Sermons at St. Mark's Episcopal Church
Season of Pentecost 2011
September 25, 2011
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-8
Philippians 2:1-13
St. Matthew 21:23-32
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Lessons in Humility
I’d like to begin this morning with a quotation that seems to embrace notions of humility, if not outright depression. It is a quotation from Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, a semi-autobiographical recounting of his family’s history, and a model of what we need to talk about today.
Everything passes away – suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
I think that the basis of our prayer may actually be a reflection of our various states of being. When we are high, full of life and of love, appreciative of each day and of creation itself we greet God with thanksgivings. And when we are low, brought down by the world or by those around us, full of Bulgakov’s suffering, pain, blood, hunger and pestilence, then we greet God with petitions and laments. Our life seems to be a journey between these two points, manic, depressive, or some point somewhere in the middle. On that journey we greet God with meditation and reflection, listening for answers.
In the second lesson for today, a reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, Paul would teach us some lessons of humility. His purpose in writing these people is to commend to them behaviors that are fitting of the Christian life, and that will serve them well in their life together. They, these people of Philippi, are his prize, and Paul wants to further their Christian education, and their life in community. He has already commended to them the value of steadfastness, and our reading today begins with a recommendation of the value of harmony and unity:
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
This will be followed by lessons on obedience as well, as Paul wishes to take the lessons of his own life and apply them to his fellows in Christ. The gem of his teaching, however, is in something that he borrowed from an unknown source. It is an ancient hymn that follows the trajectory of Jesus own life, and this Paul proposes as a model to the Philippians.
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In the first three strophes of this hymn we become of aware of three states of being for Jesus. The hymn proposes a “Divine pre-existence” much like John proposes in the prologue of his own Gospel. This is followed by a strophe on the Humility of the Incarnation – that God (here Jesus taking on the morfeQeou, the form of God should deign to become flesh, or as the hymn states it, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. It is a rather stark view of something that we take as charming and compelling – the Babe in the Manger and all of that. Paul, in using this hymn, understands the deep humility of the crèche. But there is more, as we all know, having followed Jesus on this path many times before. The final of the three strophes is the humiliation of death itself – a shared fate, and a final outcome.
I could go on and preach in this vein, as many others have. It is standard fare, this humiliation stuff, and we become quite familiar with it in Lent, indeed in Holy Week, during the Triduum, perhaps even in Advent. I wonder, however, if we all can afford this sense of Humility. Perhaps we do ourselves a disservice if we remain only here holding the wonderful mystery of the Humiliation.
The other half of the hymn
How powerful are you? How rich are you? Where in the human hierarchy do you stand and take your place? And here we need a corrective, for in the eyes of the majority of the world we are powerful. We are indeed rich. But I wish to press further, to a deeper thing, and to a place that we don’t often acknowledge. It is a place that we seem to be unable to see in our own lives, and that we find off-putting in the lives of those around us. I want us to look at ourselves from an emotional or from a mental perspective. I want us to begin to understand our powerlessness. Edna St. Vincent Millay put it well:
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you
All through my life? – sharing my fire, my bed,
Sharing – oh, worst of all things! – the same head? –
And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too.
Perhaps this is indeed the starting point for many of us. Humiliation we know quite well, and in spite of all that we have and are capable of doing, it is this sense of pain and humiliation that defines us in some sense. We are, all of us, beggars asking something of life, hoping for a release a sense of redemption.
This last week at the clergy conference we did some studying with Eric Law, who took this humiliation – exaltation trajectory to a new place for me. Paul wants to teach humility, and that is well and good. However, might our message be from the last three strophes? The exaltation of Jesus by God, The power of the Name, that Jesus is Lord – that he has suasion and power in our world? Yes, let us start at the nadir, and not assume that we are at the zenith. Let us start at our low point, recognizing that we share in the suffering of Jesus, and that it does not end there.
What is the Good News for you? Forgiveness, nourishment, being made clean, healing, fellowship, mutual care and understanding – these are all the things that we can do for one another if we move from humility to exaltation. It would do us well to share these resurrected states of being, so that the resurrection is not just a far off tale, but rather embodied in our own rise to all that God intends for us. Pain may be always with us, but the resurrection abides there as well. It is God’s promise to lift us up and to bring us to God’s presence. John reminds us, in the words of Jesus, “and I when I am lifted up will draw the whole world to myself.” And this being lifted up is not to the central point of the cross, but beyond that – to the tomb and to the resurrection.
Like the lamp on the hill, our lives of both humiliation and exaltation – modeled on the life of Jesus – can speak powerfully to our world. Even more so, we need to hear and listen to those whose lives seem to be only humiliation and distress, and remind them of the power of God lifting them up. And to those who seem to be gorged on the feast of greed and self-aggrandizement in our world today, we need to remind them of the grace of humiliation. Wherever we are on this cycle, the movement to Calvary, or the opposite movement out of the tomb, it is something to be shared. Paul ends our reading with power – the power that we all have as we walk and journey with Christ.
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you.”
And as Bulgakov beautifully stated:
. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
September 18, 2011
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
St. Matthew 20:1-16
The Reverend Beth Ann Maier
Gracious God
Open our ears to hear your Word
Open our mouths to speak your Word
Open our hands and our hearts to be your Word working in creation
Today we are presented with a Gospel that begins “For the kingdom of heaven is like…” There are over 50 references in Matthew to the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, many of them drawing a picture through parable or metaphor, to help God’s beloved children understand God’s dream for them. How do we make sense of the kingdom of heaven? What does that phrase mean to us? I think we have two lines of thought when we hear the phrase. We hold it out at a far distance, unobtainable, a vision of a future time packaged in the intangibles of eternity. Or we can hold the kingdom of heaven up close, here and now, a glowing possibility in every mindful moment. We get support for that in the gospel of Luke. The Pharisees ask when the kingdom of God is coming. Jesus answers: “In fact, the kingdom of God is among you” - or within you, or in the midst of you, depending on the translation - but the meaning is clear. The kingdom of God is here, now. So, when you turn to your neighbor at the Peace and share the oneness of eye contact or a heartfelt embrace, if you are truly present in that moment, the kingdom of heaven is there. When we pray the prayers of the people in oneness with the sick, the poor and the oppressed, if we are truly present in that moment, the kingdom of heaven is there. When we come together in the Eucharist, it is wonderfully stated in the words of the Rite I liturgy, “ here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.
The kingdom of God is there. Each of us is offered the same gracious gift: an abundant, meaningful life in God's presence, and in that presence, we know the kingdom of heaven.
It is our choice, in every moment of our lives, to live God’s dream for us or to go our not-so-merry way. I find that to be a pretty good working definition of sin. We can tap in to the kingdom of God, or we can close ourselves off. It is our choice. We radically pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth…” Think about what a radical statement that is. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. Right here. Right now. Do we really want that? We can help make it happen. Are we willing to do all that it takes? It is pretty scary stuff. We would have to change. Radically.
Look at today’s gospel. The landowner pays the same wage to everyone. There is historical evidence to suggest that the wage was one denarius, a living wage, a wage that would support a family for a day. The landowner said: “I will pay you whatever is right.” The Greek word used here is not about what is legal, or what is appropriate, but about what is “just”. ”I will pay you whatever is Just.” The landowner pays it without regard to the amount of time spent, the heat of the sun, the productivity or special skills of the laborer, or the quality of the product. There is enough to go around. There is a just wage for everyone. No one’s family must go hungry. There is abundance. And there is abundant work for everyone, even if you weren’t in the right place in the right market at the right time, or born into the right family, or gifted with intelligence, skill or experience. The landowner will come looking for you even at 9, at noon, at 3, at 5. All you have to do is show up. You are valued and worthy. That is what the kingdom of heaven is like.
There isn’t a topic much more real-world and political for our time than the consideration of just wages and the distribution of work and income in our economy. Eight years ago, when I entered the pulpit for the first time, the ratio of the income of the top 10% of wage earners to the bottom 10% was 13:1 in the US. In Western Europe, that ratio was only 4:1. Canada was 7:1. The US was 13:1. At that time, the concept of “the working poor” was just beginning to be talked about. In the last two years, as we try to recover from recession, the Institute for Policy Studies has calculated that the average CEO of the top 500 corporations in the US took home 263 times the pay of the average workers in those corporations in 2009. In 2010, this gap leapt to 325-to-1. Today, in 2011, we are all much more familiar with the plight of the working poor. The scenarios of the working poor include hunger, homelessness, lack of medical care or bankruptcy due to uninsured medical events, as well as diminishing access to educational opportunity. Corporate profits and CEO compensation have zoomed ahead, while the availability of jobs paying a just wage has sharply diminished. Is this the way we want it to be? Do we feel healthy and whole and at one with God and our neighbor in this society? Can we continue to live so far from God’s kingdom?
What is God’s call to us today? Yes – we are called to offer food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless. But in this gospel, I think we are called to do more than that. Like Jonah who was called to turn around the sick society of Ninevah, aren’t we called to take action on the sickness of our own society? We know there is more than enough to go around. We are called to join with Christ to bring about the kingdom, here and now. We are called to do something about our glaring distribution of wealth problem and transform the arena of political and economic systems that have become increasingly unjust. The world needs to hear the voice of our church in this work. I believe the world wants and hopes to hear the voice of our church in this work.
I am new here. Maybe it isn’t acceptable to stand in the St Mark’s pulpit and mention politics and economics. Maybe you will all tell Father Hiller not to ever let me back up here again. But I have to ask myself what am I doing up here if I am not going to mention these things? It helps me to refer back to the ordination service for deacons to remind myself why I am here and what I am called to be doing here. I know that you are not unfamiliar with deacons. Thank God for Ellen Ekstrom and the work of the School for Deacons, but bear with me a moment and take a look at the ordination charge to the deacon, found on page 543 in the Book of Common Prayer.
My brother (sister), every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ,
serving God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
(That is all of us. All of us are called.)
God now calls you to a special ministry of servanthood
directly under your bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, you
are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the
sick, and the lonely.As a deacon in the Church, you are to study the Holy
Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model
your life upon them. You are to make Christ and his
redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those
among whom you live, and work, and worship. You are to
interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.
That is the charge to deacons. It is also the charge to the servant church of which we are all a part. Today is ministry Sunday. Outside, you will find displays offered by all the ministries of St Mark’s. Spend some time at these displays. Prayerfully reflect on what you see. How is God calling you? Where does your gift, your passion, your voice intersect with the worlds deep need for you. Show up in that spot, God will use you, and you will experience the kingdom of heaven, here, now.
September 11, 2011
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 50:15-21
Psalm 103:1-13
Romans 14:1-12
St. Matthew 18:21-35
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Green?!
I got a telephone call from our good deacon on Thursday who wondered if we should use the liturgical color of red (red being the color for martyrs) for our services of remembrance today. “Or, perhaps”, she said, “White!” I paused for a moment and then said, “I was thinking of the possibility for purple – for penance and forgiveness.” We left it hanging in the air – these possibilities of adding an additional layer of symbolic meaning to a day already well freighted with it.
It took me a while, and a couple of conversations, not necessarily about September Eleventh, but rather things and people in general that I began to see the light. And it was in a deeply moving conversation with someone else, who was actually there, that I knew what we needed to do. I knew what the color needed to be, and what the symbolism needed to convey. The color was to be green – you know, the endless green of Ordinary Time, the green that comes with the rebirth of the earth during the Rainy Season (or for other parts, Spring). It was to be the green of life, and of the living. That is what it needed to be.
Why?
The Texts
Well, let’s take some before I answer that question. I was stunned a few weeks ago when I took a peak at the lectionary to see what today’s readings might offer us on this day of remembrance. In the first reading we hear of Joseph’s brothers again asking, after their father’s death, for forgiveness for selling Joseph in to slavery. It was a request that was tinged with dishonesty as well, they not having the courage to address it themselves to him, guised it in a request by the father, that had never been made. Joseph sees through all this, and yet forgives them, again.
The Psalm, a bridge between Psalm 102, a personal lament, and Psalm 104, a praise psalm of God’s continuing renewal of creation, this psalm (103) thanks God for the concerns of Psalm 102, and then veers away from the personal and individual to picture a God who brings forgiveness and life to all of creation. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our sins from us.” And just we’re really clear about God’s intent (is this mercy intended for Israel only, or for more than that) the psalmist provides the vision, “The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed.”
In Romans, Paul asks us to tolerant of other people’s religious practices. It was those who practiced dietary restrictions vs. those who did not. Paul asks the Romans, and he asks us on every day, and especially on this day,
“Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”
And finally in the Gospel for today, Peter wants to set a limit on the forgiveness that he has been bound to offer. “Shall I forgive as many as seven times?” Jesus’ answer is clear and overwhelming, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven,” in other words the perfection of offering forgiveness – an infinity of forgiveness.
This is the context that the lectionary serendipitously sets for us today: Confession tinged with dishonesty, a God who will have all in the kingdom of God’s rule, a recognition that all of us, no matter who we are, will be subject to the judgment, so why should we judge? Forgive unceasingly. Now, with that in mind let us take some time to see what this day calls us to do.
The Icons
The icon is a wonderful thing. Through it (it serves as a sort of window, you know), through it we can begin to see the divine. So as people kneel to be anointed with oil, and have hands laid upon them with prayers for healing, they can look through the icon of Our Lady and Our Lord, and see a mother’s tender care, or as the psalm for today describes it, “As a father cares for his children, so does the Lord care for those who fear God.” That is the reality that reaches out to us, and that we are bidden to touch.
Many icons will be offered to us today: two tall buildings either standing tall, or in phases of destruction; care givers of all kinds responding to the destruction around and about them; the photos of those who were missing, or who had died; the flag; the terrorists. What do we see through the windows of these icons? Do we see our enemies? Do we see our own failures as a country? Do we see pride of country? Do we see our need to forgive and be forgiven?
Peter’s question to Jesus is a good case in point. When he saw someone who had done him wrong – he saw the need to forgive, but he also, apparently, saw an icon of the wrong that sought to put limits on what Peter was willing to offer. He did not see an infinity of forgiveness that Christ bid him to offer. It is a hard request, this forgiveness thing. It is a hard thing to know what we need to do.
Perhaps when we are challenged in our ability to forgive we need to choose another icon, an icon different than the harm we have felt, an icon that shows forgiveness to us.
The Ordinary
As I mentioned earlier, I had an extraordinary conversation with someone this week, someone who was there, someone who was a witness – not only of the dreadful deeds of ten years ago, but of the ordinary forgiveness and humanity that Christ demands of us. She told stories of kindnesses given to her, and was surprised, as she told her story, that she was giving such kindness back – abundantly.
This is the ordinariness of life that appeals to me. This is the stuff that is required of us in any circumstances. It teaches me that often the extraordinary: September 11th, Hiroshima, Aremenia, Palestine, Jim Jones, the Sudan, all of these extraordinary moments in human history, are filled with ordinary human need and the ordinary human capacity to forgive, and to give what is needed at the time. The icon of the cross should stare back at us as we remember these events. It should stare back at us when we observe those who hurt us, or who are in any kind of need. It should stare back at us when we fall into the deep depression of our own unworthiness. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us!”
Perhaps Paul says it best:
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Please pray with me. These are the words of Saint Francis before the crucifix:
Most High glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart.Give me right faith, sure hope and perfect charity. Fill me with understanding and knowledge that I may fulfill your command. Amen.
September 4, 2011
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Ezekiel 33:7-1
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20
The Reverend Louis Weil
I want to focus on the reading which we have just heard from the Gospel of Matthew. It speaks of a situation which some of us (perhaps many of us) have encountered at one time or another. It is the situation in which someone – perhaps a member of our family, perhaps a friend or a co-worker – has (as the reading says) “sinned against you.” I would want to expand that phrase: not only for something done against me, but also of such behavior against others or even destructive behavior against themselves.
