last one reported before St. Mark embarks on the story of the Passion, beginning with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As such, it puts a punctuation mark on a whole section of the gospel narrative, one that has featured teaching and healing and controversy, and also the instructing and sending forth of disciples. Jesus and his friends have traveled north into the foreign territory of Tyre in present day Lebanon and are now closing back in on Jerusalem. I imagine last thing the entourage wanted was to deal with another persistent beggar. They tried to shoo him away, but he would not be put off. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”, he keeps crying out. Jesus stops. He stands still and calls the man to come to him. All excitement, Bartimaeus approaches. Jesus makes no assumptions. He asks the blind beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus asks that he be given back his sight. Jesus dismisses him with the words, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Sight restored, Bartimaeus disobeys the “Go” part and follows Jesus along the way.

So in all these stories, God is shown to be majestic and other, but also in deep and intimate relationship with us through the operation of divine mercy and compassion. We affirmed in last week’s litany of healing, “God, your will for us is health and salvation.” We have seen God acting in accord with that will by inviting, restoring, healing and pleading for us, all despite the fact that we are in no position to make any claim on God.
Now it is time to focus a bit on how we respond to this majestic and merciful God, who is for us both scary and consoling. We saw Job, at the last, cease to battle for his own justification and simply bow before the One who created all things. When we read his words, “now I despise myself,” we should, according to Brueggemann, think less of our present psychological idea of internalized self-hatred (not recommended) and more of yielding or submitting oneself fully to a great and good authority. That’s a hard step for our entitlement-laced consciousness, and such submission is appropriate only to God.

Perhaps we do best to look to Bartimaeus as a model. First, what we see is someone who knows his need and where it might get met, and who is not afraid to put himself right out there to bring it about. He is persistent, even in the face of obstacles. Second, when the moment of possibility arrives and he is called to come to Jesus, he does not hesitate. Nor does he even try to bring all his stuff with him. He throws off his cloak, perhaps his most important possession and protection, and launches toward the voice.

Third, he is ready to say what he really wants and needs. Jesus often asks those who come to him, “What do you want?” or “Whom do you seek?”. Sometimes the answer is not all that he might desire. If you’ve been reading along in Mark, you’ll know that the story before this is that of the sons of Zebedee pleading for special favors for themselves. Their answer to Jesus’ same question is, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Oops. I think we are not meant to let the contrast go unnoticed.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, Bartimaeus responds to the gift of restored sight by following Jesus. He is ready to go forward with the one who brought him healing as Jesus meets the next person in need. He is set to accompany Jesus through the full range of tragedy and triumph that will await them in Jerusalem, just a few miles down the road.

Bartimaeus’ journey is ours as well. We are all afflicted with one sort of blindness or another. There are plenty of things we just don’t “see” or “get” in life. But the point is, we need to admit it. Again and again, Jesus speaks of bringing light and sight, but only to those who aren’t busy insisting that their lives are already 20-20. Some of us have felt ourselves on the sidelines or even put down or discouraged by those around us, either personally or in society. Bartimaeus is our example of persistence in the face of such odds.

A big thing for most of us is, what are we willing to unwrap/untangle ourselves from so we can freely follow Jesus? It was a real risk for Bartimaeus to leave his cloak behind. Are there things you’re all wrapped up in that you maybe need to get out of? Are you using something in your life as a “cocoon” against greater commitment to Christ? What kind of giving or giving up could make you a more faithful follower of Jesus?

Today is the day we are asked to make our commitment of Time, Talent and Treasure to St. Mark’s for 2010. Perhaps you’ve filled out the card that was sent you. Look again at the numbers. Perhaps you’re about to rummage for one of the cards at the end of each pew. Pause before you write. Have you made your best and most generous gift? Does your pledge reflect your awareness of the majesty and mercy of God? Does it recognize both the cost and the healing power of love? Does it help unwrap you from those things that hold you back from following Jesus on the way?

We have an important year ahead. We need to all commit our best to it. May God bless us in our generosity.

October 18, 2009

Feast of St. Luke

2 Kings 5:9-14
Psalm 23
Romans 8:31-39
Matthew 9:2-8

The Reverend Scott Sinclair

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Love heals, and lost costs.

Today is the Feast of St. Luke, sort of, and we are celebrating it. On October 18 we regularly commemorate the work of Luke, the author of the longest gospel and of its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, the first history of the church. Now, as the liturgical experts among us know, Sunday takes precedence over a saint's day, and so theoretically we should transfer the celebration of Luke to tomorrow. But in fact we are not going to do this, and be assured we did get permission from the bishop to disregard the normal rule and celebrate Luke today.

We are making this exception in order to have an appropriate occasion for a service of public healing. The Epistle to the Colossians sends greetings from "Luke, the beloved physician." Although it is not certain that this Luke is the author of the Gospel and the Acts, this greeting has inspired the tradition that St. Luke was a doctor. As a result, Luke has always been the patron of physicians and of healing in general, to say nothing of giving his name to a zillion hospitals. Hence, St. Luke's Day seemed to be an expecially appropriate time to schedule the service of public healing which we have had at St. Mark's from time to time in recent years.

Love heals, and love costs.

Today we are in the midst of a series of debates about healing. We are debating whether the earth needs healing. For example, are human activities the cause of global warming, and is that warming becoming a threat to the future of the planet as a whole? And, if so, what must we do now? We are debating whether we need a new national health policy. Is the present system of private medical insurance for people under sixty-five so broken that we must fundamentally alter it? And if so, what would a better system consist of? We are debating whether prayer is an effective agent for personal healing. Some scientific studies have concluded that it is; whereas others studies have shown the opposite. On all these issues there is profound and even bitter disagreement.

I feel that I can speak with a modest authority on these issues because of my travels. Thus, on the one hand I reside in Berkeley, where all things liberal and leftwing flourish. Yet this summer I spent time with relatives in rural Tennessee--the land of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. From these two settings I have at least gained an appreciation of the differing sides of the controversies.

Now superficially Berkeley and rural Tennessee seem to be complete disagreement on health and healing. In Berkeley I have been swamped with urgent warnings that the planet is already heating up dangerously, and that if something drastic is not done immediately the future of humanity is threatened. In rural Tennessee I read a newspaper editorial that assured me that global warming is a hoax and that in recent years the planet has actually been cooling. In Berkeley I hear that tens of millions of American citizens are suffering without health care and that this tragedy is threatening the rest of us because of communicable diseases. From Rush Limbaugh I learned that everyone one in the United States--even the indigent--have adequate medical care because anyone can go to the emergency room. In Berkeley, one can be skeptical of the efficacy of prayer if scientific studies do not confirm it. In the Bible Belt prayer rocks!

But on deeper analysis Berkeley and rural Tennessee are in complete agreement. To begin with, both sides insist that they deeply care. It is, of course, true, that in Berkeley we tend to emphasize our love for the earth more than our love for our country. Here you see bumper stickers with a beautiful satelite picture of the planet and the caption, "Love your mother." In Berkeley Earth Day is a big deal. In rural Tenessee, by contrast, the emphasis is on patriotism. Fourth of July is second only to Christmas, and I noticed as I passed the continuing Episcopal Church in town that there was not one but two American flags in the sign board fluttering in the wind gaily (I am using "gaily" in its older sense). Nevertheless, both Berkeley and rural Tennessee insist that they deeply care.

Berkeley and rural Tennessee also agree on something else: The policies that they favor won't cost anything unlike the policies advocated by the ignorant opposition. Thus, I read in Tennessee that doing something about global warming would cripple the local economy, but since the planet was cooling anyway, doing nothing would cause no problems. I also heard that reforming the health care system would lead to rationing that would adversely affect everyone who is receiving care now. By contrast, in Berkeley I read that spending vast sums to combat global warming will stimulate the economy producing new jobs and new industies and we will better off economically and that a reformed health system will actually deliver better care at lower expenses for everyone.

Love costs.

As a Christian, I must express skepticism about rural Tennessee and about about Berkeley. Christianity is the religion that teaches that God loved the world and expressed that love by enduring torture and death. We know that love costs, and that if we are not willing to pay the cost, we do not truly love. As a Christian I have difficulty believing that Rush Limbaugh truly loves his country when he blithely assumes that an occasional desperate trip to the emergency room is adequate medical care for millions of American citizens. Nevertheless, I did believe Rush when he insisted that making more medical care available to millions of our fellow Americans would put a strain on the system and that the rest of us would experience some inconvience. As a Christian, I am willing to pay this price because I do love my country. So too in Berkeley we need to admit that saving the planet from ecological disaster is not going to be free, and if we truly love the earth we should be willing to face this fact squarely and make the necessary sacrifices.

We can also see why prayer for healing really is effective despite some negative scientific studies. Prayers for healing work when love is present. In order to be "scientific" the studies insist that people who are receiving the prayer must not know this, and that the people who are doing the praying have no personal relationship with the person in question. Such conditions make love virtually impossible. Prayer heals because it deepens our love for someone who is suffering and allows us to pass on more of God's love. The formal sacrament of healing--anointing someone with oil--heals because the anointing makes God's love tangible through a physical sign and thereby invites the sick person to experience that love in a new and deeper way. And everyone learns from our earliest childhood that love heals. As children, we skinned our knees and ran to mother and she kissed us and we felt better.