I want to expand the matter because I have seen such behavior in a variety of contexts --- and the problem in all these instances comes down to face me with the same dilemma: shall I speak to this person and try to make them aware that their behavior is wrong or destructive? --- perhaps toward me, perhaps toward others, perhaps toward themselves. I prefer to avoid confrontations with other people. The same may be true for some of you.
Confrontation can be very unpleasant – and so, I tend to think, why not simply avoid the situation, and perhaps the problem will work itself out? But the truth is that often such difficult situations do not work themselves out. When we look at today’s Gospel reading, Jesus gives us a pattern which reveals a profound insight into how people respond to criticism or confrontation. In effect, he says, do not come down with a sledge hammer: those are not exactly his words, but it is the underlying sense of his teaching. He says, “Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” “When the two of you are alone.”Speaking to the other person in private offers us the best opportunity to engage them in a non-threatening way --- to demonstrate that we have come to them because we care for them and are concerned for their good.
I can witness to this out of my own experience: it was an occasion when a very dear friend had fallen into very destructive behavior – and the prospect of confronting him raised enormous anxiety in me. But I cared deeply for him, and so I was able to move beyond my anxiety and to say to him some hard words --- words which he needed to hear: and by the grace of God, he heard them.
Jesus recognizes that this response will not always work; --- but he does not let us off the hook. Our love for the other person requires us to go further – but still without that sledge hammer! Jesus says, “Take two or three others along with you.” In this way, the person sees that the matter is not merely your private opinion: that others see the situation as you do. If this, too, fails, only then should the matter become the public concern of the community.
The point here is that Jesus is telling us not to give up: if we truly care for the other person, then we must seek to awaken an awareness that the behavior is truly destructive. “Not to give up” requires us to hold that person in love and prayer, and never to abandon them.
The last part of our Gospel reading gives us the further reminder that this does not depend upon ourselves alone. When I have heard the phrase, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them,” I have tended to think of these words as a reference to what we are doing here today: we are gathered together to worship God, and when we do that, Jesus is saying, he is among us.
But today we need to remember where these words occur: in the Gospel reading the words “where two or three are gathered together” are speaking about our response to the person whose behavior is destructive. These words remind us that when we respond in love to the need of our neighbor, we are not alone: Jesus himself is with us.
This is our assurance that in every loving action, it is the Christ who is within us and among us who is at work – inviting, calling, leading us … into the fullness of life which is his will for all humanity. Our response to that assurance must be to embody that love in all that we do, and so to fulfill the greatest of the commandments which Paul speaks of in today’s second reading: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Our vocation to love others requires us to recognize that Christ is with us in that ministry – even when that love obliges us to say hard words.
August 14, 2011
Eve of Saint Mary, the Virgin
Psalm 45
Isaiah 61:10-11
Galatians 4:4-7
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Earlier today I was talking to a member of this congregation. He had brought up the power of hymnody and music in the church, wondering if the Church had ever been moved by the poetry, meter, and music of the hymns. He answered his own question, as he recounted following the collections of hymns in the various hymnals of the Episcopal Church. He watched as the Eucharist became more and more prominent in the collection, and then in these last hymnals how Marian hymnody had become more and more prominent. “Why?” we both pondered together. In the great divide between Roman Catholicism the popular notion is that it is Mary that marks the division, although really it is other matters that deter us from sharing Eucharist together.
Christians are beginning to recover a sense of awareness and devotion to Our Lady – to the adolescent woman so brilliantly depicted by Pier Paolo Passolini in his The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, where she is depicted as staring into mid-space already pondering her situation. But why are we in this age of recovery and what will it profit us.
Some time ago I was in Florence, Italy, doing my usual round of church visitations. There in the dizzying collection of icons, altarpieces, side chapels, statuary, and hangings, I kept seeing Mary: Mary the Theotokos (the Mother of God), Mary of Sorrows, Mary of Charity, Mary of Tears, Mary of the Angels, Mary pierced by the Seven Swords (Sorrows), Mary of the Blessed Sacrament, Mary of Victories, Mary of Guadalupe, Lourdes, Medjugorje, Fatima, LaSallette. More important it was OUR Lady of…
What I realized as I slowly reviewed these treasures of human witness, was not the glory of Mary, although that was certainly implied, but rather her humanity – her sorrow, her tears, her charily, her service. These works of art celebrated her as a sister, a mother, one of the family, someone who had experienced what we experience every day – loss, grief, sorrow, exaltation, vision.
I am captured by a term that St. Paul uses in his letter to the Galatians. He sets a stage for the entry of the Christ, the one anointed to be our salvation. He introduces Jesus with these words: “When the fullness of time had come.” (repeat). What a grand procession of events, saints, prophets, miracles, Seers, sinners, judges, kings, and queens had participated in this fullness of time. This pageant of humanity abruptly stops at this young woman, and her decision. What will it be young Mary?
As we look at her in all these guises, it is the wisdom of tradition that comes down to us and helps us realize that her actions, her acceptance is model for our own actions, our own acceptance, “let it happen to me as you have said.” And it does. Humiliation and sorrow come in full abundance, as she sees her Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, born to die on Calvary, born to set us free. She sees these things and she responds, “Let it happen to me as you have said.”
Although Mary has been both accepted and rejected by the Church, her witness still stands regardless of our own personal feelings. What we must see in her is the one who serves and accepts, and in this she models the life that we need to live under the gentle rule of her Son. Her maternity, her motherhood, her nurturing, her patience and pondering are all summed up by Isaiah when he writes: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. “ She becomes the model of a life worth living, and like Abraham in Paul’s letters; Mary is the example of faith and living in that faith.
Let us with Elizabeth, greet this young woman who was honored by God’s presence, and who accepted what both God and time offered to her –
Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord? Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.'
And Mary said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
July 31, 2011
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-22
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
The Eucharistic Feast
What is your vision of heaven, the one that you formed as a child? Does it involve gold? Bright colors? Tropical plants? Food? Mine seems to have been formed by Sunday School pamphlets and a set of Bible Story books my mother gave me when I was three. As we read Second Isaiah and Matthew today, we are given their vision of heaven – well, really the messianic feast. Isaiah’s vocabulary must have been especially moving to his readers or hearers: wine, milk, rich food, without price. These are fine attributes for an exile people struggling to reestablish themselves in their homeland. Any food would be good and luxurious for them. It is important to see who is making such an offer, as well. “Thus says the Lord: ‘Ho, everyone who thirsts…’” Isaiah understands God’s offer of covenant and relationship in the context of the meal that gives evidence of his will to support and sustain his people.
Matthew has a similar vision, only his feast takes place in the desert or wilderness. This shouldn’t surprise us too much since the wilderness often is the place of salvation and spiritual refreshment in the Scriptures. Matthew takes this context and ups the anti, if you will, showing that even in the midst of little or nothing, there can be everything. Jesus hosts the meal that Isaiah anticipated, and like Isaiah’s hearers, all are satisfied.
We are a people of table, bread, and wine. One thing that is abundantly clear when you become involved at St. Mark’s Church is that it is a Eucharistic Assembly, that the Eucharist is essential and formative. This is a congregation with a hunger and a thirst for the meal that is not only a sign of God’s promise of relationship with us, but of its fulfillment as well. Forgiveness, and community come to satisfy our thirst.
A Sign of our Failure
In the mid 1980s, while I was just beginning my pastoral work at Saint Francis Church, in San Francisco, there was still some blush on the ecumenical front. Christians were still gathering together and discovering what it was that they truly held in common, and looking at the promise of what else might happen. We were involved with St. John the Evangelist Church (but that was an easy one, anticipating the Episcopal – Lutheran accords that would come in the next decades). We were also involved with Most Holy Redeemer Church (or as my partner Arthur likes to call it “My Redeemer is More Holy than your Redeemer Church.” We shared Taizé, we had a common worship-planning group, we did some Bible study together, and we did training for AIDS ministry together. It was like the messianic banquet – a promise of good things – now.
I was asked by Fr. Tony McGuire, the pastor, to preach at Most Holy Redeemer. I quickly agreed. The texts for that Sunday were the texts that we share today. I preached a rich Eucharistic sermon, pointing out the promise of the Eucharist, and the graces of the Eucharist that are churches had agreed upon. Then at the last moment, I had to tell the truth. I had to say that I was sorry that I would not be able to share the feast with them, that our brokenness was so profound that this basic grace could not be shared with me. In an almost palpable silence I closed the sermon and sat down.
Tony did not come over and invite me to receive, there was not a groundswell of invitation that greeted me in spite of our brokenness, and the gulf was real and broad. Five years later, while walking in the Castro, a man came up to me and said, “I remember your sermon, and I’m still sorry!”
How odd is it that the Eucharist is the Church’s biggest failure, that there are those who still cannot or will not share these essential things. And less we comfort ourselves by thinking, “Oh, we’re Episcopalians, we share these things,” remember those Primates at Lambeth who would not receive the Eucharist with American and Canadian representatives.
I say this because I think it is important to realize that if the Eucharist is indeed opportunity and promise that we continue to strive to make it so among those who are wary and afraid.
A Call to Openness
Last week while I was in Cologne, and enjoying the splendor of all the Romanesque churches there, I suddenly realized that one of my most favorite pieces of art was in Cologne. Ernst Barlach created Der Schwebende Engel (The Hovering Angel) as a memorial at Gustrow Cathedral to the war dead of the First World War. A pacifist and anti-Nazi, his works were declared degenerate and removed and destroyed. This recasting was hung in Antoninerkirche in Cologne. I walked the few blocks from my hotel to the church and as I approach realized a dread – the church was Evangelisch and likely to be locked. So it was, and I didn’t get to see my angel.
I published a minor rant in my blog about locked churches, and then realized my church is locked. I know all the good reasons that it is locked. There is something that we need to consider. “Ho, everyone who thirst, come to the waters.” “He had compassion for them.”
I wonder who is thirsting outside of this place, outside of ourselves? I wonder if they even know that they are thirsting? Or for what they are thirsting? Some things captured my imagination as I traveled last week: The nun who sat patiently at the Cologne Cathedral waiting for anyone who might want prayer or spiritual counseling – Ho, everyone who thirsts. The men in various churches who came up to me (not to take my camera away or to exact a fee) but to explain artwork, or to invite me into the sanctuary in spite of signs that forbad entry – He had compassion on them. The artwork at Salisbury Cathedral that sought to build a bridge between the everyday man or woman and the spiritual life of the cathedral – come buy wine and mile, without money and without price.
What would it be like if we could somehow showcase our spiritual treasures here, with open doors and hearts? Who might come in? That Jesus’ meal takes place in a wilderness should not be lost on us. There are people who come in here bringing their own wilderness with them. What milk and wine might we offer? Isaiah seems to be commenting on our own time when he says, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?” Yes indeed, a question for our time, and one we might ask not only of ourselves, but also of those who peer in at our doors.
So let us to the feast – but let us eat and drink mindful not only of the community that will be born in us, but of the potential community of forgiveness and sharing that might yet be. Yes, everyone who thirsts – come!
July 24, 2011
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
The Reverend Ellen Ekstrom
It’s all about small things, insignificant things, becoming great: a mustard seed, yeast, something hidden, something sought, faith, the body of Christ, and love; it’s about priorities – taking the treasures the Kingdom of Heaven affords over those on earth.
Life comes from a spark of almost nothing and becomes something extraordinary. The arrival of the reign of God – the greatest event in the history of creation is a work with beginnings so small as to seem hardly perceptible. Phenomenal results from seemingly insignificant beginnings.
We have today the second of three lections from Matthew 13 consisting of parables, the third major body of Jesus' teachings found in this Gospel, the first being the Sermon on the Mount and the other, the Mission Charge.
Okay, so what's a parable?
It's a tool for teaching that Jesus used - they are powerful, because what stays in the memory better than a good story?
But these are stories that allow the listener to teach themselves. Jesus' parables are disorienting; they turn society as we know it inside out and upside down, takes us out of the predictable and comfortable and challenges us to look deeper, closer.
Let’s put ourselves in Jesus’ sandals for a moment. He’s trying to explain to his twelve best friends this different way of thinking, of being, of living. It’s not an idea but a real concept. They, and we, can be dense – okay? Every day living with its challenges, joys, intrigues, the nine to five rat race that you and I run, catch us up and that’s all we know. Jesus wants us to step away from that life and try the life he’s offering. But we don’t get it. Sometimes it can be painfully impossible to even think of looking at the world through a different lens, let alone understand.
To help us along, move us away from the life we know all too well, Jesus applies the parable: sometimes they are little stories, such as those in this part of Matthew, or we get an epic tale, such as the Prodigal Son. In any case, these stories and vignettes, these images show us what’s hidden behind the usual way we look at things and think about them.
And Jesus, realizing that people just didn’t get it, tried something and it worked. He spelled it out in terms and language the audience can understand.
He showed them images and lo, we got it!
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”
Well, what is this Kingdom and what is it like?
We hear and read the phrase “The Kingdom of Heaven,” or “the Kingdom of God” is near, at hand. Jesus used it over and over to drive home the message that a new world order had arrived. To the merchant sitting in the Jerusalem market square, or the scribe in the Temple, the kingdom meant a temporal lord, a sovereign. But that isn’t what Jesus meant – I believe he meant that the kingdom was deep within the heart and mind, and it came with a new way of thinking, of living. It was what Jesus preached: loving one another as God loved all that was created, holding respect for one another and creation, a belief that with God nothing is impossible, and it affords equality and justice. All are welcome who believe.
To get people to understand this, and to accept it, Jesus showed his audience then and now what it would be like with subject matter equally familiar. A gardener could understand the mustard seed. In a single season a tiny seed becomes a shrub with branches large and strong enough for birds to roost in them. Now apply that to Jesus and his disciples. They travel the length of Judea spreading the good news – the seed is planted. One neighbor tells another, and another, and soon the movement grows, flowering, branching out.
The same could be said of the leaven the wife uses to make the dough rise. There is rapid growth from beginnings that are hardly significant: a bit of yeast is mixed in warm water, then with flour and left for an hour or two – the dough rises out of the bowl. The message of this parable is that just as a tiny lump of leaven, or yeast, can enlarge a basin of dough, so will the ministry of Christ, and ministries given to us in Christ, expand and encourage a new world vision and reality with results greater in proportion to its present size.
The shrub the seed became continues to grow and the bread becomes more nourishing. These are analogies to our faith and our community – the church.
Belonging to this community, however, comes with responsibilities.
God’s kingdom has infinite value – no rust or moths will destroy its treasure. Weeds do not grow among the sheaves of wheat. Jesus gives us two more parables and these concern the kingdom’s value over our workaday values: first, the treasure hidden in the field. People hide their valuable possessions to keep them safe from theft. In centuries past, they buried them where they thought no one could find them – and hopefully they remembered where the valuables were placed. Here, we have a treasure found by accident and the one who found it is so overjoyed that he sells everything, maybe even the treasure to buy the field. And then we have the parable of the pearl. The merchant intentionally seeks the one, exquisite pearl and gives up everything he has for it. The message in both of these parables is that God’s kingdom is a prize beyond comparison of any jewel or good fortune we can imagine. We are encouraged to reevaluate what is truly valuable to us.
Finally, we come to the last parables in this chapter – one stressing God as the ultimate judge and arbiter, and the other showing us that old and the new both are welcome in the kingdom. As fishermen sort their catch between consumable and non-consumable, so too will God sort out people – but it will be God who judges between the true and the false. Jesus concludes his teaching in this part of the Gospel by saying that those who understand Mosaic law as well as what is new in his teachings are like masters who bring out both new and old treasures – both have a place and both should be honored.
As in the first century, these stories have life and meaning today, in a time where values continually shift from seeking the greater good to acquiring greater goods. Today, especially today in light of Friday’s horrific event in Norway, we should be ready, willing, and able, be equal to the challenge and task of planting seeds of faith and love and show the world that we are advocates of equality and justice, that we espouse love and fellowship. What we can do is accept this incredible place, this Kingdom that God offers to us in Christ.