But love costs. It costs those of us who pray. We feel more deeply the suffering of those who ask for our prayers. And the need of the sufferer calls forth energy from us as we pray, and we get drained. I can personally attest that the hardest work I ever do is manning the healing station here at St. Mark's. And love costs the people who come for healing. You cannot receive love without acknowledging that you are not self-sufficient but are dependent on others and, especially, on God. And you cannot accept love without entering more deeply into a relationship over which you have no control. Love makes us servants of one another, and servants of God.

And so everything comes down to this: Are we willing to pay the price of love, because love alone truly heals?

September 27, 2009

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

Esther 7: 1-6, 9-10; 9: 20-22
Psalm 124
James 5: 13-20
Mark 9: 38-50

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Rabbi Jane, of Temple Beth El, once replied to my query about a Jewish festival, “It’s really quite simple. All our festivals are about the same basic thing: They tried to kill us. We escaped. Now let’s eat.” That’s certainly the case for the feast of Purim, though we couldn’t make it work all that well for the Solemn Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which begins this evening for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Purim is in the early spring, usually March. But I mention it because it’s the festival that finds its biblical warrant in the Book of Esther. Now, Esther is not a book you’ll get a lot of in the lectionary. In fact, I think this is it. It doesn’t have much to recommend it in terms of piety. God isn’t even mentioned. And humanity doesn’t come off all that well itself. But the borrowed pagan festival of Purim, sometimes called the “Jewish Mardi Gras,” was well loved and it really did need a good story to back it up. And, at the time of its writing, in the late second century BCE, there was again a threat of extermination this time by Persian Zoroastrians, and it served as a good reminder and encouragement.

I’ve loved the story since I was a girl; mainly because of a highly romanticized teen novel called Behold your Queen that was a real favorite of mine. Poor but beautiful minority orphan wins beauty pageant and heart of king and is made queen. The kind uncle who had adopted her warns her to keep her Jewish-ness secret and follows her royal life from outside the palace gate. He draws the ire of the king’s wicked henchman, Haman, by refusing to bow down to him there (you will recall that Daniel got thrown to the lions for being similarly observant of Jewish custom in an alien society). Haman decides to vent his spleen by exterminating all the Jews in the kingdom, without even letting them defend themselves. Uncle Mordecai sees that this is the moment for Esther to use her high position to save her people. At great personal risk, she exposes Haman’s plot. Haman is hanged. Mordecai is elevated to king’s counselor and the Jews prevail on the day of battle. And to this day, Purim is a time of “feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.”

This is all well and good, but what does it have to say to us, particularly in light of the rest of the readings? I find several things to take from Esther’s story. The first is the commonplace, “what goes around, comes around.” Esther’s combination of humility and courage serve her well. Mordecai is rewarded for his faithfulness and Haman is punished for his evil ways. The psalm underscores the story’s implicit lesson that God will take care of us if we but trust in God. Enemies cannot ultimately prevail against those who rely on God’s grace and power. Another lesson is that we sometimes need to go counter to prevailing custom or wisdom and take a real risk in order to do what is right.

When we juxtapose Esther’s story with the epistle and gospel we get additional insights. This conclusion to the Letter of James underscores our need to trust in God. Through prayer, we can alleviate our own suffering and that of others. As we said in the psalm, “Our help is in the name of the Lord.” This truth holds, even though it is not a matter of enemies rising up against us or planning a campaign of extermination. For the “twelve tribes in the dispersion” to whom James is writing, the dangers were much more about straying from the way of Christ, or dealing with the predictable suffering and illness of human life. In all situations, then and now, prayer and reliance on God are crucial. And James adds another dimension. We must turn to one another as well as to God. Asking the prayers of the community and being anointed for healing are part of our common life here and now. We will highlight them in a special healing service three weeks from today. But James asks us to go farther. We are to confess our sins to one another and also bring each other back when we wander from the truth. The mutuality of this responsibility is significant to me. All too often, we are much less willing to accept prayer, correction or support than we are to offer them. Yet it is the full mutuality of these that forms and strengthens Christian community. Our relationships deepen as we risk increased vulnerability with each other. Whether it is by opening a personal hurt or need to the prayer or advice of others or by having the ‘tough love’ courage to call a brother or sister on some error or bad behavior. I would submit that all of these are ways of showing our ultimate trust in God and God’s practice of working through us and this community.

It is a high responsibility to understand oneself as an instrument of God’s activity in the world, and one that cannot be taken lightly. Esther risked her life in approaching the king with her request, and Mordecai surely had some sleepless nights while discerning that he should ask her to do so. I doubt that I am along in having struggled with whether to admonish a friend or colleague about some hurtful behavior. And it’s not just fear of consequences that gives me pause in such situations. It is a profound sense of my responsibility to work through my own “stuff” before speaking out, so that I provide a clearer path for God to work through me. Again, it is a matter of balancing humility and courage that will serve us best, and be best for the community.
This brings us to our gospel reading. John does not seem to have gotten the balance right when he comes boasting to Jesus that he’d stopped an outsider who was healing in Jesus’ name. Had he learned nothing from the teaching on humility that Jesus had just given him and which we heard last week, the words about being servant of all and welcoming the child?

Jesus’ response is firm, but also generous. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” And he goes on to explain more fully the nature of discipleship. The first part is to be open and thankful for whatever you receive. The second is much harder to listen to, given all its images of hacking off body parts. What I think it is saying is right in line with what we were just exploring about the responsibility of being an instrument for God in the world. And, make no mistake, that is the calling of the disciple and includes each of us from the moment of our baptism. To be instruments of God’s action in the world is to be, at all times, about more than ourselves. It is about caring for the good of others and about ridding ourselves of whatever in our own make-up prevents us from doing that. As we were reminded in the Gospel several weeks ago, we are not defiled by our bodies themselves or what we put into them, but by what comes out of us as embodied creatures. These are the sources of stumbling we must cut off, whether they are tripping ourselves up or causing others to fall.

As with the epistle, the relationship factor is paramount. How are we toward one another and toward those who do not identify as one of “us”, those not within our circle? Mark’s community, as those of James and Esther, were facing persecution. They needed to preserve themselves, but not at any price. Qualities like truth, self-regulation, humility, generosity and courage are what make a religious community viable. They come before structures and organization because they are marks of reliance on God and faithfulness to God’s call.

The church, with all its structures and organization, exists to shape us into more effective instruments of God’s action in the world and more accurate reflections of Jesus’ own life. It does so by calling us to prayer and action and giving us the gifts of community and worship to sustain us. It is our responsibility to use those gifts wisely to regulate and up-build, both ourselves and others, and constantly to seek God’s direction and guidance in doing so. In this way, each of us and this parish itself will become effective instruments for God’s purposes and grace. May it be so.

September 20, 2009

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B Track1

Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9: 30-37

The Reverend Ellen Ekström

Wisdom is again our theme. The Hebrew scripture outlines the qualities of a wise woman. The psalm shows us the wisdom of choosing righteousness over wickedness and the letter of James, our epistolary reading, posits the argument for who is truly wise, and shows us that true wisdom is pure, peaceable, without partiality or hypocrisy – and then we have the Gospel, which illustrates what happens if we ignore wisdom and put our status in the world before the Word and what Christ calls us to do.

What is it about us that makes us want to be first?

Didn’t you want to be at the head of the line in Kindergarten? Called first for the softball team? Be the person the manager thinks of first to head up a new project? When I was a little girl, I wished my name was Abigail, or Anne, or Alice, so I could be at the head of the line, or the first person in the roll call. And I was always picked last for the softball game – the team captains would fight over who would have to take me. I’m sure you all have stories like that to share.

Being first, after all, is being noticed, gaining acceptance to whatever social circles we wish to belong, being important, the person everyone goes to, or thinks of. Being first is being successful.

No one likes to be last. The last are sometimes thought of as losers or the weakest. We all want to be number one, right?

The disciples were debating that very issue when Jesus asked what it was they argued about. They were shamed to silence, for despite the pressure to be alpha-whatever, they and we have been taught that that is immodest, pushy, or selfish to focus on getting ahead. Their silence is followed by a powerful statement: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.”

Who would be the last of all in the first century? That would be children. A child, being powerless and defenseless, relies on others for care. Children have no power or standing until they are old enough to work in the fields or shop. Acceptance of a child, then, is accepting Christ, and ultimately God, who sent him.

Today, by and large, we treat our children with respect, and care for them as Jesus would have us do. But there are other children of God. The poor, and by that I mean the people in our society who have incomes below the so-called poverty line, or no income at all, whether they are working or not, whether they have a place to live, or not. They are powerless and defenseless, and they must rely on others for care. They have no power or standing. Acceptance of someone who is without a voice, without standing, without power is once again accepting Jesus and the One who sent him.

Now, is Jesus telling us that to be first, to be a leader and to have authority is wrong? I don’t believe he is – but I do believe he is telling us to get our priorities straight. Putting the interests of others before our own. That is how one becomes a true leader. He is speaking to the body of Christ then and now – do you want to be great? Alrighty then! This is what you must do!

Every day we have opportunities to get at the back of the line, as it were, to be wise and act on Jesus’ advice to be last of all and servant of all. What might they be? Volunteer time to read to at-risk children, serve up a tasty meal for the hungry, the list is endless and if you put it to prayer and look around, you might find something suited to your gifts and time. It could be as simple as signing a petition to increase funding for after-school programs, or signing a letter to a legislator to encourage support of economic reforms that will find the money to feed the hungry, improve local economies, both here and abroad.

I’ll close by asking you what the disciples asked one another: who is truly the greatest? In the Kingdom of Heaven, our human idea of merit is radically shifted and redefined. The greatest is the one who follows the example of Jesus and puts aside worldly concerns to become a humble servant of all – as vulnerable as a little child or the poorest of the poor, and open to the transforming power of love that Jesus embodies.

September 13, 2009

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

Proverbs 1: 20-33
Canticle: A Song in Praise of Wisdom (Wisdom 7: 26-8:1)
James 3: 1-12
Mark 8: 27-38

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Oh, to be wise!

From my youth I have been wont to consider myself intelligent. I was told I was a very smart little girl, and I did well in school, though never as well as my parents and teachers thought I could do. I have not become nearly as knowledgeable as so many of you, and I am often humbled by the amount of information you have at your fingertips. Nor am I particularly technically savvy or mechanically skilled. Mostly I’m a “figurer out” of life and situations. I’m always trying to discern, as I spoke about last week, what’s really what, or how things all fit together. Maybe I’m more about what my mother used to call “horse-sense” than academic intellect, more about the street than the library.

St. Mark’s is a place that values highly the life and the mind. And we are home to lots of very smart and very well educated people. Our intelligences are many and varied, though they don’t tend so much to the highly practical. What I wonder is whether you all share with me the wish to be considered, not so much smart or intelligent or accomplished, but wise.

As I’ve gone along in life, I’ve had a growing desire to be, and be thought, wise. Wisdom, for us, is associated with age and experience. We marvel at one who is “wise beyond her years”. Yet we are clear that wisdom is not the inevitable companion of our later years. How often have we branded someone an “old fool”?

What struck me most forcibly in today’s reading from Proverbs is the idea that wisdom is a choice we can make. It is not about gifts and opportunities that come only to some. It is not about how much we know and can do. At its heart, wisdom is about our relationship with God. Over and over in scripture, we read that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And let’s remember that, in this context, the word “fear” is best understood as a deep respect and awe, rather than a sort of flinching dread.

The figure of Wisdom, always portrayed as female in scripture, calls out her invitation to all and sundry. She offers a banquet of awareness. Despite the fact that she is consistently begging people to come be with her, she never comes across as needy or desperate. As we sang in the Canticle, she remains self-contained but is able to transform those who come to her into friends of God.

By the same token, there is a price to pay for refusing to do so. If we keep choosing against the way of Wisdom, we will eventually lose our access to it. As we read, “Then they will call upon me and I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.”

Wisdom here shows herself one with the prophets in predicting dire consequences for those who turn aside from the Lord, even though they speak more in terms of disobedience and she in terms of refusing an invitation.

So, how does Wisdom play out in the Christian scriptures, and particularly in our two readings today? It is worth noting that there is a strand of reflection upon the life and work of Jesus that associates him with the figure of Wisdom. We see a bit of this “Wisdom Christology” in the prologue to the gospel of John, when he says, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” And we get a hint of it whenever Jesus is portrayed as teaching people or inviting them to a banquet.

What we also get is a contrast between what counts as wisdom in the world and what counts as wisdom before God. It’s not that this is a new thought. Isaiah quotes God as saying, “My ways are not your ways, nor your ways my ways.” Paul writes to the Corinthians about the paradox of divine wisdom, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”. And he cautions them not to boast about or take pride in their earthly knowledge and accomplishments, but only of their relationship with God through God’s grace. Listen next week for James to be saying substantially the same thing in the passage following the one read today.

For now, he cautions those who would teach (and here at St. Mark’s that may count as “goin’ from preaching’ to meddlin’”) to be aware that we face a higher standard of evaluation because of the influence we exert on others. As he notes, “all of us make many mistakes.” Then he warns of the dangers of intemperate speech. The power of the tongue can be used for great evil and it is almost impossible to avoid its misuse. I think we can all see that in the rhetoric that is currently swirling about us regarding health care reform, not to mention the ill consequences of various unguarded remarks caught on tape recently. All these generate more heat than light and are in no way consistent with the practice of true wisdom.

Our gospel offers us an example of Jesus as teacher as well as the contrast between earthly and heavenly wisdom. The topic is the identity and work of Jesus and how his disciples are to relate to it. It is the first of three “passion predictions,” previews of what is to be befall Jesus and what it will mean. The reality of a crucified messiah is so alien to the expectations and sensibilities of the disciples that they will be unable to take it in until after they actually experience it. And the nascent Christian community, for whom Mark is writing, is still trying to process it for themselves. In fact, we ourselves, even two millennia later, continue to struggle to fully grasp the twin facts that the only way to Easter is through Good Friday, and that our calling is to choose toward even those difficult and painful things that will keep our friendship with God alive and growing.

But for now, let’s look at the process and what it shows us about the wisdom. Jesus, ever the teacher, asks his disciples an initial question. It is a “knowing about” kind of inquiry, the kind you can deal with at arm’s length: “Who do people say that I am?” Then he takes it home, to the heart of the crucial matter of relationship: “But who do you say that I am?” As we noted earlier, real wisdom is all caught up with our relationship to God.

Peter gives a heartfelt and true answer, wise beyond his ability to cope with, for, as Jesus unpacks the full meaning of his messiahship, Peter cannot accept it. He rebukes Jesus and Jesus rebukes him right back, saying that he is stuck in earthly wisdom and not allowing divine wisdom to enter into him. Then he details both the choice and the paradox of the holy wisdom that is based on awe and respect for God’s ways, even though they are not our own. And he, like Wisdom in the first reading, warns that the consequences of turning away from faithful following.

Every day, often many times, we are faced with the choice to be faithful or not to follow the world’s wisdom that of God. It is always an invitation, not a command. We have a choice, but every choice has consequences. We can use our reason and intelligence to sort through them, but eventually it comes home to the heart of the matter. Will we act as friends of God? Are we just smart? Or can we become truly wise?

September 6, 2009

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2: 1-10 [11-13] 14-17
Mark 7: 24-37

The Reverend Robbin Clark

“Teach us, O Lord, to discern those things that differ and to seek only for what is according to your will.”

This prayer, which I think comes from St. Ignatius, goes to the heart of many themes in our readings today. Another way of putting it might be to ask God to, “Help me see with your eyes and not just my own or those of the world.” The pop culture of my youth asked, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” and “Is that all there is?”

We humans crave meaning and a certain amount of predictability and order. We need to figure out what’s really what in order to navigate responsibly through this complex and confusing world of ours. As people of faith, we want to know which variables matter to God and which are of no consequence. Such awareness is the key to our living a moral life and to “walking in the way of the Lord.”

Our first two readings tackle these questions in terms of one of the most pervasive differences we encounter in life, the dichotomy between rich and poor. The proverbial wisdom of ancient Israel lines up squarely with the voice of the prophets in proclaiming that this division is not morally substantive. “The rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all.” And further, the poor, because they are so consistently oppressed by the rich, have a special place in God’s heart, what has been called God’s “preferential option” for them. “The Lord pleads their cause.”

The Letter of James stands directly in this line in chastising the congregation for their dismissive behavior toward the poor. With their favoritism and fawning upon the rich, they are making a distinction God does not make and judging in a manner abhorrent to God. Their behavior has stayed far from the core commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” It is against such prejudice and wrongful discrimination that we pray each week in our intercessions. And over the years we have added various categories to remind us of the many false bases of our behaviors.

It might seem that the paired healing stories in today’s Gospel are quite far removed from the topic of the first two readings, but I think not. In them, we are again dealing with the question of what counts as relevant difference.

In our gospel text, the difference is about ethnicity and religion. Jesus and his disciples have traveled north into the Gentile region of what is now southern Lebanon. He seems to be on a bit of a retreat and trying to keep a low profile. But it is not to be. A local woman hears of his presence and begs him to heal her daughter. The fact that she is an outsider, “a Gentile, of Syrophonecian origin” and not a member of the “house of Israel” is at first taken as a relevant variable, a sound reason for refusing her request. But she will not leave it at that. She asserts her dignity and her claim on God’s mercy, despite her lesser status in the disciples’ and Jesus’ eyes. At once, the prejudicial distinction is dropped and her request is granted.

The second of the healings also takes place in Gentile territory. But here the emphasis is not so much on the man’s ethnicity, but on the mechanics of the healing and the crowd’s reaction. Jesus’ method couldn’t be more different from the effective declaration over some distance that had caused the demon to leave the Syprophonecian woman’s daughter. Here he takes the man aside and puts his fingers in the man’s ears and spit on his tongue and utters the incantation, “Ephphatha!”

It has long intrigued me that Jesus would say, “Be opened,” because that command seems directed at so much more than the particular man’s tongue and ears. He himself had just been trying to open the minds of the scribes and Pharisees about what really mattered in the traditions of the elders. As we heard in last week’s gospel, the relevant variable was not particular ritual actions around hand-washing and bronze vessels, but the content of the human heart and the acts that proceed out of that content. Then Mark shows Jesus’ own mind and heart being opened to the need to go beyond the distinction between Jew and Gentile in the ministering of God’s healing grace. Now the command to “Be opened” brings release from constriction and the ability to hear and speak plainly.

I see a connection here with the prayer of St. Ignatius. Only by being open to God’s leading can we have the clarity to “discern those things that differ and to seek only for what is according to [God’s] will.” It takes a great deal of openness to move beyond the many “isms”, both insidious and overt, that keep us from transcending those differences that are irrelevant to God. In our petition against prejudice and wrongful discrimination we list, “race, color, age, nationality, political affiliation, gender, disability, sexual orientation, class or creed. We might well add economic and educational status, cleanliness and mental health.