Dare we believe that such a life exists for us in the Kingdom? Yes. Can we get gleeful and excited about what Jesus promises? Certainly! Is it ours to take, this life, filled with such promise, such joy, such confidence, such power, such possibility? Again, I tell you, yes. Because my friends, the Kingdom of Heaven is a place where seeds of faith are planted daily, where faith grows as easily as leaven mixed in with flour, where one’s good deeds and right action taken to make the world a better place for all are pearls of exquisite value and where nothing now or in the future can separate us from the love of God.
July 17, 2011
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 44:6-8
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
St. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Fennel
I love fennel. You know the plant, with the feathery leaves, a bulb that tastes faintly of anise, and the seed that definitely tastes of anise. It is wonderful braised in meat stock, or served raw with a salad, or grilled and served with lemon. It can be cooked with potato and then puréed, or mixed into other meats to make a very tasty sausage. Fennel and pasta, fennel and pork, or in a nice sauce over fish. Ah, fennel!
Then there is the fennel that has invaded my neighborhood. Brought to California by some enterprising immigrant, the fennel that has graced so many Italian, French, and Greek dishes has become something of a nuisance. It has invaded the basins around the street trees in my neighborhood. Whole back yards of negligent homeowners have become fields of fennel. It stands up, feathery and light green in vacant lots and train yards. It is impossible to get rid of. I hate fennel.
The weed is a funny thing – as it seems to be in the mind of an observer. I had a late friend who had a wonderful country home up in Sonoma County. There in the almost Mediterranean landscape, typical of Northern California, she made her home nestled in wild oaks, the grounds strewn with Lavender and California Poppies. On a visit, as I accompanied Nancy through her yard, I saw her (to my amazement) uprooting hundreds of California Poppies and throwing them into her compost heap. “Nancy,” I said, “you can’t do that. Those are California Poppies, the state flower, it’s illegal.” “Weeds!” was her succinct reply as she tossed another load into the heap. Weeds, indeed.
"The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.”
The Kingdom of Heaven? We had best take notice. Jesus wants to teach us something about our environment, and indeed about ourselves as well. In his parable there is the seed – the good sown by the farmer, and the bad sown by the enemy. Which however is which? There is an economy in Jesus’ answer, which I will save for the close. In the meanwhile, let’s savor the fennel, or the stinging nettles, or the tumbleweed.
What both Jesus and Matthew assume is that we understand the allusion – that the field filled with both weeds and wheat (or whatever) is ripe for harvest, ready for the barns, ready to feed the harvester and the family that keeps the fields, ready to be useful. The harvest is the people, you and me. What is interesting to me is the notion that an “enemy” has come to do the harm, not some nice Italian immigrant who planted fennel in her San Francisco back yard, not realizing that it would soon infest the whole of the peninsula. Or nature – could Nancy not realize that the lovely poppies she hated so much were a product of nature, and not of someone who wished to annoy her.
If the field is the harvest, and if the harvest is those who have grown up into the word, then what are we? Are we the good plant or the bad plant – the grain, or the weed?! (That would be an interesting tangent).
Weeds and Crops
Over a decade ago, we became acquainted with cousins who live in Germany, in the Schwartzwald, in a small town called Swann. Initial contacts were with my mother and my two sisters as they made their way to visit these new relatives of ours and were greeted one winter’s day in the ancestral village of Nabern – greeted by 40 individuals who had come to discover who we were. The following summer, my daughter was in Frankfurt am Main, polishing up her German, and went to visit one of the cousins who lived there. As Anna and Elle poured over photo albums, my daughter Anna suddenly startled. There in the photos was one relative in a Hitlerjugend outfit, and another in a Luftwaffe uniform. Suddenly she realized that she was no longer necessary the good seed, but that there was an aspect to her existence that was weed. It would no longer be easy to cast aspersions on others.
Just as Christ has two natures, both human and divine - an initial realization in reading this parable is that we may share that proclivity in that we are both seed and weed, good and bad. Saint Paul, a couple of Sundays ago, put it well (or as well as Saint Paul can be expected to put anything).
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
This convoluted and twisted argument, and psychological dilemma was put more simply by Martin Luther who stated the Christian (you and me) is simil Justus et peccator – at the same time justified and sinner. We are wound up in each of these conditions. We are seed and weed. What will come of it all will have to wait.
Renewed with Water
And that is precisely Jesus’ answer to the question of “what then are we? What shall we become?” The economy of his answer is instructive of how we should not only live life, but also of how we ought to observe and honor our neighbor. I know plenty of people who think that I make a marvelous weed – unworthy of the water that sustains me. I suspect that you have similar relationships as well. The slaves of the household approach the owner and wonder what to do about all of the weeds in their fields. The owner (Jesus – God – perhaps even ourselves, urges their patience. “Wait”, she says. The owner is a wise woman, for in tearing out the weeds, she may lose some of her crop.
Paul makes the same comment in the second lesson for today:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Who have we torn out of our lives simply because they were weeds, inappropriate and troublesome in our lives. And who has torn us out of their lives for the same reason? This is Jesus’ economy of time – there is plenty of it, and we are enjoined to wait it out. What will be redeemed at the harvest will be redeemed for our good.
It is important that we remember we are both: weed and seed, good crop and bad crop, useful and useless, saint and sinner. It is God’s judgment in the end as to what we have turned out to be. For this reason, we have placed the baptismal font at the entrance to our nave – the place where we gather to worship. It is a bit of an obstruction. We will make it easier to get around in the coming weeks, but right now it confronts us in the middle of aisle. It says something to us about our nature as a redeemed individual or a redeemed people.
When I grew up, the liturgy of the Lutheran Common Service began with these words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” to which the people responded, “Amen,” (so be it!) That was then followed by confession and absolution. A similar realization was in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer where the worship was initially confronted with this collect:
ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The instinct of both is to remind us of our dual nature, saint and sinner. There is an aspect of the Lutheran entrance that I find to be instructive and helpful. We knock at the door of the church, a sort of “Knock Knock?” moment. Realizing that we are both seed and weed, we invoke someone else’s name. “Who’s there?” “I am,” we say in our hearts, and continue with “but I am coming and entering here in someone else’s name, I come, “in the name of the Father…” When we are obstructed by the font, we reach down with our fingers, touching the water and remember that in spite off our difficulties we are baptized and redeemed. Using Jesus’ model of the harvest, the weed part will be overlooked, and we shall be retreaved as the ripe harvest, the product of the Sower’s finest intent.
We need to begin to look at ourselves in this manner, for in doing so we can begin to see the seed in others, their redeem ability, their being loved of God along with us. So with no further ado, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.
July 3, 2011
Third Sunday After Pentecost, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a
St. Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rev. Fr. Michael Hiller
Little Ones
Last Friday, at our weekday Eucharist, we celebrated a new entry on the Episcopal Calendar, Harriet Beecher Stow. She was the renowned author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel that endeared her to the Northern abolitionists, and made her a persona non grata in the South. Her strong anti-slavery stance was rooted in her own theology, borne of the strong Calvinist background of her family and of her education. She said strong things, and she pursued her stance with fervor and ferocity. Upon meeting President Abraham Lincoln, he is supposed to have said to her, “So this is the little lady who started this war.”
Here the Gospel according to Matthew:
"I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”
In the course of daily life there is one thing that I am hearing over and over again from people. It is a troubling and fearful statement of the powerlessness and hopelessness of our time. I find that surprising to hear, but not totally unexpected. I read the newspapers as well, and I hear what is being said on the radio. I, and I think others around me, are beginning to understand the frustration of women only wanting to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, or wishing for a modicum of self-direction in Syria, Libya, or Palestine. Yet it is truly troubling to feel powerless and hopeless when reared on the hopes and dreams of the Constitution. We all begin to wonder, “what has gone wrong?” Have the “little ones” like Harriet Beecher Stowe lost their way? What is there left for us to do to address the problems of our time.
Saint Paul wrestles with a similar psychological battle in the second reading for today. “The good that I would, I cannot!” Do we even know the good that we want for our nation, for our selves, for our fellows throughout the world? Fr. Joe Pummill regularly sends me an email that warns me, guides me, reminds me that I still must be on the lookout for the good that I might be able to do. Like Paul, we all may desire these good things, and yet find them unachievable.
Heroes
Let’s talk about heroes. It’s the time of the year to talk about heroes, it’s the stuff of the celebrations that we shall have on the morrow. When we read around in Second Isaiah, and again in the second half of Zechariah, we can see their vision that looks beyond the usual when looking for heroes that can weigh in on our helplessness and our restlessness. They both look beyond what their culture and national identity had given them. They look to what is happening in the world around them, and like God, they say, “It is good!” For Isaiah it was Cyrus the Mede, the conqueror of the Babylonian Empire who released those exiles who wished to return to their home in Palestine, and who helped them reestablish their own religion, the religion of Yahweh and of the Temple.
For the other Zechariah (it’s clear the book has at least two hands at work), for this Zechariah it was another hero. It may have been Alexander of Macedon whose dreams for a unified world excited the sympathy of some. Those dreams were dashed by ambitious general following his death. Zechariah, however, still buys into the dream. It was a dream of peace that settled the ancient world of the Levant and of Mesopotamia and gave it a cause for not only peace, but religious toleration as well. It is a fuller development of the universalism of the latter Isaiah, and Jeremiah as well. These men did not look for the standard hero. Zechariah did not put his hopes on a revivified David.
Who are our standard heroes? How can we, like these prophets, look beyond our national verbiage to discover those who have truly made a difference in our world? What frightens me are the easy heroes of our culture, the easily won battles that are portrayed on our screens, with none of the difficulty of seeing a people’s need, or their helplessness. Will Captain America or the Green Lantern fill the void of our hopes?
Who are your standard heroes? Perhaps the celebration at Gay Pride Day last weekend will fill your mind with some names. Independence day will bring other heroes to mind – the “little ones” who fought in our wars. Name any social movement, and there we will find our heroes – people who believed and people who dreamed. They are the “little ones” to whom the goodness of the Gospel was revealed and made known. Jesus would/does know them.
Jesus also knew that a prophet is largely without honor in his or her own country. In the Gospel for today, Jesus mentions two: himself and John the Baptist. “They said John is crazy”, Jesus reminds us, and “they called me a glutton and socializer”. Think about the little ones – the heroes: Rosa Parks, Mary Magdalene, Martin Luther King Jr. and his battle with the FBI, the women who struggled to win the suffrage.
Comfort and Power
With what words might we both comfort and encourage ourselves on this national day? Isaiah and Zechariah urge us to look beyond our usual collection of heroes. Our time urges us to look beyond the simplicity and naïveté of our national politics to seek a truly genuine pursuit of justice, peace, and freedom. Our community, our parish, needs “little ones” and heroes who understand the fullness of the Gospel and who address the poverty, helplessness, and hopelessness of our streets.
Jesus says something about these concerns, these interior concerns (not unlike Paul’s) in today’s Gospel.
"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
These are not words that are aimed at those who need our aid and prayers. We need to provide them with words and acts of comfort that are of our own making. No, these words of Jesus are for us – the little ones – the potential heroes of our community and of our world. He promises rest and comfort, but there is more. “For my yoke is easy.” There is still a yoke; there is still a burden and labor that is expected of us. Like heroes of old and of our own time, we know where our courage is needed.
To enable yourself in your own little deeds, that make a full measure of the promise of the Gospel, refresh yourself at the font, and have joy in the community that surrounds you. And take sustenance and nourishment from the simple food that is set before us, “given for many.” Yes, little ones – yes, heroes for those who need your courage, there is comfort, but even more so there is power and courage – yours for the asking.
June 19, 2011
First Sunday After Pentecost - Trinity Sunday, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
II Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
The Reverend Lizette Larson-Miller
I received an invitation to an academic conference on the Trinity in which all of the talks sounded wonderful, but none could top the invitation itself:
1 + 1 + 1 = 1! I thought of just stopping the homily right here actually…
This does seem to be a way to sum up the mystery of the Trinity – a teaching, a belief, a core doctrine that defines Christian faith, and yet one that very few Christians seem to be able to articulate as far as understanding such a complex set of realities or how it applies to living life as a disciple of Christ. We are in good company in that issue. In the ending of Matthew’s gospel which we have just heard, even the disciples, upon seeing Jesus on the mountain, drop to the ground and worship him, but some doubted – some were still not sure what this was all about – or, perhaps more to the point – what exactly they had signed up to do.
The Trinity is the constant hub of all our worship – even a casual glance through the Book of Common Prayer will reveal that most prayers are addressed to the first person of the Trinity, prayed through the second person, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, at least in the doxological endings. Our Eucharistic prayer is similar – it is addressed from beginning to end to the God the Father, the almighty, or other attributes of the first person of the trinity, and involves the request to send the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and the gifts of bread and wine. We baptize in the trinity, we cross ourselves in the trinity, all our blessings are Trinitarian, our creed is Trinitarian, our outline of faith is Trinitarian, our hymns are Trinitarian – so are our lives Trinitarian? What does that mean, what would it look like?
Throughout Christian centuries of reflection on our Triune God, there has been a multiplicity of ways to describe what is beyond our immediate experience. Last week at evensong I preached on one of my favorite images of the Trinity condensed from Augustine of Hippo, who tried to express both the relatedness of the Trinity one to another and the distinction of person and mission by offering the idea that the first person is the lover or the primordial source of all love, the second person, Christ, is the beloved or the embodiment of love, and the third person, the Holy Spirit, is the love itself-all loving and loved and love in knowledge. (Augustine, De Trinitate) I still like this image, because it is dynamic, inter-related, and gets us away from the “two men and a bird” (As Sandara Schneiders has so ofter described the popular view of the Trinity) picture that subconsciously often prevails. But what is this really about? Why is Christianity so complicated when other religions simply have one God, full stop, or a multiplicity of gods who each do their own thing? Why do we have such an unsettled both/and God, one with problematic gender language, no known photos, no clear meaning of how three persons can be one, or how 1 + 1 + 1 = 1?
But these questions bring us back to defining the Trinity itself, rather than the work and mission of God for us. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life is the title of a book by a wonderful theologian, Catherine LaCugna, who died far too young. She was part of a group of scholars and faithful Christians who turned the tide in thinking about the Trinity, from what often seemed to be attempts to define a static God to reinvigorating the question of what it means to believe in and live in an active, loving God – a God who is directed toward us in all action and will.
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” – and so we are made, not simply individually as is often the interpretation, but corporately. God is pure communion, we are made in that image, most in likeness in communion. But God the creator does not remain separate from God’s creation – the NT “companion” to the beginning of Genesis is, of course, the beginning of the gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.” Why? Why would God do that-any of that? Because “God is love” (I John 4:8) and God has poured that love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). Why such a complicated God? Because the encounter and ongoing relationship between creator and created is complicated, because the encounter and ongoing relationship between spirit and flesh, divine and human, is complicated. But irrationally, illogically, the whole economy of God is love - in being, in will, in action, until the end of the ages of ages.
How are our lives Trinitarian? Because we – we together- are made in the image of God. Because we are loved by a God necessarily Trinitarian, to be the source of all love, the embodiment of love and the activity and being of love. And we are called to be part of that – not something separate, no longer unaware of the mission of the household of God as if we were slaves, but now called to be friends, adopted children, part of the household, part of the mission of God.
How do we do that? To what are we called? We are called, first and foremost, to be passionately in love with God – passionately, all consuming, infatuated- leading to acts of foolishness - a love changing all things, in love with God. The rest will follow – loving our neighbor, going and making disciples of all nations, loving all that God has created, being the economy of God in the world. The rest will follow.
Still have doubts? Doubt can be the place where we learn the wisdom to pray for gift of faith – not faith as an intellectual exercise-knowing more facts, or history, or theologians, but as a core knowing – a knowledge of God which precedes articulate descriptions of that knowing. All of us ‘know’ God to a certain extent, all of us are loved passionately to the full extent, all of us are invited to share in that knowledge and passionate love. So we pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be increasingly woven into our being and our mission, that we may be that grace, that love and that communion.
Eastertide 2011
June 5, 2011
Seventh Sunday in Easter, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Acts 1:6—14
1 Peter 4:12—14, 5:6—11
John 17:1—11
The Reverend Louis Weil
I want to focus on the final words of the Gospel reading which we have just heard: “that they may be o ne, as we are one.” Our reading today from the Gospel of John is part of the final prayer of Jesus for his disciples. This passage speaks with a moving serenity about the close unity between Jesus and his Father and between Jesus and his disciples, that is, between Jesus and ourselves. And the passage ends with the petition that the disciples may be one---may be united---just as Jesus and the Father are united.
These words---“that they may be one, as we are one”---have become what we might call the motto of the ecumenical movement. They are grounded in the conviction that all of us who name Jesus as Lord are called to be united, and that our divisions are contrary to God’s will. But for centuries we have lived with denominational divisions which, at their worst, make one Christian communion the adversary of other Christian communions.
So how are we to understand these words of Jesus? Are they are a prayer that has failed? Or perhaps they are a prayer that has yet to be fulfilled. One of the fruits of the ecumenical movement has been the discovery that what the diverse Christian communions share is far greater than what divides them. And yet, certainly, there are real differences among the various communions: differences in the under-standing of the nature of the Church; differences in the understanding of ministry – and specifically of ordained ministry; differences in the understanding of the sacraments; differences in our models of prayer and worship; and the list goes on and on.
But differences do not necessarily require division. The Church throughout the world is made up of people living in very different cultures, shaped by very different historical developments, and influenced by the very different emphases that we find in our diverse communities. So differences alone do not divide us. For me, at the heart of what divides us is a familiar human sin: the conviction that WE (and the ‘we’ can be any communion you might name) – the conviction that WE must be right, and for us to be right, YOU must be wrong.
I am reminded of the title of a book which I read many years ago: ‘Your God is too Small’. It is easy to understand how a Christian who has been shaped by a particular tradition embodies the spirituality of that tradition; the problem comes when that religion is claimed as the only true path to God. If we survey the whole range of humanity’s religious experience, we see that narrowing for what it is: ---- it is a betrayal of the extraordinary diversity of humanity’s experience of the Holy.
But in the Nicene Creed which we shall proclaim together in a few minutes, we claim that the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” If we hold that claim up against our lived experience of the institutional Church, we see that we fail to some degree on all four counts. But that is true not just of the Church of today, but of the Church throughout history. Even in the New Testament we find conflict between the followers of Jesus: remember that even Peter and Paul had to go their separate ways! They understood the mission of the Church in very different ways.
A few years ago, I was preparing a lecture for a meeting of Anglican liturgical scholars. One concern at our meeting was the conflict which we have been experiencing in the Anglican Communion for the past several years. What would this mean for Anglican unity? As I worked on the lecture, I kept thinking about the phrase in the Creed: “one, holy, catholic and apostolic,” and I realized that never in the history of Christianity has this been fully realized. There has always been disagreement and conflict. This is true for the entire 2000 year history of the Church.
Unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity, are the future hope of Christians --- they signify what the Church is called to be. They are the goal toward which, by the grace of God, we are moving. These marks are God’s challenge to us: they are what God calls us, as the People of God, to become.
One week from today, the Church will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This will mark the end of the Easter season, and it commemorates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the Church’s journey of faith through history. Every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we pray for this outpouring of the Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine, and upon ourselves, that in receiving these holy gifts we may find our unity in Christ strengthened. This is the unity to which we are called as the Church of Jesus Christ, and it is the unity for which Jesus prayed in that final prayer for his disciples.
As we open our lives to the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we see the unity of the Church revealed as God’s promise. It is a promise which is planted in each of us through our baptism into Christ --- because it is in baptism that the unity of the Church is manifested and which all Christians share.
St. Basil spoke of the unity which the Holy Spirit bestows upon the Church; but, he said, it is a unity which needs to be revealed. As we move this week toward the Feast of Pentecost, let us pray that this unity will be revealed in us, and that the prayer of Jesus may be fulfilled: “that we may all be one.”
May 29, 2011
Sixth Sunday in Easter, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
John 14:15-21
The Reverend Ellen Ekström
For the last six weeks we have had continual messages of love and assurance from Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, and now this week, the assurance that we are not alone.
Recounting those messages as assigned in the lectionary, we have Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary in the Great Vigil Gospel, which we used on Easter Day, the luminous account from John, again on Easter, when Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, the appearances to the disciples in the upper room and at the Sea of Galilee during Easter Week, and then the appearance to Thomas, where he is invited to touch the wounds for himself, walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and breaking bread with them, and then we have flashbacks, as it were, to before the crucifixion, where Jesus speaks of himself as the shepherd. Finally, on these last two Sundays, we are back in the upper room in Jerusalem at Passover, when Jesus shares a last meal with his beloved disciples before his death.
Our Gospel today continues the Farewell Discourses to the disciples – the interpretation of Jesus’ work on earth and his relationship to his believers and to the world after his glorification. As he prepares his followers for his absence, Jesus instructs them on how they are to order their lives and practice their faith when he is no longer physically present. He promises that God the Father will send an Advocate to be with them in his stead.
Jesus has been the advocate, the parakletos, the one called to be alongside, throughout his ministry and time with the disciples. He will not leave them alone – a new Advocate will be sent to dwell and abide in every man, woman and child who loves Jesus and keeps his commandments. This new Advocate is the ‘Spirit of Truth,’ a gift to the community of faith. The Advocate will remain with the infant movement, this new church, because Jesus taught it to recognize and value the truth. The Spirit of Truth serves to reveal all falsehood.
This new Paraclete is far more than just a substitute, a babysitter replacing the ascended Christ; it will prepare the disciples and all who follow after for God’s continued revelation of truth and love. God will continue in the disciples, then and now the work begun in Jesus. The defining characteristic of the Church became, and is, the enduring love power and presence of God.
The Spirit of Truth poured out of Peter’s words set down in his first letter. He gave further instruction to the followers of Christ as they faced persecution, to offer a defense with gentleness and reverence. To do so will honor Christ and shame the persecutors. A quietly spoken phrase oftentimes gets more attention than a shout – don’t you think? It certainly takes one off guard, as I am sure Paul’s speech in the Areopagus did.
This isn’t the Paul I’m used to – I’m familiar with the scolding, sniping, whining apostle who had to get knocked off a horse in order to see the light, the man who Pauline experts describe as “ironic and argumentative” and “bitterly polemical.” But here, at the Areopagus we encounter a sensitive, respectful, courageous apologist for Christianity. Paul never mentioned going to Athens, so we may assume he never went there, and it is unlikely he ever delivered such a speech. It is Luke who puts these words in Paul’s mouth. He weaves Hellenistic philosophy and poetry together with Christology as he invites his audience to share in an indwelling life with God through Christ. Clearly, the Spirit was hovering here! The apologist also invites the Athenians and us to recognize the difference between the kosmos as God’s good creation, and the oikoumene, the empire, the world made by humanity, for it is within creation that Christ moves and works within us.
How does Christ move and work within us?
The moment we say ‘yes’ to his statement, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”
What are those commandments?
Those handed down to us by Moses, and those are stated at Matthew, Chapter 22, verses 37 to 39: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ And, in the Gospel of John at Chapter 15, verse 12: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
I preach on these constantly, I repeat them constantly because they bear repeating and to remind myself what I am called to do – what we are all called for.
Last week, I saw it action at our monthly Hot Meal. We didn’t have as many volunteers as we normally do, but the stalwarts who showed up pitched in and cooked, set up, served, and it was appreciated by those who came to receive what may have been the only hearty meal of their day or week. I see it when our Lay Pastoral Care Group reaches out to our parishioners in need of comfort and spiritual friendship; I see it in the growing pile of donations for the Berkeley Food and Housing Project; I see it in our concern and action for those affected by the tornadoes in the Midwest and South, I see it as I read accounts of fellow Episcopalians taking stands against bullying in schools and at the workplace, in challenging congress to keep the Family Assistance Act alive so that thousands of hungry American families can have food on the table in these continuing times of economic uncertainty. I see it when I listen to the stories of women living on the streets and how they struggle to turn their lives around, to get back on their feet; I see it every Sunday here, in this nave, where we praise God and give glory in Word, action and song.
We are not alone in the world or creation. The paraclete is with us now and always. We have one walking alongside us as we proclaim the Gospel in our actions and live into Christ by following the Commandments he asks us to obey.
May 15, 2011
Fourth Sunday in Easter, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
I Peter 2:19-25
St. John 10:1-10
The Reverend Fr. Michael Hiller
Jesus as Light and Bread
The Theme of the Shepherd
While I was in college, I attended the Church of the Redeemer in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The chancel there was dominated by a huge stained glass window depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd surrounded by lambs, and ewes, but no rams that I recall. It was quite bucolic – English actually, with leafy trees, unknown to Palestine, and luxuriant flowers and grasses, equally unknown. Like much of the shepherd imagery used in the church, it tended toward the sentimental. It was meant not to offend or to put off. In my seminary days I recall an outrageous, if not blasphemous hymn verse that seminarians used to shock one another. It was about the Good Shepherd, and went something like this:
Jesus is the good shepherd
He gives his life for the sheep
We are all God’s little lambs
And Jesus is Bo Peep!
It abruptly and quite shockingly comes to the point. There is a great deal of reality concerning shepherds in the Bible that is forgotten or avoided. Before we can tackle these verses on this Good Shepherd Sunday we need to be about the business of fully understand exactly what it is that Jesus is trying to get across in his parable.
There are wonderful visions of shepherds in the Old and New Testaments – the 23rd Psalm, the story about David (as shepherd), Moses was seen as a shepherd and Amos actually was a shepherd. The shepherds are the first to hear of the Birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. There is another side to this coin, however, and we need to dwell here briefly in order to understand. Hear the words of Jeremiah (23:1-6)
Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD. Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds. I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply. I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the LORD. Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; As king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security. This is the name they give him: "The LORD our justice."
Here Jeremiah points out the shepherds of Israel (namely the kings who have not served the people well, and who have abandoned Jahweh) as being false shepherds. God will depose them, Jeremiah says, and God will come as the Great Shepherd to lead God’s people. Again from Jeremiah (2:8-9):
The priests asked not, "Where is the LORD?" Those who dealt with the law knew me not: the shepherds rebelled against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after useless idols. Therefore will I yet accuse you, says the LORD, and even your children's children I will accuse.
These harsh statements by Jeremiah, can help us understand the starting point of Jesus’ parable. In Jeremiah’s mind it was the priests, the kings, and the nobles, who had lost the way and who had lead the nation into idolatry and forgetfulness of the God who had shepherded them out of Egypt. The Judea of Jeremiah’s time was looking for another Shepherd, either the Egyptian Pharaoh or the Babylonian kings, that would relieve them from their political difficulties.
Jesus sees a similar situation, only his lost shepherds are the Pharisees. Jesus does not begin his parable with a statement as to who he is or what role he plays over against the flock of Israel. Rather it is the “thief and the bandit” who attracts his initial attention. It is the one who comes in by some other way, someone who avoids the gate, the one who climbs over the brambles that top the stone wall of the sheepfold; this is the one that Jesus distrusts. At this Jesus has gotten our attention. How is he different? What aspect of his shepherding makes the difference to the sheep? If Jesus hoped that those following and listening would see the light and understand his parable of the shepherd, he was sorely disappointed, fir they do not understand. Jesus complies and offers an explanation.
The Voice and the ShepherdIn the Gospel of John, Jesus is not afraid of the senses. In the previous chapter, the preaching and the signs are all about light. The blind man receives his sight. Jesus is the light. In the verses that follow Jesus’ introductory parable, Jesus announces that he is two things, gate and voice. Let’s ignore the gate for a second and concentrate upon the voice. “…And the sheep hear his voice, as he calls by name those that belong to him.” One of the sentimentalities that has surrounded the 23rd Psalm is stated quickly at the incipit of the psalm – “The Lord is my shepherd.” Posession (the Lord is my shepherd) and Recognition are bound together into one notion. Jesus is the voice that those who follow him recognize. Remember your father or your mother, and you will hear their voice. It must be evolutionary – that importance of recognizing the voice, identifying it with safety and protection.
There is here, however, more than just voice recognition. This is just the matter of knowing who the proper shepherd is. This is not to diminish the importance of this recognition, for it is also about belonging – being a part of the Good Shepherd’s flock. There is more.
The Gate and the Shepherd
The comparison to the voice is not the only one that Jesus makes. He also identifies himself with the Gate, “I am the gate. Who ever enters through me will be saved;…”
The gate protects. It keeps out thief and bandit, Pharisee and false prophet. The gate opens and closes, keeping in and letting out. And it is here we can begin to learn what it means to be God’s flock. I always found it kind of disconcerting that we so willingly put up these Good Shepherd windows. It’s mildly embarrassing to be compared to the sheep who huddle around the feet of the shepherd. Sheep are actually quite stupid. In the verses that embellish Jesus’ notion that he is “the gate”, he describes the true purpose and functions of the gate. Jesus is the one who holds in a protects, and he is also the one who allows his flock out of the gate, “and he (the sheep) will go in and out and find pasture.” Earlier, in the parable, Jesus describes this process, “When he has brought out all his own…” The Greek verb (ekballein), her described as “brought out” actually means “cast out”. The point that is made here is that often the sheep need to be pushed out.
Pushed out! And here we come face to face with the evils that surround the Good Shepherd and his flock. Not only is it wicked priests, kings, prophets, and nobles who endanger the flock, but it is also their own fear as well. The shepherd leads them, accepting all of the risks. We, however, are not sheep. We don’t call leaders in the church to absorb all of our spiritual risks, and to alleviate our fears. Jesus is no “Bo Peep”, but neither are we (and here I really date myself) Shari Lewis’ Lamb Chop! The metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep can only go so far. Protected, fed, and led, we must continue on, as the closing verses say “that we might have life and have it to the full.”
Must we then be Shepherds?
In Acts, Luke describes the early Christian community. They are sheep only insofar as they are led into goodness, but it is a goodness for others. What do they do, these sheep who are bidden to have life? They take the lead, they devote themselves to apostolic teaching, to fellowship, to breaking the bread, to prayer. Like the apostles, they are sent out, which is what the word apostle means. Oftentimes work in the church and for the church is called apostolic. It is work that sends us out, that pushes out of the gate, out of the sheepfold into a real world of need. In John, Jesus is constantly describing himself in terms of his effect in the world: shepherd, light, gate, bread, way, truth, life. It then our vocation in life can be informed by the examples that Christ sets for us, how can we be these things: shepherd? Light? Gate? Bread? Way? Truth? Life?
The Christians in Acts, pushed out through the sheepgate, seemed to know what to do. They did things for others, sharing things in common, reflecting the goodwill that God had shown to them in the first place.
May 8, 2011
Third Sunday in Easter, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
I Peter 1:17-23
St. Luke 24:13-35
The Reverend Fr. Michael Hiller
Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands
For our offenses given
But now at God’s right had he stands
And brings us life from heaven;
Therefore let us joyful be,
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of alleluia, alleluia!
It strikes the proper note of triumph and victory, and allows for genuine joy – a true Alleluia. The second verse deepens that hope, and it is precisely here that the dilemma begins:
It was a strange and dreadful strife
When life and death contended
The victory remained with life,
The reign of death was ended
Stripped of power no more he reigns,
An empty form alone remains
His sting is lost forever! Alleluia!
In the midst of a season that celebrates victory over death, we seem to be deeply mired in the midst of it. Vanquished though it may be, it is still on our minds and hearts as we struggle to integrate two separate realities into the core of our belief. As I rushed through SFO on Monday, making my way to a conference on the Psalms, death intruded: Osama bin Laden had been discovered and killed. His threat of death was no longer there. He indeed was dead. But so were countless others, in New York and New Jersey, in Washington D.C., and in a lonely field in Pennsylvania. In addition there have been too many deaths in Libya, Syria, Palestine, and Israel, along with scores of other states in Africa and the Mid-East. Our news is filled with death: catastrophes in Japan, Haiti, and the southern United States and in Indonesia. As one hymnist put it, “In the midst of life, we are in death.”