It requires our constant attention and self-examination to stay open and not fall back into insularity, unexamined habits and indifference. We so easily slip into a kind of deafness and blindness to both God and neighbor and their claim upon us. We fail to act and speak clearly on behalf of those who are marginalized and oppressed. And when we do so, we are failing in our own faithful response to God.

The Letter of James, like the prophets and Jesus before him and the proverbial wisdom of every age, urges us to show our trust in God and our appropriation of God’s teachings, that is, to show our living faith, in our actions. It is not that our good works alone can justify us before God. We cannot be fully righteous on our own. That is why we need Jesus as our savior and the grace of the Holy Spirit. But God has given us those and now depends on us to use them for healing and for the restoration of right relationship in the world.

This requires both discernment and action. Through prayer and study and in conversation as a community we open ourselves to see more closely God’s vision for us and for the world. We are able to hear God’s word to and for us. We articulate the meaning and call that has come to us, as individuals and as a congregation. This is a big job in itself.

But then we must act. We must practice the good news we have received and trusted in and now preach. As we grow in commitment to Christ, we will inevitably grow in generosity. We will reach out more comprehensively and live more fully according to God’s vision and values. Partiality and prejudicial distinctions will decrease and mercy will triumph over judgment. We are all on this journey together and we must help one another toward the full openness of heart that we see in Jesus. This parish has a tradition of outreach and social justice work, which we must continue and expand. Every time we ourselves are fed here, we are called to share sustenance beyond ourselves. We are called to see, hear and speak the good news. We are called to “discern those things that differ and to seek only for what is according to [God’s] will.” We are called to do the works that make our faith live.

In short, we are called to, “Be opened.”

August 16, 2009

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

I Kings 2: 10-12; 3: 3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5: 15-20
John 6: 51-58

The Reverend Robbin Clark

“You are what you eat,” proclaimed the gurus of the health food movement some decades ago. It was all part of the era that was marked by fascination with the myriad connections and juxtapositions of who and what, of action and identity, of being and doing. We had Marshall McLuhan telling us that, “the medium is the message.” Communications theorists were all about “meta-messages” and the huge complexity of our needs and efforts to connect with and understand each other. These issues have only become bigger in the face of recent explosions of media and technology: hundreds of cable channels, thousand of networking websites and a cacophony of tweets all around us. And all the while our feelings of isolation increase. We are being fed (almost force-fed, I would contend) a choking diet of interactions that lack cohesion or continuing and resist conversion into anything that promotes wholeness.

But enough of my semi-Luddite rant. The point is that we do “become”, or at least take on the characteristics of that which we absorb from our surroundings, whether it be the food we put in our mouths or the commentators we choose to listen to or the people, ideas and experiences we open ourselves up to. And thus, we become the “medium” of one message or another and actually of many, and those often contradictory. Who has never felt that they were getting “mixed signals” or, by the same token, been accused of giving them?

All these things are on my mind as I seek to thread our way through this week’s readings. For a month now we’ve been following the story of David from youthful beauty and promise through military and political might and attended equally by triumph, treachery and tragedy. All along the way the hand of God has been present and, even in his worst moments, David has come back to that relationship as his most basic identity. He has sinned and repented and God has never failed in the covenant of steadfast love God made with him. Now his son Solomon inaugurates his own reign, one that will feature the same full measure of good and evil deeds, with a high moment of faithfulness. God offers to give him whatever gift he requests, and Solomon asks for an understanding mind so that he can govern according to God’s will. Ever after, King Solomon is famed for his wisdom, even though subsequent events indicate he didn’t always use it.

Also over this past month, we’ve followed John’s story of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ subsequent discourse on the Bread of Life. The evangelist has skillfully moved us through several levels of considering how we are fed to bring us to the point where we can really hear him tell us, essentially, “you are what you eat.” The affirmation here is that God provides for us total nourishment. The challenge is how we pick what we put into our bodies and our selves and whether we choose to eat the “bread” that will help us become like Jesus.

Let’s look for a moment at three levels of feeding we’ve encountered in this sixth chapter of John. First, there is the obvious physical nourishment provided by the multiplied loaves of bread and the fish. This was and is huge. God really does know we need to eat to live. Jesus had compassion on people who were faint from hunger. We carry on this tradition (and often wish for miraculous multiplication of resources with which to do it) as we feed the hungry here yesterday and every month.

As the Letter of James reminds us, our faith is made visible in good deeds and it isn’t very effective to preach God’s love and care without embodying it concretely. But Jesus asks us to move on to another level as well. He chided the crowd for following him just to get another free lunch and reminded them that they needed to feed on his teaching as well. As he said he himself did, they should live by every word that comes from God. This was not a new idea. God’s people had always been nourished by God’s teachings and statues, given through God’s messengers the prophets. At their best, like the young King Solomon, they were eager for the holy wisdom that would enable them to live faithfully and righteously, to “walk in the way of the Lord.” We continue this level of the tradition in our programs of spiritual study and reflection, our honoring of the life of the mind and our placing it in God’s service through our Forums, retreats, inquirers’ classes, EfM, etc. as well as our personal study disciplines.

Now Jesus, in his teaching, moves the crowd (and us) to a third level, that of mystical communion. Life is not just about “eating our fill of the loaves”, that is, partaking fully of all the fruits of creation or, at its most basic, existing merely to gratify the physical body. It is not even just about having a satisfying, or even exhilarating, life of the mind. It eventually comes down to a relationship of redemptive intimacy with God. John uses the terms indwelling and abiding to speak of this relationship of being “in” one another. Such mystical communion is made possible for us through Jesus. Our aim as Christians is no less than to be living Jesus’ very life in our own. As Paul puts it, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.”

All week I’ve been mulling over the text that Jan told us about last week of the poster in the convent refectory, “The purpose of all bread is to become the Body of Christ.” It spoke to me of the possibility of transformation inherent in the whole created order. It reminded me of the ability of all creation to glorify and speak of God. But it also struck me as being in sync with the movement of Jesus’ discourse that we’ve been following. Each level calls us to the next level. The physical feeding beckoned the people on to hear more of Jesus’ teachings. By the same token the meeting of our own need for food, shelter and safety frees us to attend to the hungers and possibilities of our hearts and minds. We can observe and wonder and reflect, not only on the world around us but, rather, on its source. We can cultivate wise and discerning minds. And ultimately, we become so attuned to God’s Word and so nourished by it that we ourselves become able to offer that nourishment to others. Our “bread”, our bodies and selves, the limited, physical “earthen vessels” that we are, become for the world a channel of redemptive grace, a transformed reality, the “Body of Christ.” We become what we have taken into ourselves. We are what we eat.

The quintessential example of this process is our Eucharistic worship. Here, surely, not only is the “medium the message, but the messenger becomes the medium. Christ is our host, our teacher and our feast. God’s word nourishes us in scripture and our reflection on it. And the Word made flesh enters into us in the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine. Our communion is multifaceted. It is with God, with one another and with the ultimate source and end of all being, and also with our own deepest and truest selves. Our worship points us toward wisdom. What we carry from here helps us to make the most of our times, even though the days are evil. Its helps us transform the “bread” of our daily lives into new life, in ourselves and for others. The very thanks we render in this Eucharist place our feet on the path trod by Jesus, of obedience, compassion and wisdom. May we become what we will soon gather around the altar to eat.

August 2, 2009

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

2 Samuel 11: 26 – 12: 13a
Psalm 51: 1-13
Ephesians 4: 1-16
John 6: 24-35

The Reverend Robbin Clark

In the name of Jesus, Son of David, Son of God.

Track I of the Revised Common Lectionary, the program of scripture readings we are following during this three-year cycle, breaks new ground in its use of the Hebrew Scriptures. Heretofore, the church’s selection of Old Testament passages has been grounded in an effort to make them connect with the Gospel reading for the day. New Testament passages are selected for continuity or seasonality. Track II of the RCL basically continues this practice and is not all that different from the Lectionary of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. But now, during what is called “Ordinary Time,” that long, green season after Trinity Sunday that runs until Advent, we are invited to enter into some of the great sagas of the bible that Jesus himself knew. Last year it was stories of the Patriarch and Moses. Next year it will be the great literary prophets. This year, it’s the period of the Monarchy, from Saul to the Exile. And King David is the centerpiece.

This innovation requires a bit more of both preacher and congregation. The three readings may not have much to do with one another. And, one may have to attend church somewhat consistently to follow the thread of the story from week to week. In addition, you could actually pull out the bible and read the saga all the way through. I do commend that practice, as it will fill in all sorts of gaps in between the appointed segments.

Last week, Louis preached wonderfully on the Gospel story that we’re following for several weeks, John’s treatment of Jesus’ miraculous multiplication of loaves that provided a meal for the multitudes that followed him everywhere and also of the greater implication of Jesus himself as our sustenance.

Today I would like to look at the two parts of the David saga that we heard last week and today. They are two halves of one chapter in the king’s life. And they give us a lot to think about in our own lives.

Stunned silence followed last week’s reading as we tried to take in the enormity of the great king’s transgression. Len’s fine presentation of it was totally in keeping with the artistry of the writer. The sordid tale is told without embellishment or speculation about the motive or rationale. What happened happened. That’s it. It’s not glossed over and it’s not sensationalized. Contemporary purveyors of public information could take a lesson. The marvel for me is that such a story survives in scripture at all. To show the seamy and despicable side of the Lord’s anointed ruler would be unthinkable in most forms of hagiography, or stories of the saints. Here, with clear-eyed honesty, we are shown the full measure of a man from boyhood to death and are given a case study in the ways of power. We meet a person of immense gifts and just as exaggerated failures. Neither the triumph nor the tragedy of David are meted out in half portions.