When confronted by the death of loved ones, we mirror the fervent desire of the disciples at Emmaus. “Stay with us, Lord, for it is evening.” Yes, stay with us. It is the hope we harbor for those who soon will pass, or who have already been laid in the arms of Abraham. Stay with us. This is the hope that Jesus engenders in our hearts as he passes through doors to greet us with his wounds, or as he speaks our name in the gardens of our grief. This is the Jesus that promises us that he will be with us, and our Easter prayer is: ”stay with us. “
When training the good people of our Lay Pastoral Care Group the point was often made that it was not what we said or sang to those who wished a visit from the Lay Pastoral Care Team so much as it was their mere presence. Sometimes we are speechless in the face of illness, trial, or adversity, and we fear that our silence will not be enough to meet the difficulty of the day. However, the fact that we are there, present in the midst of difficulty, or in the midst of needed prayer is what precisely needed and called for. So Jesus is present, not only for these followers in Emmaus, but also for us in our troubles.
Yet, there is so much of our world that we would just as soon have go away to not be present. That is the state of mind of the disciples when they meet Jesus on the road, before they can muster the hope of, “stay with us.” They are amazed that Jesus doesn’t seem to know the depth of their concern, the depth of the presence of death in their lives, the death of Jesus their Rabbi, their teacher, their friend. Sometimes we, like the disciples are blinded by our situation. We see all of the realities, and it is impossible for us to see the grace, or to know what to say. Luke describes their situation in a brief phrase: “but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.“ Sometimes God creates a huge silence in our world and in our hearts so that we might again begin to hear and perceive his presence.
Archbishop Anthony Bloom tells the story of a very old woman who needed to pray and to experience God’s presence in her life. She complains to Fr. Bloom, as a young priest, mentioning that his inexperience in these matters might give him the chance to blunder into an insight in her situation. She hopes that his blindness will grant a new vision of what she needs to see. It is almost blindness that he recommends to her. He recommends that she sit in her room and really take it in, seeing it as if for the first time. He wants her to sink deeply into her context – and then he recommends knitting, a craft that allows for blindness and silence. She does as he recommends, and her eyes, knowing and deeply familiar with all that is about her, are opened to a sense of peace and silence. Her hands moving on their own, with no known guidance from her mind, she soon finds the silence in which she can listen to God, and to pray.
The presence is always there even in the midst of our concern and anxiety. I have never heard God so clearly as I did during this week of wrestling with Jesus’ clear Gospel commands, and the death of an enemy. How could I love, how could I pray in these circumstances? Jesus speaks to the disciples’ blindness, and explains all, but they are still not seeing. Jesus speaks to us as well, but sometimes we are removed from perceiving the answer. Jesus wants us to wallow in the reality a bit.
Bread will be broken here, and in its brokenness, in its crumbs and destruction we will come to recognize our presence with Christ. Our eyes will be opened and he will disappear, as is the pattern with so many resurrection appearances. He will disappear so that the silence will once again descend upon us to give us the ability to pray. We will always be in the midst of a “corrupt generation” as Peter calls it in his Pentecost sermon. It is our lot, but it is not our fate or our hope. Our hope comes from the warmth of God’s presence. The disciples ask, “Were not our hearts burning?” What an interesting phrase – heart burn – not a good thing and yet a good thing. Sometimes it is only in the pain that we can begin to see the Good News. Living in our world as those who have entered the tomb and seen it empty, or as those who walked with the Lord of Life, and did not see or understand, or as those who do not know how to pray about the difficulties of life in our time; living in this reality we need to remember the Spirit who gives words to our unspoken and difficult prayer.
We will have an opportunity to listen to the silence this morning as we bid the prayers for the dead – so many names will flood our mind with both good and bad thoughts. The prayer and the silence is where we meet the God and judge of all, the one who rules our life as well as the lives of others. God will be with us and our eyes will be opened. Then, in that state, we will see the Bread, the Lord, the Resurrection, and most of all, we will see our neighbor.
May 1, 2011
Second Sunday in Easter, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
John 20:19-31
The Reverend Ellen Ekström
Which is easier to do – say that you believe, or to believe?
Saying it just takes a few words; believing takes the heart and mind and soul, especially when life’s events can turn everything upside down.
Someone close to me last week asked if I would still believe and hold the faith he finds amazing if historical evidence, if concrete fact, proved that Jesus of Nazareth did not rise from the dead.
Yes, I would.
In my mind and heart, I think it could not be otherwise. It had to have happened, because so many centuries after, we are still talking about it, still walking the journey, still finding inspiration and hope, still embraced by an all-encompassing and wonderful love that we have in God through Christ.
How is this possible, when you and I weren’t there when the stone was rolled back and Jesus walked out of the tomb?
It’s possible because Jesus said so.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We are those who have not seen and yet, have come to believe. Jesus’ blessing on those who come to faith without the necessity of sight or touch is not a chiding of Thomas for his lack of faith at that moment, but an affirmation of the generations who have relied on the Word and Thomas’ actions for their faith.
Thomas is called the Doubter. He was bold to have stood before his friends and fellow disciples to say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Where did this come from?
Was it that Thomas still didn’t get it, or was it grief, fear or shame taking up space in his heart and mind? His teacher and leader had been executed as a criminal, after all; perhaps he didn’t want to believe for fear of what it meant – crucifixion. Or, it was grief at the loss of someone he loved taking hold and putting him into denial.
Perhaps all of the above.
We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the others when Jesus first appeared to them – there’s no clue – but it begs the imagination, doesn’t it? He might have been going out for food for the rest; what if he was out in the world in full sight of Jesus’ persecutors, carrying on Jesus’ work?
But he is called Doubting Thomas and that nickname has become an appellation for those of us who steadfastly refuse to believe or take at face value what we cannot see.
Haven’t we all at one time, questioned what we’ve been taught or told, or seen, especially when the hour and the day are dark and feel without promise? My days have been rife with those moments, when doubt creeps in. When those moments come, God puts into play or reveals something that turns one from being faithless to faithful, something like the Resurrection. Something like a woman at the well who breaks with tradition and speaks to a foreign man with honesty; a sage like Nicodemus who is not afraid to learn something new or be born again; or an angel big and powerful enough to roll back a huge stone. Remember Paul’s words to the Hebrews: “now faith is a well-grounded assurance of that for which we hope, and a conviction of the reality of things which we do not see.”
There is so much in life that we cannot see with our eyes, but we know they are there – God is there. God came to us in the form and blessing of Jesus. So many prophets came before Jesus claiming to be the Christ but they slipped away into obscurity, suffered ignominious deaths like Jesus.
What made him so different?
He was who he said he was. He did what he said he was going to do.
The resurrection of Christ gave new life to humanity. What was promised by Jesus in his teaching was and is being lived out. The apostles, the first followers of Jesus, proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom - what Jesus promised in his teachings and ministry was made true. The followers of Jesus live out the new commandment - that they love one another as Jesus loved them, and in attending to the needs of one another, what Jesus commanded was made tangible and real.
The apostles became the leaders of the movement and strived to live as they were taught, showing that “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a great family of different people, living together, loving one another and all living in equality.” What Jesus demonstrated in his ministry was kept alive by right action, faith and belief.
And this is where we come in.
We are now the disciples, called to keep the Good News in play, to keep the Word in our hearts and minds, and to keep it alive. How you and I do this depends on the gifts God has given each one of us, and how the Spirit moves within us. We are the next act in this very real mystery play.
We’re always looking for new ways to proclaim the Gospel, to tell the story, to keep it fresh and alive. Jesus walks with us every step of the way - sometimes we have to open our hearts and minds a bit wider to see him, get past our own wounds so that we can see his. No, we haven’t seen the five wounds except in artwork and in scripture, but we know they are real. Every time we say ‘peace be with you,’ Christ says it to us. And when I send you out at the end of the service to go in peace to love and serve the Lord, I mean it and I want you to do it. Again, how you follow through is dependent on what you called to do.
Let’s show the world in thought, word and deed, that Christ is our Lord and our God – show the world that we believe. Let’s shout it out to the world that you and I can see Jesus working in our lives and we are continually blessed by that grace - sight unseen.
April 24, 2011
Easter Morning, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-23
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10
The Reverend Lizette Larson-Miller
We have made it to Easter once again, the year come ‘round to this pivot point from which all the weeks leading up to this feast are interpreted, and all that follows unfolds the many meanings of these events we remember and celebrate this morning and last night.
This year we hear the familiar story through the words of Matthew’s gospel -- what do you see, what do you feel, when you hear the story again?
Early in the morning, at dawn, on the first day of the week, the women go to the tomb. Then there’s an earthquake – we know something of earthquakes here in California, first hand as well as through horrific images of Japan’s recent disaster. How big of an earthquake? Is it enough to send the women racing for cover, or do they simply wait it out – hmmm, I wonder how long this will go on, perhaps it is just a window-rattler… And then the natural story gives way to the supernatural, the physical to the metaphysical. An angel appears, like lightening, dazzling white: this is the same description we heard weeks ago in the story of the transfiguration – that time it was Jesus himself who was pure light, dazzling and blinding. And make no mistake, this is not some sweet little wimpy angel – this one rolls back a huge stone, mortared into place, and then sits down – what does an angel look like when it sits down? In the meantime the temple guards have passed out – they are of absolutely no help. The women, however, have not passed out – the angel speaks to them – “do not be afraid” (right) …I know what you are doing here…I know who you are looking for…a criminal executed two days ago…you are one of them. And just as the cold dagger of fear really sets in, the angel says “he is not here, he has been raised.” The angel invites the women into the tomb to confirm the message, and then sends them out to tell this good news. “This is my message for you.”
And then the women bolt, adrenalin kicks in, they must be stumbling over all the rocks – there are lots and lots of rocks around Jerusalem – tripping and slipping down, watching the ground so they don’t kill themselves as they go up and down the low hills, and then – they run right into Jesus, who says “greetings”,“salve”, “chaire”, “shalom”. Unlike some other stories in scripture, the women recognized Jesus because they immediately went for his feet, the ultimate sign of awe and worship. But they are not to stay there worshipping Jesus, he sends them out – go without fear, preach the resurrection to my brothers – we will meet again.
It’s as simple as that – it’s as complex as that. 10 verses of a story around which a 2000 year old religious system circles. The heart of the paschal mystery, the heart of the liturgical year. And everyone of us in this room today hears it differently, uniquely because we have entered into the story at different points. Many have been hearing the stories leading up to this story for weeks now. Fasting, kneeling, preparing, praying, singing, preaching, presiding, cleaning, decorating, rehearsing, cooking – others have not.
Somewhere in the 4th century, an early Christian leader, perhaps Hippolytus of Rome, preached about this exact same reality saying:
Let those who have borne the burden of Lent now receive their pay, and those who have toiled since the first hour, let them now receive their due reward; let any who came after the third hour be grateful to join in the feast, and those who may have come after the sixth, let them not be afraid of being too late, for the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to those who come on the eleventh hour as well as to those who have toiled since the first: yes, he has pity on the last and he serves the first; he rewards the one and is generous to the other; he repays the deed and praises the effort. Come you all; enter into the joy of your Lord.
Good – so that gets us all into Easter, here we are, all together. But where exactly are we? An ancient story, a modern world. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The church brings us to the story of new life, a new beginning, once again in Easter. For all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, this story is our story, we are marked as Christ’s own – we have died, but the fullness of our lives are hidden, with Christ, in God. There are some here this morning who have lived that dying more than once – who know better than others, because of illness or accident or experience, that living life after death is pure gift – never to be taken for granted. There are others here who live as if death is only a future reality, to be pushed from mind by activity and acquisition, those who are still waiting for the invitation into the empty tomb – not racing down the hill to tell the story to others. Faith is freely given, belief nurtured, supported, and cultivated. This Easter may find you still climbing up the hill while others have already been up, in the tomb, and are on the way down – that’s okay: “come you all: enter into the joy of your Lord, you the first and you the last…you rich and you poor, dance together: you sober and you weaklings, celebrate the day…the calf is a fatted one: let no one go away hungry. All of you enjoy the banquet of faith; all of you receive the riches of his goodness.”
If you are still getting ready for Lent – come; if you are in the midst of Lent – come; if you are in Good Friday, come; if you are in Holy Saturday, suspended between the abyss and the light – come; if you are in Easter, come. Easter is 50 days long – we have time to help each other along the way, may those of you wise beyond others lead us where we need to go, to find our lives hidden with Christ, in God.
Easter is time to practice resurrection – St. Augustine encouraged his congregation to chant alleuias even “here in the midst of dangers and temptations” so that our journey, our hidden fullness of life, will increasingly conform to salvation – which is none other than union with God. He preached that what we always have is “praise mingled with fear here, but without disturbance above. Here the one who chants must die, but there that one will live for ever. Here we chant in hope, there, in possession; here it is Alleluia en route, there it is Alleluia on arriving home.”
Hippolytus has a few ending words for us: “O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen and you are abolished, Christ is risen and the demons are cast down, Christ is risen and the angels rejoice, Christ is risen and life is freed, Christ is risen and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for Christ, being risen from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who have fallen asleep. To him be glory and power for ever and ever.
Sermons at St. Mark's Episcopal Church: Advent 2010 thru Epiphany 2011
January 23, 2011
Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
The Reverend Lizette Larson-Miller
I’m teaching a class on preaching the Gospel of Matthew this spring, and one of the students was assigned Matthew 17:1-9, the very passage we have just heard. It is a well-known story, present in Matthew, in Mark and in Luke, usually referred to as the “Story of the Transfiguration.” And because it is a more familiar story than many of the other scripture passages assigned to students, a conversation began about how practical it was to write this homily or sermon in class. “You can actually preach it on the second Sunday of Lent” one student said. Another replied quizzically, “you mean the Sunday before Lent, don’t you?” Another student said, “no, I’m pretty sure the Feast of the Transfiguration comes up in the summer.”
They are all correct – for it is an ecumenical class, and for Roman Catholics, this reading is assigned to the second Sunday of Lent, for Episcopalians (and now borrowed by many Protestant churches), it is assigned to this, the last Sunday before Lent, and for the Eastern Orthodox churches (and for many Western Christians) the actual feast of the Transfiguration is August 6th.
Not only is the biblical story itself complex and fascinating, but its placement in the flow of the liturgical year, what it begins, or ends, is part of how we must interpret its meaning for us today. Compared to the history of many parts of our church year – how we use time extended and time intensified to marvel at the works of God in all of human life – the Transfiguration got its spot in the calendar rather late. In a chilling sense of history repeating itself, the Feast of the Transfiguration for the Western Church was assigned to August 6th by the pope in 1456 as a triumphant way to celebrate the winning of a great military battle – and 489 years later the same feast of Christ in majesty is again linked to the horrors of war, the bombing of Hiroshima, August 6th, 1945. Not a happy association for a peaceful and transforming manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus and a foretaste of the resurrection. That feast had been dropped in Anglicanism completely until the American Church put it back into the Prayer Book in 1892, and all the other Anglican churches followed suit. But the duplication of the reading on this, the last Sunday before we enter Lent, comes to us from the 1970s and appears here in the 1979 Prayer Book – the one in front of you – for the first time. Presented with the new lectionary, or arrangement of scripture readings in Roman Catholicism that emerged with Vatican II, why did the Episcopal Church decide against the story of the transfiguration on the second Sunday of Lent and instead, insert it here? One of the keys is certainly in today’s opening prayer which sets up a frame for Lent-setting it between the transfiguration and the resurrection:
O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain; Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory…
We have heard stories of Jesus’ teaching in the past several Sunday gospels, and now we are turning a corner to hear stories of Jesus’ going up to Jerusalem, and all that entails in what we call the Holy Week. And here at the turning, Jesus the teacher is again revealed to be more than a good person, more than a wise teacher, more than a holy man. As the second letter of Peter tells us, “we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory…we ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” A little surety is a good thing when you’ve just heard Jesus’ words in the verses previous to today’s gospel: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross…
The story of the transfiguration of Jesus has layers and layers of interpretation to it. The vision of Moses and Elijah seen talking with Jesus as the representations of all the law and all the prophets; Christ transfigured – changed – as a type of Moses’ going up the mountain – the story we heard from Exodus today; Christ making manifest the power of God before the journey to Jerusalem; Christ prefiguring the transformation of his resurrection. Throughout the centuries, Christians have seen this story so full of images from the Old Testament that it represents the fulfillment of the old covenant, the perfection of God’s plan for humanity, the clarity of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. Early Christians would surely have heard echoes of the book of Daniel, where visions and transfiguring were part of the end time, the summation of all time.
Adding to the drama of the vision – the dazzling white – the unearthly light – we have the voice of God, which finally causes what seems like the most logical reaction from the disciples yet – they drop to the ground in an almost deathly fear. It takes a healing touch from Jesus, a kind word, to raise them up to any functioning stature again. The words that the divine voice says are ones that we heard only a few weeks ago when we commemorated the Baptism of the Lord. There, according to Matthew, a voice from heaven says, ”This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Today we hear, “this is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Listen to him.
We who walk by faith, and not by sight, may not have a vision of the transfiguration, the dazzling white, the unearthly light – but we can still listen to Christ. We are invited to listen in the words of scripture –read aloud in community or read silently in our own devotions; we are invited to listen in the words of songs and hymns, and in wordless music that carries our soul; we are invited to listen in the silence of private and communal prayer, when the still, small voice of God invites us to see with the eyes of our heart.
But it is finally through the mercy of God that we too will be changed – not through our own light or our own shining - but because we turn our faces and our wills to the light of God’s countenance, to the face of the transfigured one, who will illuminate us - we who are sinners - with everlasting light.
Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory…
As we prepare to begin our annual journey of renewal to the waters of baptism, to a recommitment to our baptismal promises, to listening to God’s voice more attentively and prayerfully, may we pray for this strength to bear the discipline of Lent in order to be refreshed in ‘unearthly light’ when Easter comes.
February 27, 2011
Epiphany VIII, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 49:8—16a
I Corinthians 4:1—5
Matthew 6:24—34
The Reverend Louis Weil
I have a friend who worries a great deal. He once told me that if he is not worrying about something, it causes him to worry.
I am not quite that bad, but I can easily slide into a worry-mode, and sometimes the worrying seems to take over, and I feel myself in a downward spiral that colors everything going on in my life. And I am well aware that spiritually this is not a healthy place to be.
When I looked at today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, I groaned. We heard these words:
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Why this Gospel reading, I asked myself, on a day that I am assigned to preach? Obviously God has a sense of humor – because this reading is very challenging to me.
I realized that I had to see first of all what the reading is saying to me before I could preach about it to you. The main thing that it says is quite clear: “Do not worry.” And it says this quite forcefully. Well, I thought, for me that is easier said than done.
So I read the passage again --- and then again. And the wisdom that it speaks began to break through. The fact that Jesus says “do not worry” shows us that he took worry seriously --- it was a spiritual problem, and the people of his time perhaps worried as much as we do.
If that were not true, there would have been no reason for Matthew to include this passage in his Gospel. It tells us to confront worry or it will dominate us --- it will become our master – and it will push aside the other priorities which we claim for our lives. As Jesus says, “no one can serve two masters.” I had never thought about worrying in those terms, but here Jesus is reminding us that whatever we place at the center of our lives is, in fact, our master.
Given the current crisis in the American economy, this is a painful issue in the lives of many Americans. People might say, including perhaps some of us here, that there is a lot to worry about: men and women without work, many trying to deal with massive debt, some dealing with the foreclosure of their home. We all know that it is a difficult time for a great many people, and they --- we !! --- are worried.
Our national situation is not merely a subject on the evening news: it can suddenly come into our daily lives, and people everywhere are caught up in a common fear: we are living in what the poet W.H. Auden called “the age of anxiety.” We worry, and yet much of the current situation is beyond what any of us can do anything about. Again, we hear an echo from the Gospel: “worrying will not add a single hour to your life.” -- Worrying, Jesus is telling us, will not solve problems; worrying will not produce solutions. The words of Jesus are very clear: “Do not worry.” Worrying bears no fruit, and it distracts us from what we as Christians claim as our first priority: to believe in God – and to believe means to trust. Each time we proclaim our faith, this is what we reaffirm: faith in God, and faith requires trust.
At the end of the Gospel reading Jesus says,
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Again, the Gospel confronts me: in these words Jesus acknowledges that worries do come, but the question for us is how we deal with them. I have often worried not only about the present, but also about the future --- future troubles which I admit quite honestly have almost never materialized. So let us hear again: “Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Then in the light of faith, how do I deal with it?
Today, in this Eucharist, the opening collect reminded us to “cast our cares upon [God] who cares for us.” Do you remember that prayer? It continues, “Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ.”
And so we are brought back to the beginning: if in faith we claim --- and in each new situation reclaim --- that God is at the center of our lives, then we must allow that faith to be embodied in trust --- a trust that will preserve us from faithless fears and enable us to embrace the will of God in our lives with confidence and hope.
February 20, 2011
Epiphany VII, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
I Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
St. Matthew 5:38-48
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
The Totally Other
A long time ago, my friend Stephen Katsaris, a Greek Orthodox priest at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Belmont, California, invited me to come and experience The Divine Liturgy. In the subdued splendor of a neo-byzantine church, lorded over by the Pantocrator in the dome, and attended by the Theotokos in the apse of the church, I and my friends, whom I invited along, sat entranced. The Great Litany (which the BCP preserves as Form I), the Little Entrance, the veneration of the icons, the copious smoke, the drone of Byzantine chant, and the glory of the Great Entrance all made us aware of a God that was totally other. Perhaps that is why I personally like icons so much – God beyond a divide, accessible in another space and circumstance.
There are aspects of this otherness in Western Christianity. If you doubt me, just go to a pontifical mass celebrated at St. Margaret Mary’s Church just off Park Boulevard in Oakland. It is there that you also may become aware of another divide, an other “otherness” – the divide of Holy Orders that places some in an ontological reality, that others may not share. This divide between clergy and laity offers a vision of a parallel Christian world, not necessarily helpful to or informed by the Gospel.
And then there is the Church that ignores the world – does what it does in spite of the realities that surround the church. A church that harbors a deafness to the difficulties of our world and time - the “sacred” versus the “profane”. The holiness, about which I would like to speak this morning, in contrast to our daily life and daily realities, is about being set apart, but yet fully present in the now.
The Gap
Sometimes this gap is best seen in how we picture the Lord of the church. I mentioned earlier the Pantocrator (the Creator of All) pictured in the dome of Holy Cross Church. In this classic icon we see the Jesus of the Prologue of Saint John,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”
Power, might, grandeur, and humanity all rolled into one – the Jesus who rules the earth.
Next to this image, well, you’re all Episcopalians – you all have such good taste, you may not know this image. It’s a picture of Jesus, by Richard Hook – a faint smile on his lips, hair tossed as if fresh from the gym, the guy next door, Aryan, blue eyed, ready to talk to you about “those Giants”; Jesus your friend, close, intimate, totally within your realm of understanding. Each of these images describes the extremes of holiness.
Where does life fall between these two extremes? Martin Chemnitz, Sixteenth Century theologian would reply that the Christ embraces both extremes, and in that lies the mystery. And as the body of Christ, I suppose that we fall some where in the middle as well. Archbishop Rowan Williams, and others in their book, Love’s Redeeming Work – an Anglican Quest for Holiness, describe that quest as a vacillation between those extremes, and provide examples from the movement of the English Church from medieval Catholicism to the reformed catholic church that has journeyed down to us. Their first example is about the Eucharist, what we think about it and how we receive it. The medieval catholic was concerned about receiving it worthily, and seeing the impossibility of that, preferred to receive it only sparingly, and substituting an adoration of the holiness present in the Bread and Wine.
There were various responses by the Reformers: Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Zwingli, and others. English reform, however, seemed to be captivated by the hidden interior grace of the Eucharist. They were concerned about a holy reception of holy things, but they also wanted to see an active participation, couched in deeply personal, and interior terms. George Herbert, the poet, writes about “The Holy Communion”
Not in rich furniture, or fine aray,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who for me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep’st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshy hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.Onley thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms;
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
Dispatches from their friend.
Holiness here is not an object, but rather a deeply held and soulful presence. Where then is the middle way – the via media of classical Anglican theology?
Holiness and the Kingdom of Heaven
In a meeting of the Lay Pastoral Care group a couple of weeks ago, I was heartened by an earnest and stimulating discussion about this ministry and the priesthood of all the faithful. To do this work would move any of us who participated from an interior life of faith to an exposed life of grace. The readings for today weigh in on this dilemma.
The reading from Leviticus begins with the phrase, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God an holy.” No gap there, for indeed the Hebrew reads better, “you must be holy. Our question is simple – but how? The Hebrews who read Leviticus were certainly aware of the holiness of things – the Temple, the priesthood, the sacrificial offering, and the blood. These things they understood. The Levitical author, however, wants them to understand more than the holiness of things, but also God’s grace and holiness in actions. Jesus will mirror this understanding in the Gospel for today as well. Leviticus makes some suggestions about holiness, our own personal attempts to be holy. He or she writes about the grace of abundance (the fields are so ripe with grain and grapes) and the action of sharing (leave some for the gleaners). Leviticus rightly asks the question, “What do we do with our abundance?” Then, there is the grace of holiness (all being right with God) and the actions of honesty, and satisfaction with what we have (love of neighbor). Finally, there is the grace of forgiveness (God granting us holiness) and the action of Justice toward others.
Jesus radicalizes these laws, gets at the roots of the Divine Practicum – the Holy Life and Living. For Jesus, there are additional considerations: the grace of acceptance, and the action of non-violence; the grace of forgiveness and the action of loving the enemy. His arguments and proofs are simple – does not God rain down on both the righteous and the unrighteous? He wonders why we should be impressed with our loving those who love us in return. He wonders if we can love those who do not love us.
St. Paul offers some thoughts as well. He understands the Jewish notion of the holiness of the Temple. To that idea he adds a further distinction – we are the Temple – we are holy as well. We are bound in a relationship of holiness with the God who is indeed holy: I Corinthians 3:23 - all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future-- all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Let us open up the “privie rooms” that George Herbert pictures as the heart of our faith, so that grace and holiness can flow and shine forth from them into the lives of others.
Now, I wonder, having heard this, what will the Social Justice Committee call on us to do?
February 13, 2011
Epiphany VI, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Mattehw 5:21-37
Psalm 119:1-8
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
“Choose Life”
At the risk of making you think that I am much too enamored of the films of Terry Gilliam, I find that one of his films is a suitable reference point as we engage the readings for this morning. The film is full of fantasy and hi-jinks, wonderful effects, and good writing, but most of all it is a film of theological questions. I used it once for a clergy retreat at Bishop’s Ranch, and they all thought that I was mildly delusional. However, after some discussion, they began to see its value as well.
The film is Time Bandits. A young English boy, just on the edge of sleep in his room filled with small figurines of knights, and books on Robin Hood, is suddenly started from sleep, as his room expands and is invaded by the Supreme Being who demands in a loud Dolby voice – “Give me my map!” “Give me back my map!” The map, stolen by a band of dwarves, heavenly minions whose duty is to support and uphold creation, this map is a map of all possible choices and events. It is a guideline to an all-knowing, and all-powerful God, not intended to be in the hands of humans. The minions have taken it in order to travel time and fantasy and to exact treasure.
We meet a variety of characters. First are the boy’s parents who are the ultimate consumers, and the adman who makes them aware of what they might have. It is a promise akin to Satan’s come-on to Adam and Eve: “You shall be like gods!” We also become witnesses to human inventiveness and frailty. There is Napoleon, the embodiment of insecurity, Agamemnon, whose story is ripe with infidelity and jealousy. John Cleese plays a con artist with the name Robin Hood, and there are scenes of the Titanic, which remind us of the human propensity for pride and hubris. Finally there is the map itself, a representation of Predestination – the real hot potato not only of this film, but also for any of us who struggle to understand God’s will.
The movie ends with a stand off with Evil (the adman), and all the treasures and weapons that the dwarves have captured avail not. Evil plays with them like a puppeteer. It is God who swoops in and rescues the whole lot, and when Kevin, the young boy asks the august Deity what this was all about, God answers, “I think that it has something to do with free will!”
“If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice” – Ecclesiasticus 15:15
We are traveling along a cusp of change in our time, tremendous change and tremendous choice. Are we approaching in Egypt a choice for a new kind of political life, and the end of at least one benevolent despot? There are people sitting in this room whose lives embraced the beginnings of communism and its end. We have seen the demise of “Christendom” and the beginnings of something new. What will we choose? We have watched as our society has on the one hand rethought the realities of family life and marriage so that marriage is not the common desire of young couples, and at the same time denied those rights to gay men and women who have sought them. What can they choose? What shall we choose? We are pressed into a society that is global, and have misunderstood the value of that which is local.
We have to ask ourselves, “How much of all of this is really up to us?” According to Jesus ben Sira, a great deal. It is all our choice, informed by the commandments of God, but our choice. Our protestant background looks at such attempts at holiness with suspicion and doubt. And yet our baptismal gratitude needs a place to bloom and give thanks. Paul wants to warn the Corinthians about their immature choices, made without understanding the fullness of grace, the fullness of the life that Christ offers. He commends milk to them – the meat (the hard stuff) can come later. What is your choice? Milk or Meat, Flesh or Spirit.
Jesus wants us to look deeply into the heart of our choices. He understands the consequences of our choices in ways that we do not. Jesus sees what it is that we would will, and knows how it might fit on the map of that which God desires. As far as Jesus is concerned, we’re not radical enough. Our choices don’t explore the roots of that which we believe.
Being a people of choice, what does God ask us to choose?
“I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live,” – (Deuteronomy 30:19). Ecclesiasticus mirrors the thought: “before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” So then what shall we choose? The psalmist for this morning would choose the commandments. St. Paul would ask us to choose the labor of the Gospel, and in that labor to grow into life. Jesus asks us to choose several things: He asks us to grant life through our good speech and actions, for any bad speech is tantamount to murder. Jesus asks us to choose integrity in our dealings with other, and finally to choose honesty about one another.
Well then, what shall we choose? Shall we choose life? Shall we choose life by protecting the environment in which we all live? Shall we choose life in the young people in this parish, who today begin their studies leading to confirmation? Shall we choose life in the students that not only attend here, but that also surround us on all sides – shall we give them opportunity and cause to choose us? Shall we choose to be involved with the neighborhood that is our home, and with the individuals who live here? Shall we choose life in listening to the wisdom of those who have made this place their spiritual home for so many years? Shall we choose to have life in the future of the ministry of this place – abundant and fruitful?
Above all let us be about the business of choosing to love ourselves – the baptized, the forgiven, those satisfied with the Eucharistic bread and wine. Let us choose life.
February 6, 2011
Epiphany V, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Is. 58:1—9A (9B—12)
I Cor. 2:1—12 (13—16)
Matthew 5:13—20
The Reverend Louis Weil
Before I moved to Berkeley in the 1980s, I taught at the Episcopal Seminary in Wisconsin. Our principal celebration of the Eucharist was on Thursday evenings: it was a community event, attended not only by the students and faculty, but also families and guests.
One Thursday evening, when I had been the preacher, the Dean commented afterwards that I had preached “my annual anti-liturgy sermon.”
Since I was the Professor of Liturgy, this seemed to be a strange remark – but in fact, he was correct. From time to time in class or in sermons I would speak about a danger which could develop in a community in which the liturgy played such an important role in our daily life, whether it be at a seminary or a parish.