To recap from last week. David, the legendary warrior king, has stayed at home while his troops go out to battle. He spies Bathsheba and lusts after her. Even knowing she is the wife of another, he summons her, lies with her and gets her pregnant. That’s bad enough, but then it gets much worse. To cover up his adultery, he calls her soldier-husband Uriah back from the battlefront and tries to make him lie with his own wife so the child will be thought to be his. Uriah’s loyalty and integrity (in sharp contrast to the king’s character) will not allow him to do so, for it goes counter to his military oath and honor. David then sends him back to battle carrying his own death warrant, a message to his commander saying to put him on the front line of the worst fighting and withdraw support. When word comes back of his death, David takes the grieving widow for his own.

“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” I’d call that a masterpiece of understatement. But God does not simply press the “smite” button. The Lord sends Nathan to David. The prophet, without ever uttering an accusation, engages the king in a story of perfidy and abuse of power that enrages him. The rich man who stole the poor man’s precious ewe lamb rather than cull his own herd to serve his guests has acted outrageously, showing no pity. He deserves to die.

Nathan turns the king’s proclamation of justice right back on him. “You are the man!” he says, and he recites all the gifts and graces God has bestowed upon David and God’s willingness to “add as much more”. What David has done has not only wronged Bathsheba and Uriah, he has despised God. And the consequence will be that “the sword shall never deport from your house.” And so it happens. The golden days are over. God never goes back on the promise to “build David a house” of progeny, a line that will reign forever. We count the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus, Son of David, Son of God, under whose reign we all live and hope to do so forever.

Hearing Nathan’s speech, David comes to himself. The makes his confession, “I have sinned against the Lord.” The prophet immediately pronounces God’s forgiveness. David’s sin is put away. He is reprieved from the death sentence he has pronounced upon himself. Our Psalm today, so familiar to us from its use each Ash Wednesday, is traditionally counted as David’s mediation on this moment.

One of the reasons we use that Psalm so regularly and that many of us love it so deeply, is that our lives are not so very different from David’s. No, we’re not monarchs or military heroes. But we have been given gifts and graces by God, and we have misused our personal powers and prerogatives and failed to show pity or compassion toward those less fortunate than ourselves. Can we also “come to ourselves” as David did and as the wandering and wretched prodigal son did? Are we willing to confess our wrongdoings and seek the forgiveness of God and those whom we have injured? St. Paul is absolutely right when he tells the Christians in Rome, “None is righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The thing is to be honest about it and to move beyond it, to feel contrition, to make confession and to amend our lives. And what we do for and in ourselves, we must also do toward one another and toward the public figures of our society. None of them is all good or all bad. To be sure, contrition, confession and amendment of life are asked of all. And, even as David experienced, consequences of our wrongdoing follow us through life. But just as God forgave David and did not let him perish for his sins, we also must cut people some slack when they sin against us or in our eyes. We certainly want them to do that for us.

We hear St. Paul, in our epistle, urging us to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called,” and to do so in humility, gentleness, patience and love. We have been called to grow into the full stature of Christ. It is no less a calling than King David’s. And, like him we have been given gifts and graces to fulfill our calling. Like him, we stumble and fall along the way. May we, like him, come to ourselves and repent of our failures to live into that which God calls us to be and to do. It is not an easy journey, but God is with us to guide and sustain us. Jesus teaches, heals and feeds us in our need, that we may all do the work of ministry and upbuild one another in love.

July 19, 2009

Memorial Service for Dick Rogers

Job 19:21-27a
Psalm 39
II Corinthians 4:16-5:9
John 14:1-6

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Mr. Bob had it right. He and Dick were soul mates these last few years. They were never apart except when Dick was in the hospital or had to go for treatments of the painful illnesses that he endured throughout his eighties. Dick brought Mr. Bob here to be blessed on St. Francis’ day. They went on walks together as long as that was possible. The rest of the time, Mr. Bob leaned lovingly against Dick’s feet or else he plopped down on “his” couch nearby.

When Dick came back from the hospital so he could die at home – and he knew he had just a few days left – Mr. Bob made camp by the strange hospital bed, curled up on Dick’s old bathrobe. His spaniel eyes seemed inexpressibly sad. But at the moment of Dick’s passing, something happened. He suddenly perked up. He went dashing about the house, cavorting like a young pup and wagging, not just his tail but his whole hind end.

Yes, Mr. Bob had it right, just as Dick had it right. Dick knew, as surely as he knew anything – and Dick was one sharp cookie, right up to the end – that he was headed for a better place. And in those painful last years, his longing to go there became palpable. Our reading from Second Corinthians is exactly to the point. As Dick’s outer nature, his earthly tent, wasted away, his inner nature was growing ever stronger. He had long been a man of deep personal faith and prayer, but these became paramount as he neared the time for him to meet his Lord, whom he loved and trusted. He was ready. His prayer became that the time of their face-to-face encounter would be sooner rather than later. His family knew this well and, even in the sharpness of their grief, cannot begrudge him that reunion.

I cannot help but think of the inscription that I captured in a rubbing some forty years ago. It’s from a colonial-era gravestone in Marblehead, Mass. Folks back then had a keener sense of the fragility and woes of this life in comparison to the promise of eternal blessedness in heaven, and they weren’t afraid to “tell it like it is,” just as St. Paul told the converts in Corinth. This is what it said:

Rejoice for a brother deceased.
Our loss is his infinite gain,
A soul out of prison released
And freed from its bodily pain.

With joy let us follow his rise
As he mounts with his spirit above,
Enthroned in the mansions of light
And lodged in the Eden of love.

Now, don’t get me wrong. As deeply as Dick longed to be with Jesus, his faith was not of the sort that merely endures this world while waiting to move on to the next. Dick loved and delighted in this world and its wonders. Nor was his delight rooted in the shallow soil of never knowing hardship. He survived the unspeakable horrors of war, and those combat experiences scarred him forever. But he did not let them define his life. Instead, he grounded his life in God’s goodness and trusted in that above all else.

Dick embraced the wonders and joys of creation, particularly the sea and its beaches. His deep tan was a permanent souvenir of much time spent on shores around the globe. And I do mean around the globe. Dick and Clara were inveterate travelers and have visited more of this planet than most of us have even thought about. Even when his own traveling days were done, he encouraged Clara to become my “cruise buddy” and never failed to send us off with some special surprise treat. Such was his courtliness and generosity.

Clara is the first to say how Dick “loved the ladies,” but it was always in his own courtly and appreciative way. He could do that because Clara was always the undisputed queen of his heart. He was devoted to her from the moment they met though sixty years of marriage. That devotion extended to their family and was a heritage of the close family he grew up in. And it is those deep bonds that are making their hearts break, even as they affirm that he is where he wanted and needed to go, whole and well in God’s loving embrace forever. The same is true for his St. Mark’s family, whom he also loved dearly. His has been an unfailing voice of encouragement to many of us. He loved this community and we love him and will miss him sorely.

Just as this is an Easter service, so Dick’s was an Easter life. It took its meaning from the resurrection of Jesus and his promise that we would share in it. But he did not embrace this promise lightly. He worked every day to live in a manner befitting such a gift. The psalm we said today is not one appointed for funerals. We recited it because it was Dick’s favorite. He used it daily to ask God’s help to live a good and honorable life and to be ready for death. I would say that his prayer was answered.

Dick didn’t want eulogies. He didn’t even want a service, but we all knew we needed one, so here we are. I hope you will join Clara and the family following this liturgy for a reception and a sharing of memories and stories. And I hope you will share the full range of them and not turn Dick into a cardboard saint. Keep him real and that will help you keep him present to you. For now, take a moment to reflect on how he may have particularly touched you as you listen to Dick’s very favorite song, sung in tribute by his son-in-law, Tony.

July 19, 2009

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

2 Samuel 7: 1-14a
Psalm 89
Ephesians 2: 11-22
Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56

The Reverend Robbin Clark

It’s the middle of summer and it’s a time of vacation from the “Three R’s” of school. So I have five other “R’s” for you from today’s readings.

The first is Rest, or we might call it Respite. Rest is something we tend to do too little of as a society. As a country, we are allocated the least amount of vacation and holiday time in the developed West. And many people don’t even take call of that! Astonishingly, some even boast of the fact. They cite their own industriousness or indispensability or see it as evidence of their importance or even their moral superiority. I don’t think so. From the very beginning, we were formed for cycles of effort and repose. We need our sleep each night and are even commanded by God to keep a day of Sabbath rest each week. Now there’s a commandment that gets broken more regularly than some of the racier ones.
God gave David rest from all his enemies so he could relax and enjoy a time of peace in his house. But he was having none of it. We’ll get back to him later. Jesus greets his disciples upon their return from their missionary journey by inviting them on retreat. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” It’s too bad they didn’t have the Bishop’s Ranch, because what followed didn’t turn out to be all that restful.

So here we come to my second “R”, Responsiveness. Jesus can’t seem to help himself. He sees the deep need all around him and just has to extend himself to meet it. In this case, he wasn’t so good at practicing what he advocated for his disciples. I suppose it was OK for him, being God and all, but it sure set up a double bind for his followers, both then and now. Where do we draw the line between obedience to our bodies and to the command to take time out on a regular basis, and our quest to live in imitation of our Lord? There is no one right answer here. We all live in different situations and in different bodies and are at different stages of life. Perhaps there is a clue in the second term of Jesus’ Great Commandment, the part about loving our neighbor as our self. The point is proportion and parity. We should become suspicious if we would never demand of others the things we demand of ourselves. And conversely, we should never hold others to standards we are not willing to impose upon ourselves. Jesus warned the Pharisees pretty clearly against doing that. We all need to go “above and beyond” when the situation demands, but we must retain an appropriate balance over the long run.