The danger was (and is) that we can get so caught up in the preparation and celebration of the liturgy that it can become an end in itself, that there is a risk of losing a sense of its purpose, a risk of forgetting that the liturgy always points beyond itself, that it embodies priorities which lie outside of the ritual celebration itself.
When I became an Episcopalian during college, I can remember hearing on more than one occasion priests speaking about “our incomparable liturgy.” It is true that as Anglicans we have a rich heritage in our forms of liturgical prayer, in Book of Common Prayer. But what makes me very nervous in that phrase [“our incomparable liturgy”] is that it seems to stop at the liturgy itself, suggesting that we can bask in the beauty of its language and music as a kind of aesthetic experience. But our participation in the liturgy is not the same as listening to great music at a concert. The aesthetic aspect of the liturgy is always intended to serve its greater purpose, to build up – to nourish – the faith of those who have gathered to celebrate the liturgy. In other words, the liturgy is not intended to be admired; it goal is to send us forth to be the Body of Christ in the world.
In our celebrations of the liturgy, we often experience great beauty, for example in its music, and we see its capacity to awaken in us a sense of the Presence of the Holy. In that way, the liturgy can play a significant role in building up the Church in the life of faith, both in a parish community and also in our individual lives. But the work of the liturgy does not stop there. Its purpose points beyond itself.
At the heart of the liturgical action we see its purpose in reminding us: the entire Eucharistic rite is an act of remembrance, both in the proclamation of Scripture and also in the Eucharistic meal at which we hear each time, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We could say that the liturgy reminds us of what God has done, the whole history of salvation, of God’s mighty works from Creation to the present time. This is done through the reading of Scripture which places us who hear it today within the context of the ongoing work of God, and so also relates our individual lives to God’s Presence and grace.
As Christians, we find that Presence of God revealed with particular intensity in the Incarnation of our Lord, in whom we see the Presence of God revealed in a human life. At the center of every Eucharistic Prayer we hear: “remember.” And it is in the power of that remembrance that we go forth to continue our own journey of faith. That is the purpose of the liturgy which we must claim again and again. If the liturgy does not lead us beyond itself into our daily lives, its purpose has failed.
Today our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah shows that this problem has been around for a long time. The prophet quotes the worshipers of his time: “we are doing all of the outward observances: why does God not notice?” One can hear: “we attend the liturgy regularly, isn’t that enough?” And the prophet says, “No, it is not enough.” Isaiah reminds us that the fulfillment of the liturgy is found in what we do in our daily lives: fight against injustice; lift the burdens from those who suffer; help to free those who are oppressed; feed the hungry; give shelter to the homeless; clothe the naked.” This is what our first reading from Isaiah says: did we hear it merely as an item in our bulletin? --- or as an imperative to us in the living out of our faith.
Do this, the prophet says, and “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly. … Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer.” Isaiah is reminding us and warning us of the danger if we stop at the liturgy itself and fail to move through it into the doing of the imperatives it sets before us. This is echoed for us in the Christian community in the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew: as with Isaiah’s “your light shall break forth like the dawn,” Jesus says to his followers, “You are the light of the world. … Let your light shine.” That light shines in the lives of those who not only celebrate this act of faith, but seek daily to embody its meaning.
January 30, 2011
Epiphany IV, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-13
I Cor.1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
“Walking with God”
The World in which we live.
There were photographs in the New York Times on Friday, which depicted a world far away, and yet it did not seem that dissimilar. They were photographs of people in Egypt, and in the background one could see the logos and signs of global corporations that have sought, for economic reasons, to bind us into a common culture of consumerism and consumption. Here in the land where Moses emerged, freedom from oppression was sought and won, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, where a thriving community saved the knowledge of Judaism from destruction, Jesus was brought by his parents for protection from those who sought to do him ill, in this land there are problems.
The problems are not unique to Egypt, to its religion, culture, and history. The problems that have spawned the riots of the last week are felt in Tunisia, Georgia, Ireland, and here. When asked what troubles them, Egyptians respond with a ready list of grievances: Emergency Law (first promulgated as a result of the assassination of Anwar Sadat), Torture by the police, Wage problems, unfair elections, Poverty, a failing infrastructure and the disasters that result, and peace with Israel.
With very little tweaking we could apply this list to most of the nations of this earth. Indeed we could apply this not only to the time in which Jesus announces the Kingdom of Heaven, or Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount in his Gospel, or Micah looks at the world to which he is called to proclaim God’s word and will. The hard-handed rule that came with being a Roman Province would be recognizable to any of the oppressed in the world today. The economies of the ancient world, which marginalized the efforts of the peasants, and gave unfair advantage to the elites, would be identifiable in our world. International politics and national interests would look the same as well.
It is in this framework that we are called, as a People of God, to do some very particular things. However, before we discover what those things are, we need to understand the background of Jesus’ teaching and Micah’s good words. Jesus’ list of blessed attitudes and Micah’s list of directives can form for us a way of approaching our world and its difficulties. The trick will be to make this approach both local and doable.
The World as God would have it.
Matthew is not alone in using political and royal terminology is making clear Jesus’ pronouncements about the Kingdom of Heaven. The heaven part may trip us up, making us want to believe that this is talk that is relegated to the future, or to the fantastic. And the Kingdom part may fill our minds with visions of royals who have no connection with reality in which we live. Matthew helps his hearers understand the difference, when he notes that the meek, the unwary, or the afflicted will inherit the earth. This is not a pie in the sky theology of hope. It is the theology of the here and now. It is what classic prophecy was all about – God’s word for us in our time, in our place.
Jesus sees as blessed three areas of human life. The first is those who make up the kingdom, and it’s not what we might expect. This real is made up of those who are poor and unassuming, those who are sorrowful, and those who are hungry. This is Jesus’ focus on the majority of those who lived in his world and time. If these words and classes do not describe us and who we are, then they at least need to describe those are the objects of our prayers, concern, and good deeds. The second is made up of the properties of the pious, the truly pious, the pious that would make St. James proud: Those who are merciful, those who have a purity of heart (and here Psalm 15 can help us out: “Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, * who speaks the truth from his heart.” and finally those who make for peace. This last group of people, the peacemakers, are not those who just wish for peace, using it as a greeting, but those who are the opposite of those in the streets. These are Martin Luther King Jr. people – non-violent, working for peace in quiet unassuming ways. The final blessedness is seen in the response of the world – persecution. This is the fate of prophets, as Jesus would point out elsewhere.
The World in which we proclaim
It’s the Sunday of our annual meeting – a time of sitting back and seeing what it is that we have done here in Berkeley, California, on Bancroft Way. And it is a time to peer into the future and see what it is that we want to do – areas of ministry and mission that flow from our relationship with the Jesus who names us his heirs. It is a time to think of what we might be in spite of the obstacles that stand in our way. Jesus understood those obstacles, and they are evident as the unspoken text in his Matthean beatitudes: wealth, pride, joy, a full stomach, power over others, omissions and commissions, making trouble in our homes or in our workplaces, and finally being accepted by society. Yes, these are the obstacles. There is one other obstacle that especially makes mission difficult in churches. It is called the budget. If it limits what we are called to say and proclaim, then we need to fine ways to lift up our sights and to do the things that we are called to do.
The prophet Micah takes an interesting and ancient approach as he looks around his kingdom, the territory given him to cajole into righteousness. Like those before him, he understood the earth, indeed the entire cosmos, to be a witness of what had been done in God’s name. As he calls on us to listen to what it is that God wants, he also calls upon earth, mountains, and the very foundations of the earth, to witness to God’s testimony. God recites what God has done – made us free, brought us up out of slavery, redeemed us. And Micah listens into our soto voce response: God, shall we offer sacrifices? Expensive sacrifices? Rivers of oil? My very first born? And like Amos and Hosea, Micah hears God’s resounding “no.”
How do we respond to where we live and worship? How do we respond to the world that surrounds us and challenges us? Micah has a simple answer – or perhaps it’s only seemingly simple. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God?” These are the virtues and callings that we need to take with us into our annual meeting. These are the standards that our common work and giving need to meet.
We have people around here who talk about “doing justice”. If you’ve not met them or know how they are, find them out, or hopefully they will come to you so that together we all might do justice.
There are many translations of the second virtue. “Loving kindness”, “to love loyalty”, “love goodness,” are a bit difficult to discern. Is it loyalty to God, or is it loyalty to our neighbor that Micah espouses. Jesus would say that it is both, and that the combination of the two completes the law. Our challenge is that we need to translate such goodness, kindness, and loyalty so that it is perceived by those about us. Another challenge for us at our annual meeting.
Finally, Micah asks us to walk humbly with our God. This last part, to my way of thinking, is the easiest, and the one that nourishes us for the other two. Walk in a knowing a circumspect manner to the font, and remember your baptism. Walk in remembrance and repentance to hear words of forgiveness and grace. Walk with hunger in your heart to the altar (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst) and receive their food for your soul, your continuing journey, and your life of justice, kindness, loyalty, and goodness.
If we do these things, then we can with confidence as the world, and all that surrounds us to see how we fulfill these virtues. God will be blessed, and our community will be blessed as well.
January 23, 2011
Epiphany III, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-13
I Cor.1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
The Reverend Lizette Larson-Miller
Can you imagine having not just the most sublime of your thoughts recorded and repeated for 2000 years, but also your mumblings and ‘senior moments’, forever woven into the fabric of Christian thought? Setting aside St. Paul’s mixed reception in the ears of 21st century Christians, today’s epistle contains an almost eerie personal ‘humanness’ that reaches across the centuries, a sort of bumbling in contrast to the central point of unity in mind and purpose.
“Why are you fighting among yourselves? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? I’m so glad in light of this argument that I actually only baptized Crispus and Gaius so I can make this important point…well, actually, come to think of it, I did baptize the household of Stephanas…and, there may have been others now that I think about it, I actually can’t remember who I baptized at this point – what community am I writing to…right, Corinth…and the point of all this was – not whether I baptized anyone but the gospel…I was sent to proclaim the gospel, and at the heart of that the message about the cross…it is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Keep that at the center of focus.”
Keeping what is at the heart of our common life central - Jesus the Christ in our midst - striving to recognize the reign of God drawing near, proclaiming that good news, being saved: that is the basis of our unity, our common prayer, our same mind, our same purpose.
In the gospel today Jesus calls four of the disciples, asking them to set aside what had been the most important aspect of their common life and livelihood, and do the unthinkable, simply follow him, trust in him, and turn their lives upside down. And being a follower meant not just following, but being thrust into leadership, preaching the reign of God through word and deed, leading others to and in the same way of life. But whether it be the Apostle Paul or the first called of the disciples, Peter, we know that they were not perfect, saints-yes, perfect-no! By what they did and by what they left undone, we still read and learn of times they failed to keep the same mind and the same purpose with Christ.
We began today’s liturgy with the penitential order, an option presented in the prayer book and suggested for times when reconciliation might need highlighting. The words of the confession and absolution are the same as ‘the usual’ – it is primarily the placement that calls our attention to the ritual words and actions – but that placement is important. It is how we gathered and began, reminding ourselves not just of our own sinfulness and need for God’s forgiveness, but above all of the need for reconciliation – to bring together again, each of us as individuals with God, as individuals one to another, and even peace with our own selves. In an older Anglican version of the confession, we prayed that because of things done and undone in thought, word and deed, there was no health in us – no wholeness.
One of the gifts that the social sciences have given to our contemporary understanding of rituals and sacraments in the church is that the human person is not a dualistic entity, but a holistic being. We are spiritualpsychosocialsomatic beings. When we are emotionally ill, it can and does affect our physical health, when we are mentally ill, it can alter our spiritual health, when our relationships are ill, it affects our individual and corporate health. It is the same for each individual and for the body of Christ. Whether it be sadness, pain, anger, confusion – if it is in the way of what is at the heart of our being, our common life, prayer, our same mind and purpose, then we must acknowledge those blocks and address them, we must enter into what expresses and creates healing, both within our Sunday liturgy and beyond it.
Several months ago Arthur Holder preached here at St. Mark’s about entering into transition – not as a universally happy time or easy time, but as a liminal time, where the betwixt and between of being neither there nor here leads to reflection, growth and new insights for all of us. Liminiality needs to be of sufficient duration to leave what was and move to what will be – not an easy transition for either individuals or for a community. One penitential order does not a necessary liminality make, but it contributes an opportunity to give communal expression and communal affirmation to the reconciliation that only God can bring to fruition – to bringing together again what has been broken, strained, or forgotten.
We express reconciliation again at another point in the liturgy – at the kiss of peace yet to come this morning. There is an unfortunate trend in a number of parishes of turning the sharing of the peace into a sort of coffee hour without the coffee – a chance to chat with friends, catch up on news, greet people we know and haven’t seen for a while, welcome strangers – encourage them to come to the adult forum or coffee hour after the liturgy… All of these are worthy exchanges, but none of them are the kiss of peace. When we turn and greet those around us – family, friend, stranger or other – and say “the peace of the Lord be with you” and receive the response “and also with you” – we have just signed on the dotted line. We have expressed by word and gesture that we see and know Christ in the other person – many Eastern Christians say at this point – “Christ is in our midst”- “he is now here, between us”.
By recognizing the presence of Christ in one another we also express the reality that unity is now reigning – we reconcile and are reconciled in Christ so that together, as one body, we can offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God, praying that through the cup offered for the forgiveness of sins, we will be united to Christ in his sacrifice, sanctified in the Holy Spirit – united one to another and together with God.
But we are not done yet – this reconciliation is the means to the end, not the end in and of itself. Like the bread and wine become body and blood, we, living members of the Body of Christ, are also transformed, so that we will be bread broken for the good of the world, and wine poured out for all people. We will do that – the heart of our being – imperfectly. We’ll be back here, there will be another confession, another absolution, another Eucharist.
Why is this so difficult? Why can’t we just get it right? How much time do you have… Part of the challenge is that we are not asked to follow – first and foremost – a set of rules, or a confession, or a statement of faith, or a particular church, or a particular priest, or a book, or a liturgy, but a person, human and divine! We are in process, liminal, being saved – a work in progress, but a work in progress in relation to this person. Reconciliation is about relationship, relationships require regular reconciliation.
We are in this together, unified – not uniform, of the same mind and purpose, refreshed and recommitted to offer good news, healing and wholeness to those we meet along the way.
Christ is in our midst – we see him differently, we hear him differently, we know him differently, we respond to God and the call of God in our various ways, through our various gifts and places on the way – those differences are to be treasured, we are more than the sum of our parts – and in our midst is the one who calls us to follow for the sake of the world. Let us, then, have the mind of Christ.
January 16, 2011
Epiphany II, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42
The Reverend Ellen Ekström
“What are you looking for?”
Let me rephrase that: What are we looking for?
Over the last week, many of us have been looking for answers to the horrible event in Arizona. Answers to questions like, “Why?” “How could this have prevented?” and “Oh no, she did not just say that – what, did she really say that?!” During the last unsettling eight days, I noticed, and I hope that you did also, a rumbling, a stirring, maybe a whisper, of calls to right action, to put things right. Most notable to me were Jim Wallis of Sojourner’s call to transcend politics in response to violence; the First Lady’s call to service, inviting us to emulate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and speak out against poverty, injustice and violence; the President’s speech at the memorial service at the University of Arizona; the calls by many, many, more, famous and not, to stop the bickering, stop the hate, and come together. Finally, there was a comment posted on iTunes by a young person in a review of a movie about Jesus:
“Man, if people just went by a few of his teachings, we wouldn’t be duckin’ all the time!”
And for those who asked, “Where was God in all this, or what would Jesus do?” I say, God was present, God received those who died in his loving embrace to live another life apart from ours, God opened the hearts and eyes of many to begin a dialogue of unity, sanity and reconciliation being shared now – we only pray that it continues.
And Jesus? What we’ve lived through is nothing new to him.