Our third “R” is really a group of “R’s”. Let’s go back to David and reflect on his Restlessness. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone and accept what God had given him. He’s itching for a new project. Maybe he’s feeling the need to give back. Now, that’s generally a very positive thing and one that happens too rarely. But David makes one major mistake. He doesn’t let God be God. He decides what God needs and proposes to do it. “I have a lovely house”, he figures, “God should have the same. I’ll build it for him”. But a house is not what God wants or needs from David. What David, and a lot of other people who want to do good, fail at is to Respect the ones they wish to help by making a Request as to what needed or desired by them.

This is the real difference between the over-functioning of David and of Jesus. David’s Restlessness came from within. It was all about him and what he wanted to do, and that did not please God. Nor does it always please the intended recipients of other charitable works. Jesus, on the other hand, is responding to actual heartfelt requests from people. It’s not that he doesn’t have or can’t state clearly his own position and intentions, but he never imposes them. He always respects those he wishes to help. How often we hear him ask, “What do you wish me to do for you?” It’s that invitational element that levels the ground and leaves all parties with their dignity intact. And it’s that kind of humility that is crucial when we seek to imitate our Lord.

For my fourth “R”, I ask that we move from the personal dynamics of the situations we’ve been looking at to the context of David’s idea and God’s response to it. And we’ll also throw in some resonances with Paul from our Epistle. The fourth “R” is Residence. What is an appropriate dwelling place for God?

That’s actually a fairly complex question and has been answered in a number of ways throughout history. Adam and Eve encounter God strolling in the garden in the cool of the evening, sort of the way neighbors are wont to do. Moses was surprised by the Divine in a burning bush and was called up the holy mountain to meet God and receive the Law. As a nomadic group of tribes, the people of Israel carried the sacred Ark of the Covenant wherever they went as a symbol of God’s presence with them. Tent and tabernacle had been fine with God up to that point. And God has already determined that it will be David’s son, Solomon, who will be charged with building the Temple at Jerusalem.

More important for us is that God here turns the tables on David and promises to build him a house. It won’t be another structure of cedar. The King is already living in one of those. Instead, this house will be made of people, of David’s progeny, his “line”. As we are reminded in today’s Psalm, God makes a covenant promise never to withdraw his “steadfast love” from David’s line. The king’s “house and lineage” will stand forever and reach its fullest expression in the person of Jesus.

What Jesus does is inaugurate a new sort of lineage. Instead of a connection of flesh, the new “house” will be increased and perpetuated through baptism in faith by water and the Spirit. And into this house will be brought those who had seemed impossibly far removed from God’s people or David’s line. Paul is the chief apostle to these outsiders, these aliens and strangers to the Covenant. He reached out to them and begins the chain of invitation to those beyond the borders that continues to our very day.

So we have our answer to the Residence question. The appropriate dwelling place for God is in the hearts and ministries of God’s people. As Paul tells the Ephesians, “You are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

But what do we do with this answer? How do we live as God’s dwelling? And how do we integrate into our living the other “R’s” we have been talking about?

The answer is easy to say and hard to do. We need to be ready to respond to the requests and the requirements of the world around us, as Jesus was, and to do so in a respectful and realistic manner. And we need to honor the invitation and command to rest appropriately. We must always remember that we are God’s dwelling and behave accordingly.
There were a bunch of “R’s” in there, but the fifth one on my list is Resolve. Living as God’s dwelling, that is to say, living a responsive and responsible life in faithful imitation of Christ, does not come easily or naturally. It takes a real choice and ongoing acts of the will to do it. This is the resolve that is required of us. We took the first and most important step when we decided to follow Jesus. We reinforce that step when we pray and open our hearts to God through Christ in the power of the Spirit. We do it by acts of justice and service. As a community we reinforce one another’s resolve and also act as a body.

Whew! What a lot of “R’s”. But I can’t resist wrapping up with one last one. “R” you willing to let God live and act in and through you?

July 5, 2009

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

2 Samuel 5: 1-5, 9-10
Psalm 48
2 Corinthians 12: 2-10
Mark 6:1-13

The Reverend Robbin Clark

All across the country this weekend, barbecues are blazing, fireworks are popping, patriotic music is blaring and small-town parades are stepping out in celebration of our nation’s founding. Politicians and elected officials “press the flesh” and make speeches about what a great country we are (and, not incidentally, how much they or their party or their programs have to do with that.) The Episcopal Church even has liturgical propers for Independence Day that rank on a par with major saints’ days. The readings and collect we have just heard are not those, but they could well be. I say that because I see a real connection between their themes and the ones for that day. Both are about recognizing and acknowledging God’s hand in “our” accomplishments and exercising our liberties and freedoms in such a way as to show righteousness and promote peace. A shorter way of putting it might be to say that we are reminded by both sets of propers to live in right relationship, or shalom, with both God and one another. This can only be done by placing ourselves “under God” and having all our actions spring consciously from that context.

Our first reading and psalm tell the tale of the consolidation of David’s position and power as king of the united tribes of Israel. He had already been ruling the southern tribes of Judah, but now the leaders of the north come and ask him to be their king as well. David accepts their call and sets about building, out of the fractured tribes, a single great nation. He knows it will require a new sense of common identity and a new center. So, with strategic brilliance, David chooses an old fortification between the two regions that has no ties to either group’s history or power. It will be David’s own city, the city of the great king. It is Jerusalem. It becomes the holy city where warring factions can come together in faith and peace. With all it has gone through in the three millennia since, it still holds that hope for so many of us of the three faith traditions that claim it. Without trying to draw too heavy an analogy, I’d say that many in the world still hope that our nation can live into its ideal of being a new place where many peoples and races and tongues can come together to live in just and peaceful liberty. As followers of the faith of our founders, we hold that God is the true and only source of that blessed state of being and that we can help move our country toward it only by following the path of faithfulness and relying on God’s guidance and grace to realize our goal.

Our other two readings move us from a national political context to the local community. But since, as someone has remarked, “all politics are local”, that is an appropriate place to turn our attention. Not many of us act on the big stage of life, but we all have to figure out how to live in community. And we’re not alone in finding that challenging.

Paul, like today’s political and media figures, led a pretty public life. There was no big national stage for him to play out his ministry as there had been for David, but he is a well-known and well-traveled figure. By the time he writes the words we have heard today, he has been on the road for Jesus nearly two decades. He has founded many congregations and is widely revered. But it has not been easy. He has had to struggle the whole time to understand and fulfill his calling. He has faced opposition, danger and even physical harm. He has known failure and rejection as well as success. He has had to adapt and re-invent himself as he moves into different contexts. Throughout it all, he has tried to maintain his integrity as a faithful servant of his Lord. Now he is being pressured by a real threat to the young congregations he cares so much about and for whom he feels such a strong responsibility. He sees people going after some pretty flashy “super-apostles”, spiritual snake-oil salesman who make big promises without disclosing real costs and whose interest is self-promotion rather than the well-being of the people or the truth of the Gospel. It’s breaking his heart. He doesn’t want to sell out, but he knows he has to somehow meet them on their own ground to bring people back to the truth.

We see him here in an agony of self-revelation. The fiction of “I know a person” is the thinnest of disguises and is soon dropped. Paul knows that the good news is not all about him or his accomplishments. It is about Jesus. But he also knows that God works most compellingly through personal story and witness, so he talks about the extraordinary experiences he has been granted, but equally about his limitations, his ‘thorn in the flesh” that has kept him from becoming too full of himself. He shares what is probably a key realization that has guided his apostolic work, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And he testifies that, in fact, his trials and failures have brought him more strength than his supposed successes. For in them were the moments that taught him to rely on God and brought home the fact that his whole life was now “hid with Christ in God” to the point that, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.” That awareness was so empowering that he kept taking on greater and greater risks and challenges and finding that, astonishingly, he was able to meet them through the grace of God.

What he was doing was living out the very example of the one he preached. Our gospel reading shows us Jesus at a point that must have been pretty discouraging for him. He has come back home with the band of friends/followers he has gathered. We aren’t told his motivation. Maybe he needed to see his family. Maybe he craved some recognition from those who had known him from childhood. Maybe the disciples had urged him to share his roots and background with them. Or perhaps he wanted to give them an object lesson to prepare them for their own mission.

The home folks were astounded for a moment, but that soon turned to offence. They’re both resentful and dismissive. Jesus accepts their attitude and the way it limits him and simply moves on. Soon he will advise his disciples to do the same when they meet rejection or disdain on their missionary journeys.

His example and instruction served for them and for Paul, and it continues to guide us today. If we are to be heralds of the gospel, bringers of good news to a world badly in need of it, we must be humble, truthful and inviting. Is it going too far to suggest that this profile might also be suitable for our national identity?

Like the great apostle, we as a nation have been given great gifts and great calling. We also have our “thorns in the flesh” and a temptation to boast and to make it “all about us”, not to mention a tendency toward making promises without counting the costs. But our foundational ethos was trust in God. And like Jerusalem, we too, have been spoken of as a “city of hill” and a place where old factionalism can be left behind.

So Jesus’ counsel to us as his disciples and as those sent forth in mission can serve us just as well in our lives as citizens. Both our local communities and our nation can thrive by being humble, truthful and inviting. These are key to living in right relationship with God and one another. They are the foundation of Shalom. So, as the collects for Independence Day and today put it, let us pray for “grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace” and to be “devoted to [God] with our whole heart and united to one another in pure affection.”

June 28, 2009

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Trinity Sunday) Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

The Reverend Arthur Holder

Like some others of you perhaps, I had the privilege to know the late great theologian Robert McAfee Brown who used to teach at the Pacific School of Religion here in Berkeley. Professor Brown was well-known as an interpreter of Latin American liberation theology for North American Christians. He once explained the fundamentals of liberation theology by saying:

Where you stand determines what you see.
Who you listen to determines what you hear.
What you do determines who you are.

In light of today’s gospel reading, we might add:

Where you are coming from determines how you get saved.

In this fifth chapter of Mark, the evangelist begins to tell us about a Jewish religious leader named Jairus who asks Jesus to heal his young daughter. But that story is interrupted by the account of a woman with hemorrhages who touches Jesus’s cloak as he is walking along the road to Jairus’s house. Both Jairus and the woman approach Jesus with requests for healing, but they are coming to him from very different social locations.

Jairus comes to Jesus from a position of strength. He is an important man, a ruler in the synagogue. Well known in the community. Powerful and respected. But all his power and prestige doesn’t help when it comes to his little daughter’s sickness. She is at the very point of death when he finally gives up and takes drastic action. Jairus approaches the young rabbi from Nazareth who has developed a reputation as a healer and—completely out of character—he throws himself at Jesus’s feet and begs him, not just once, but repeatedly.

It must have been a shock to the crowd, who were more accustomed to see synagogue leaders arguing with Jesus or warning against him. Maybe Jairus himself had been critical of Jesus in the past—it would have fit his profile. But now his family is in desperate need, and all that matters is that he find help. So this great man humbles himself and becomes a beggar on his knees.

The interrupting story is quite a contrast. The woman with a discharge of blood doesn’t even have a name in Mark’s story. She is anonymous—a nobody. Her bleeding sickness made her ritually and socially “unclean,” which meant that no observant Jew would be able to touch her or talk to her in the street. Whatever money she once had she long ago spent on physicians who did her no good—so now she is poor as well. She has been begging for a long time—that is nothing new to her.

What is new is the possibility for wholeness of life that Jesus is offering. She sees his power—she feels it and is attracted to it the way a hungry person is attracted to bread, or a thirsty person to water. If only she can touch him—just that, just a touch is all she needs. Not his attention—she knows she is too insignificant for that. She doesn’t need him to say anything, do anything, even know anything about her. She just needs to gather up enough courage to reach out and touch his cloak, like this.... And she is healed.

But Jesus does know, and speak, and act kindly toward her. His question (“Who touched my clothes?”) and his compassionate look invite her to come forward in fear and trembling to confess the truth. “Daughter,” he calls her—now she has a name—a child of God! “Your faith has made you well...made you whole...saved you.” (The Greek word means all those things.)

Both of these supplicants receive salvation and healing on account of their faith. Both of them had to put their faith into action. Jairus had to humble himself and give up his pride; the woman had to assert herself, reach out, and speak the truth in unaccustomed boldness.

In Jesus’s day, as in ours not so long ago and in many ways even still, these were typical gender roles. Men represented power and prestige, women represented weakness and want. But in Jesus’s day, as in ours, the gender associations didn’t always hold. There can be proud women and humble men, rich women and poor men, women who need to fall down and beg, men who need to stand up and declare their need. In fact, any one of us can be powerful on some days and weak on others, or rich in some ways and poor in others.

All of us, though, need to come to Jesus and ask for help. All of us need to be saved today. All of us need to touch and be touched. All of us, each in our own way, need to be healed. And Jesus does want to heal us. But once we are made whole, what does Jesus want us to do? Jesus loved everybody equally, but he knew that meant he had to love them differently, because people are not all the same. Look at the different ways he treats the woman with the hemorrhage and Jairus the leader of the synagogue.

To the woman Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” He calls her by a term of affection and respect (“daughter”), gives her own faith the credit for the miracle, and bids her go forth in shalom to claim her health and salvation.

Jairus, on the other hand, requires a different approach. For one thing, Jesus has to separate Jairus from the other people who would keep him locked in his social and religious position. His friends appeal to Jairus’s rational sense, telling him not to waste Jesus’s time since his daughter is already dead. The professional mourners that Jairus’s family could afford to hire are weeping and wailing, making a great commotion over the girl. But Jesus tells Jairus not to listen to them when they say that there is no hope. He tells the mourners that the child is not dead but sleeping, and when they laugh at him he actually throws them out of the house.

Remarkably, Jesus dares to reach out and touch the little girl’s corpse, which would have rendered him unclean. He speaks to her in the common vernacular Aramaic: Talitha cum! (“Little girl, get up!”) And then when she gets up and starts to walk around, notice what Jesus tells Jairus and his family to do.

First he tells them what not to do: he forbids them from telling anyone what has happened. The usual explanation for Jesus’s command of secrecy is that he didn’t want people to see him as a wonderworker but as a suffering servant. Perhaps Jesus also suspected that an important man like Jairus would be tempted to brag about the miracle that had come to his house, turning his daughter’s resurrection into a source of personal pride. Instead, Jesus orders Jairus and the others to give the girl something to eat. The father is to become his own daughter’s servant. The great man is not supposed to gloat over the miracle but to do something practical to help someone else.

Jesus told the poor woman with the hemorrhage to go in peace, but the rich religious leader was to stay at home and get to work. Where you are coming from determines how you get saved, and what you do after that.

We began with Robert McAfee Brown’s observation that “where you stand determines what you see.” Where are you standing today as you see these two healing miracles of Jesus? Are you Jairus or the woman with the hemorrhages? Do you need to stop trying to hold it all together, throw yourself at Jesus’s feet, and beg for mercy? Or do you need to draw up your courage, reach out boldly, and claim your blessing as God’s beloved daughter or son?

Whoever you are...wherever you are coming from…no matter how high you have risen or how low you have fallen, Jesus knows that your existence is plagued by woes and worries, disease and death. But no matter how long you have been suffering or how desperate your case may be, in his eyes you are not dead but only sleeping. To you, to me, to every person of every gender, rank, class, and situation, Jesus offers resurrection life. He loves us all the same, which is why he treats each one of us differently.

How do you need to be saved?

June 14, 2009

Second Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

1 Samuel 15: 34 – 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5: 6-10 [11-13] 14-17
Mark 4: 26-34

The Reverend Robbin Clark

Things are seldom what they seem.”

“You can’t tell a book by its cover.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Who’d-uh thunk it?” or these days, “Who knew?”

We have all sorts of expressions in our common speech to explain those occasions when people or situations don’t turn out to be as they had originally seemed. We use them to caution ourselves against making premature assumptions and to rue the times we have done so.

At the same time we have a whole range of the opposite sort of expression, to use when things turn out, often disappointingly, just as we thought they would; “I told you so”, “what did you expect?” “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” “Garbage in, garbage out” (for you computer folk).

The thing is, we as creatures tend to really like predictability. It gives us a sense of structure and stability. It enables us to plan. And, for good or ill, it saves us the trouble of assessing each new person or situation from the ground up. Think how, when you meet someone, you ask the kind of question that will pinpoint his/her social location. In the South, I’m told, it’s all about “who are your people?” Here, the first queries revolve around, “what do you do?” and “where did you go to school?” (often with the word “graduate” hanging silently in the middle of that one)

It’s a kind of dance, or sometimes a sort of parrying, as in fencing or boxing, I’m afraid. We’re trying to establish commonalities, to be sure. We want to discover points of connection to build on. We want to see if we can find familiar ground and relax there together as we seek the next handhold on the climb up the rock-face of real relationship. But there’s all too often a one-upmanship going on as well. We’re testing our place in the pack or establishing the pecking order. Most of all, it’s about helping us to figure out what to do, how to behave.

Samuel has a bit of this going on in today’s marvelous first reading. His whole world changed with Saul’s disobedience that led to God’s rejection of him as Israel’s king. A close relationship has turned to enmity and fear. God now sends him on a mission to anoint a new king from among the sons of Jesse. And he gives him a cover story for his politically risky mission. When he gets there, we move from the political (“Do you come peaceably?) to the more personal as he invites Jesse to worship in order to fulfill his assignment. As he encounters Jesse’s sons one by one he thinks each time that he must be seeing the Lord’s anointed. But God chastises him, saying, “Do not look on his appearance...for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Or, in other words, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” When Jesse seems to have run out of sons to show Samuel, the young David is called in from tending the sheep and anointed as Israel’s future king. And no, the irony is not lost on me that the first thing said about David is that, “he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” I guess we’ll have to assume that what God saw in David’s heart was shining out of those eyes and making them beautiful. At any rate, with the anointing came the mighty presence of God’s Spirit to empower him for the ministry laid upon him.

More than a millennium later, St. Paul makes the same point about looking on the heart rather than the outward appearance as he writes to the new Christians in Corinth. But he adds a bit of new dimension to the contrast between the God’s-eye view and a human perspective. For us, it is not only a matter of seeing beyond appearances and their resultant expectations. Once we give our lives to Christ and die and rise with him in baptism, we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. The faith we embrace gives us the God’s-eye view. The new life we live is not bound by our earthly body and its senses. Our home base is no longer this world but God’s eternal presence, and that changes everything: Our points of reference are no longer things like family, job and education. We look for faithfulness, good-heartedness and the fruits of the Spirit. Our primary connection is made through being fellow children of God and, within this parish community, being brothers and sisters in Christ. What we share is the reality of a dual identity: whoever we are in this world, and our common citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Now that’s a place where appearance clues do us no good at all. The main thing we know is that it is really different. Or maybe not. Maybe we are experiencing it right now amid this life here. So I guess the real main thing we know is that we don’t know. And that, surprisingly, is a pretty important thing to know. It’s key to walking by faith and not by sight. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” God’s people have always had to walk by faith, dependent on God’s ongoing self-revelation to know how we should proceed. On rare and amazing occasions God makes things perfectly clear in some great vision. Usually the clues are shrouded in mystery and paradox. We saw that last week in our consideration of the Holy Trinity as the revelation of God’s own inner being.

Today in our Gospel, we have two out of many examples of Jesus revealing to us the nature of God’s reign, or kingdom. Like most of his teachings on this subject, they are parables-pungent little stories of this world that help us make the connection to God’s reign. The first, the story of the seed growing secretly, takes our human understanding and effort and places it in the much larger context of God’s activity and accomplishment. We till the earth and scatter seed. Which is to say that we plan and prepare and have ideas and initiatives that we hope will produce good results. We invest our effort toward the future. We do this when we raise children, when we map out a career or, for instance, when we sign a redevelopment agreement for our parish. But we always know it depends on a lot more than just us. As Paul said the first time he wrote to the Corinthians, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” The farmer in the parable is made to seem pretty laissez-faire. I bet he was out there daily- weeding, watering, putting up scarecrows, and the like. But that does not diminish the mystery of the sprouting seed and budding grain. We have our role. Our effort is needed, and sometimes that effort is intense. But in the end, it’s not all up to or all about us. We are always acting in concert with God. That is what walking by faith is.

The second parable illustrates what can come of such faithful walking. Here, the motto might be “expect the unexpected.” It’s not so different from where we began, with “Things are seldom what they seem.” From the seemingly most inconsequential, tiny seed comes a shrub big enough to shelter the birds of the air. Those same birds might have eaten that seed, had it fallen on the path instead of under the care of the tiller and the greater Grower. We can take heart that even our small efforts, when dedicated to God, can bring forth transformation and open the way toward service beyond ourselves.

All of these lessons seem to point to the same place. We have choices. We can look at life either with just our own eyes and priorities, or we can take the God’s-eye view. When we do the latter, new possibilities emerge and great transformation can result. That way is fraught with mystery and contingency and takes us out of our comfort zone, but it brings the gifts and guidance of the Spirit. Actually, we’ve made the choice by being here. Now we need to live it.

June 7, 2009

First Sunday After Pentecost (Trinity Sunday) Rev. Common Lectionary Year B

Isaiah 6: 1-8
Romans 8: 12-17
John 3: 1-17

The Reverend Robbin Clark

“Holy, Holy, Holy”

The acclamation resounds from angels and mortals. The young Isaiah cowers in the Temple before the awesome and terrifying majesty of God. We sing that majesty no less than five different ways here today. For it is the great festival of God’s own self, the Feast of the Holy Trinity.

For me, this day caps the varied riches of the liturgical seasons we’ve been celebrating these last six months. Through them we’ve marked the events of our salvation, beginning with the expectation of our Lord’s coming in the twin-horizoned season of Advent. We’ve celebrated the miraculous birth of Jesus and his manifestation to the world. We’ve followed his teaching, his healing, his feeding and fellowship and journeyed with him through his trials and passion. We’ve proclaimed his resurrection and rejoiced to share his risen life. And we’ve received the gift of the Spirit to guide and empower us to share that life with the world and to be his Body, the church. Next week, we’ll enter into nearly six months of “ordinary time,” punctuated by the occasional festival of a saint, but mostly a time of consolidation, reflection and growth into the full stature of our Lord.

But today we celebrate the very nature of God and give thanks that God has revealed that nature to us and given us the will and ability to think about it and express it. The work of theology, one might say, is to “language faith”; to give carefully considered words to one’s experience of God. And the role of doctrine is to do that as and for a community. The doctrine of the Trinity was hammered out over several centuries and has been being refined and restated ever since in words not only considered but considerable.

It’s not that one day some brilliant theologian will finally figure it out and pen the definitive treatise, pinning down the nature of God for all time. God’s nature is far beyond the measure of human thought. In the end, all our efforts bring us to our knees crying, “Holy,” and that is well and good. It is where we should be before the tremendous and fascinating mystery of God. But that does not mean that our prayerful and painstaking study or our struggle for precise expression are for naught. Far from it. They deepen our wonder, enflame our love and enrich our praise.

Thirty years ago in Oxford, I attended a lecture by the French theologian, Paul Ricoeur. He said a lot of things I can’t remember, but one thing I can. He gave me the phrase, “Post-critical naiveté” and an image to set it in my brain. Imagine yourself walking along and seeing a great forest in the distance. “My,” you say to yourself, “what a beautiful forest!” You continue and your way leads you right into the forest. You can pick out and name all the various types of trees. You can see the fallen ones and the new sprouts poking through the loam of their decomposition. You note the tangles of dead branches. You marvel at the amazing shapes of leaves and seeds and cones, and at the interrelation between the trees and the forest creatures. You ponder all these things as you follow the path out the other side of the forest toward the far horizon. Just before you dip out of sight of it, you turn around and, from a completely new perspective, your cry out, “My, what a beautiful forest!”

Without this final appreciation and awe, we might just find ourselves stuck, as Nicodemus seems to be, among confusing and contradictory details in trying to pin Jesus’ statements down too concretely. Nonetheless, he was definitely on the right track as a seeker and questioner, venturing out into the dark on a quest to understand and connect with God. I urge us to emulate him in that- to persevere in prayer and contemplations as well as in scripture study and theological reading and discussion. Spend time in the forest, but don’t get lost there. Reconnect with a childlike engagement with God as wondrous and wonderful, loving and trustworthy.

Too often, the majesty of God begets in us a fear that is neither holy or healthy, but is one borrowed from our human experience. We’ve seen the misuse of power to destroy or inflict harm. We may have been raised on a diet of fire and brimstone or flinched under violence from parents, peers or institutions. The nature of God, even in all God’s awesome power, is to save and not to condemn. It is power for and with us, not against us. So our awestruck view of God from afar must be paired with a sense of intimacy and trust that the One who created all that is loves us, knows us and delights in us. St. Paul uses the image of close family relationship. We are both children and heirs. We can call the great and awesome source of all being, “Abba”/papa/daddy. This sweet tenderness is as integral to the nature of God as is the majesty that make seraphim hide their faces and prophets cry out, “Woe is me! I am lost.” We see in Jesus a friend and brother as well as a teacher and a judge who seeks not to condemn but to save. We know in the Spirit both comfort and empowerment, guidance and strength, advocacy and truth. In fact, God has so many facets to show us that three may seem like a pretty paltry number for God’s persons.

But three is good. It is the irreducible number for multiple relationships and thus is the number that, for me, signifies community. And that is crucial. It is out of an inner communal nature that God created the myriad entities and relationships of creation. We are never just “being.” We are always “being with.” And that reflects the inner life of God, in whose image we are made.

Four of us from St. Mark’s spent most of yesterday at a workshop at Grace Cathedral. It focused on Area Ministry as a way of “Building the Beloved Community,” a key thrust for Bishop Marc’s episcopate here. He spoke to us of how often a deep yearning for community had been expressed to him during his time among us. He cited a study that called New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area the most individualistic places in the world. We in Berkeley certainly know the “do your own thing as along as it doesn’t impinge on my doing my own thing” mentality. But we also know the shallowness and isolation that this sort of individualism can bring. Many of us look to this parish as our most significant source of community. When longtime members are asked what is most important to them about St. Mark’s, the answer is, almost invariably, “the people.” Newcomers may say they were attracted by one program or another, but in the end it is the relationships they form that matter most. This is why we are ever seeking ways to deepen and enrich the quality of community among us. In doing so, we are attempting nothing less than reflecting the true nature of God.

“Perichoresis” is a fancy Greek term for the eternal dance of relationship within God. Last Sunday, we ventured a bit of a communal dance, or almost-dance, in our liturgy. Some loved it and some didn’t. So it is with most things here, I find. In whatever ways, by whatever programs or initiatives, we attempt to live out the inner dance of God, we will be the more whole and holy for it. This Feast of the Holy Trinity, the festival of God’s own self, is a great reminder of our own awesome and mysterious nature as beings in community. I hope it will also remind us of our calling to use all the facets of our being to save and not to condemn, to build up and not to destroy. I say this about us not only, or even primarily, as individuals, but as families, parish, citizens and part of the community of all creation. As we deepen each of these relationships in trust and truth, we will be renewing and deepening our relationship with God. This is what we were made for. This is what the world waits for. Can we, trembling like Isaiah, respond to God’s holiness with the words, “Here I am; Send me”?

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Index of Sermons

Past Sermons: Thanksgiving 2008 through Eastertide 2009

Sermons at St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Pentecost Sermons 2009

November 22, 2009

November 15, 2009

November 8, 2009

October 25, 2009

October 18, 2009

September 27, 2009

September 20, 2009

September 13, 2009

September 6, 2009

August 16, 2009

August 2, 2009

July 19, 2009

July 19, 2009

July 5, 2009

June 28, 2009

June 14, 2009

June 7, 2009