Jesus was born and lived in times more violent than ours. Israel was occupied by a foreign empire that sucked the life and taxes out of it – people struggled to exist and live through adversity and they undoubtedly thought they had lost favor with God. There were people, however, who looked for answers and wondered about life and their relationship with God and kept the hope that was with Moses and Abraham alive as they waited for the Messiah and flocked to teachers who stirred up that hope and kindled a flame for the Kingdom of God. John was one of those, and as he gathered his disciples to him on the banks of the Jordan River, he called them to repent and return to God. More and more people looking for answers, searching for a relationship with God, came to him. But he wasn’t who they thought he was – he wasn’t the anointed one. He told his followers that the one they were searching for would come and was already among them and He would restore the people of Israel to God.
Andrew and another disciple heard John’s description of Jesus’ baptism, and when Jesus walked by, pointed him out and told them to follow.
And so they did. Following in this sense of the word means a commitment to discipleship. But in this instance, not yet. Andrew and the other disciple followed Jesus, who didn’t miss a thing, turns and says:
“What are you looking for?”
Rather than state the obvious, they answer the question with a question. Their answer is just strange – perhaps they were taken off guard that he actually noticed them, or tongue-tied – we’ve all been there, right? The moment when someone you open your mouth and the wrong thing comes out as you try to impress the new boss, a potential lover, your professor? These disciples ask, “Where are you staying?” If they had asked, “We’d like to know what you’re all about,” or “We want to join your movement,” and received blunt answers and a glimpse into their futures, would they have followed? Instead, they ask a strange question. Jesus tells them, “Come and see.” It is gracious, simple, and it opens up new challenges, new possibilities and a new relationship with God for them. They went and saw; they spent the day with Jesus and later went to tell their family and friends about what they had done, who they had met. Our community, our Church, began with an invitation that was extended generation to generation, down to us.
“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks us.
Even today, especially today, we have curious seekers of the truth and light, looking for meaning in their lives and to events. When you and I ask, “what are we looking for?” Jesus turns to us and says, “Come and see.” He states no conditions, no regulations, no two-year contract or small print at the bottom of a rapidly moving screen. And so we come to Jesus, and we look for and we see in Christ that we are given hope, unconditional love and the promise of eternal life through our belief and faith. With these, we have the means to bring harmony and love to our communities, to the world. We are children in and of the Kingdom called by Christ to grow and change, to be examples of our baptismal covenant: to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. Can you imagine a life as wonderful as that? Can you imagine a world like that?
You and I are called to extend that simple and gracious invitation to those searching. We are invited to call to them and say, come stand in the light that dispels the darkness, come and realize love, come be with sisters and brothers of like mind, come and help work for change, take right action, come help stop the violence, come to the Father and stand at this table, come and embrace the Word.
Come and see, for Christ invites you, and you are most welcome.
January 9, 2011
Epiphany I: The Baptism or Our Lord, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17
The Reverend Lizette Larson-Miller
I have been attending the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy for the past few days, and there is probably a great danger in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the midst of attending an academic conference! The wonderful conversations about the early history of the liturgy in which I have been swimming in recent days are academic teasers, and they can be a source of distraction from interpreting the lives of us – the gathered community – in light of today’s scripture. Is not the point the ‘here and now’, rather than the ‘long ago?’
Today is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord – and this year we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism according to Matthew: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” But what has this story of Jesus’ baptism to do with us? Is the proper response “how nice for him” – we’re glad it worked out and the Spirit of God descended on Jesus – he even had a voice from heaven. But that was 2000 odd years ago, what about me, here and now?
This feast day – the commemoration and remembrance of the baptism of the Lord, is one in a series of feast days we have been recently living – the Nativity – the birth – of Jesus, the naming of Jesus, the epiphany of God through Jesus to the Gentiles, now the baptism. Are these simply nice things to remember, snapshots in history, or do they transcend history? And if they are transhistorical stories, what have they to do with us, do they actually do something, mean something?
Here the academic field in which I wallow – liturgical history – might actually be of some help. Not because knowing the history is in any way the means of our salvation, but because how our ancestors in the faith, early Christians close to the source – close to Jesus Christ himself – understood the meaning of the events and the stories in ways we have actually lost. Let me use baptism as a fitting example on this day. We have accepted as normal, as the ‘right understanding’ a theology that we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus – a theology beholden to the Apostle Paul, especially in his letter to the Romans, where he says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4) You can see this clearly in our book of COMMON prayer (see page 306), “Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection and look for him to come again in glory…” Is there anything wrong with this theology, this understanding of how our baptism relates to Jesus? Of course not – it is scripture, it is tradition, but it is not the only scripture or tradition in Christianity. Part of the difficulty with this theology is that the connection is between our baptism and Jesus’ death and resurrection. None of us here – yet – have physically died or been resurrected – so the experience of baptism is linked to experiences that we do not yet know in our very being.
There is another strand in Christian history though, and it emphasizes our own baptism in relation to the baptism of Jesus, rather than to his death and resurrection. It sees Jesus’ baptism in water, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and the recognition by God of the person so bathed and anointed as the model of our baptism.
In early Eastern Christianity, there is a story of Jesus’ baptism that emphasizes this connection. In this understanding of baptism, Jesus goes down into the waters of the Jordan River – into the waters of his baptism – and his robe of glory (in some stories a robe of fire) which is his divinity, is spread over the water. Forever more, whenever a new Christian goes down into the waters of baptism and is drawn up, that robe of glory – the robe of fire – clings to them. They are forever clothed in Christ, clothed in the robe of glory that is part of the divinity.
What can this understanding of the baptism of Jesus do for our self-understanding as Christians? What difference does it make? It gives us another image, another story, another metaphor for what most baptismal liturgies throughout the centuries have used as the primary understanding of baptism “You have put on Christ”, “you have been clothed in Christ.” As Jesus was baptized – so you are baptized; as Jesus was anointed, chosen with the Holy Spirit, so you are anointed, chosen with the Holy Spirit; as Jesus was named, recognized, acclaimed – so you are named, recognized, acclaimed. Here we have more common ground: baptism to baptism, rather than baptism to death. But more to the point, we are clothed with Christ – we have put on Christ.
Like any poetic image we can find a crack here too – our own Episcopal baptismal liturgy does not express this clothing metaphor well. We do not have what many other churches have, which is an emphasis on the putting on of the baptismal garment – the white garment – that outwardly expresses this putting on of Christ. On the contrary, we actually have babies and adults coming to their baptism already wearing the baptismal garment, undoing the outward symbolism all together. But more to the point, is clothing actually a part of us? We can take clothes off – we can take that identity off, it is really not the essence of us, even though we say “clothes make the person”, is that really true? Here again, these are symbols, they outwardly express something much deeper – what scripture and our own older Anglican liturgies named ‘indwelling’. Our Eucharistic prayers in Rite I still use this language, praying there that Holy Communion may “make us one body with Jesus Christ, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”
And here we draw closer to what links us – 21st century Christians – to this feast day, this story of the baptism of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew. The wonderful images of the robe of fire, of being clothed with Christ, of indwelling, are all ways to talk about a reality that transcends not just history but also our ability to speak it. We put on Christ, Christ puts on us: “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” You participate in the Body of Christ, the Body of Christ participates in you. What does that mean? You can sit in the back pew with your arms folded across your chest and never say a word, never sing a note, never come forward for communion – but if you are baptized you cannot NOT participate – you are Christed – you are christened – you are claimed – you are marked – you are chosen.
We celebrate this feast day – not just to remember something that happened long ago and far away and changed the life of A Jewish man in Palestine – but we celebrate that AND an event that began but has never ended, by telling this story again “as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “this is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” When we tell this story again – the story is our story, it is our identity that is put before our very eyes and hearts, reminding us of our baptism, our salvation, our being called the “beloved of God”.
You have put on Christ – NOW – be Christ for the world!
January 6, 2011
Feast of the Epiphany
Isaiah 60: 1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Darkness and Light
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
It was 1989, and the earthquake had struck. As the reality set in, my sister, after determining that all was safe and that friends and family were OK, walked out of her front door and walked up to the summit of Bernal Heights, the neighborhood in San Francisco where she lived. As she reached the top that looks over the city, she experienced something very different. What greeted here was not the usual sound of traffic and machinery, but utter silence. And arching over all of this silence was a darkness that admitted no light. She sat and she meditated.
The quotation from Isaiah bespeaks a different world, a world in which darkness was common. There was no glare from streetlamps or automobile headlights. There was only darkness, and it was in this darkness that foul things happened, or were thought to happen. The works of darkness were something to be avoided and disdained. So Isaiah dreams of a time of light, a light that would transfigure those who were warmed by its rays. Light was special and unusual in this world. With the coming and passing of evening, the earth would descend again into a period of darkness. Unlike our world, where light is common, and darkness is special and unusual, Isaiah’s world celebrated the light. It was a sign of God’s triumph over chaos – “the darkness he called night, and the light day”. How odd then, that we darken our churches or homes to celebrate what has been taken away in the darkness.
Transitions
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Once, while on a trip to Myrtle Beach, North Carolina where I was to give a speech to some gathered Credit Union Executives, I couldn’t sleep. The darkness and the warmth of the bedding would not coax it out of me, and I lay awake on my bed. Around 4:30 in the morning, I bundled up in a robe, walked out to the balcony of my room, that overlooked a very cold-looking Atlantic Ocean, and I lay down and waited. It was slow to happen, this transition from dark to light, from night to day. In the greyness of the Atlantic I began to see a tinge of pink, which slowly grew into a pinkish white, and then into a full-blown orange. It was no sudden transition, this passing of the night into day. It took its own time.
Someone, in commenting on these verses from Isaiah, pictured a young woman, the personification of Israel arising in the early morning darkness, and climbing up Zion’s heights, to be greeted by the morning’s sun. As she is transfigured by this light, she begins to notice the transitions taking place about her.
The Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ in our lives, the rebirth that comes each day with our morning prayer happens with an equal slowness, as we begin to see the glory that transforms what could be another day into another kind of living. On Sunday we will celebrate the Baptism of Jesus which used to be subsumed in this feast. On this day, and at that feast we ought to celebrate not only our Lord’s baptism, but our own as well, for it is our common ordination in to the work of the world, and the mission of this world. As we look about us in our lives we see our selves slowly transformed by what goes on about us as we react to the news of the day. This Epiphany, however, this being made real, transforms us into a people transformed not by the world and its difficulties, but by our common reaction of prayer and sacrament.
Reflections
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Once when flying to Israel, I awoke early, and cracked open the airliner window to my side. What I saw was the alps softly reflecting the rising sun. It was stunning.
The young woman, the representation of Israel, she reflects the dawning of Yahweh upon Mt. Zion. Jesus, standing on the Mt. of Transfiguration reflects the glory of the prophets, and of the God who sees him as Son. Those gathered at the Great Vigil of Easter stand around the font, reflecting the light of tapers lighted from the Great Paschal Candle. All creation, at some point, reflects the glory of the sun, the glory of God.
What shall we, on this Epiphany, choose to reflect to a world inured to light? What reflections from us will convince the world of the truth of this light? How can we reflect the ministry we all share to those who don’t trust in our ministrations. Perhaps, at this feast of light, we might want to sit in the darkness, and listen for God’s bright voice. Then we shall know, like Jesus coming out of the desert, how to become God’s sons and daughters.
December 25, 2010
Christmas Day
John 1: 1-18
The Reverend Ellen Ekstrom
A light unlike any other shines brightly this morning. It isn’t a beam of winter sunlight like those crossing a floor, but a spark has been ignited, an ember smolders deep within, and I believe it has been struck within me, within you, and you – all of us. All that’s required is fanning the flame with love, trust and belief. That kindling comes from a sentence as simple and as powerful as they come:
“In the beginning was the Word.”
It has been said that the the Gospel of John, the prologue to which you have just heard proclaimed, is a summary of Christian life -- conversion, baptism, Eucharist and quest for higher spirituality. It is a revelation of the true identity of Jesus and his connection to God. It has been called an apologia written in a time when the Johannine community was divided over the question of Jesus’ divinity. Or it is all of these.
This prologue continues the mystery and beauty of the Christmas story. We are invited to carry that mystery and beauty with us during the rest of the year, to move out of the dark spaces and corners in our lives towards the light that embraces, offers grace. John’s poetic language tells us that God wanted to lift us out of darkness so very much, that he did something deities and monarchs rarely do – God climbed off whatever throne we frail humans planted him on, and came down to our level. What’s even more amazing is that when God arrived, it was in the form of a helpless infant, born to common, yet uncommon people, and as he grew into manhood he experienced the joys, sorrows and delights of your average first century Galilean -- and inconceivable pain.
Why? Why did this extraordinary incarnation happen?
The obvious answer is atonement for humanity’s imperfect nature and actions, to bring us closer to God.
Here’s a better answer: Love.
God loves us and went to a great deal of trouble to show us how it is to love perfectly and completely and it was done in the form of Jesus, who is our light dispelling darkness.
I used to call the days after Christmas Day the dark time. This started when I was a little girl and continued until I began to understand the difference between darkness and light where it concerns God.
Why did I call it the dark time? Christmas was over – Christmas trees were kicked to the curb; gone were the shiny decorations, the bright, colored lights, the fake snow in a can, the Glass Wax snowflake stenciling on the windows, the endless carols on the radio stations – the happy season of peace on earth and good will towards all was torn off the block of calendar sheets for another three hundred and sixty four days. It seemed to me, and this is my humble and personal observation, that the smiles on the faces people from Thanksgiving to Christmas, that look of expectancy, the sounds happy greetings and optimism, faded and people looked grim, worried, preoccupied – again.
The dark time was upon my world.
But, like so many other times in my life, I was dead wrong.
No, it is really a time of light; it started with the story of a child born in a manger, and continues with healing, of power beyond belief, a fullness of being, of humanity receiving grace upon grace and to be blessed with the gifts God has bestowed upon us through Jesus. Unfortunately, there were and are those who for whatever reason cannot recognize that Jesus is the light of the world and rejected the man and the message. But to those who accept him, then and now, and that is to say, put their trust in him, and made a commitment to the Word, a deeper relationship is formed with Jesus; he becomes our brother, and therefore, we become children of God.
Whatever darkness may envelop the world, whatever gloomy clouds may hang over us in our own lives, it cannot dim the light. We have grace from God to keep the light going. The smallest gesture of kindness, act of compassion, or work of mercy will light up the life of someone else, and in turn, will light up the world.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
With Christmas, we embark on a journey in light towards light. I invite you, my sisters and my brothers, to keep the candle in your hearts and souls burning after the merchants and high rises have packed away the decorations and silenced the carols for another year. Let every day be Christmas in your hearts. In just a week, we will embark on a new year with new possibilities, new hopes and dreams. As with every New Year there is a fresh canvas before us, waiting for us to apply the first brush stroke. Do we want to live in light and experience the love and grace offered to us, follow a path of endless possibilities in a life in Christ, or is it going to be business as usual with grim, set, faces, preoccupied with matters that we have no control over and live in a dark time?
Come, let’s dispel the darkness and walk in the light that is our brother the infant in the manager, the man walking in Capernaum, in the Temple, and our savior on the Cross.
December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve, Main Service
Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
St. Luke 2:1-20
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
Before I begin this evening, let me first of all wish to you might have a most blessed and holy Christmas, full of the hope and light that this birth brought and still brings to us. And may you and your family be blessed with the richness of God’s grace as we celebrate the birth of the Holy Child of Bethlehem. A merry Christmass to you all.
Yesterday, after work, I made my way to the grocery store to pick up a few things in advance of the big meal tomorrow. It was understandably crowded and people were courteous, but intent on making their purchases. There was a sort of mass understanding of what needed to be done in advance of Saturday’s festivities. Menus were in the air, and choices were having to be made. People were getting ready to celebrate with family, friends, and some with people that they didn’t even know, gathered out of the kindness of their hearts. It was stimulating, and made me anticipate the day even more.
If you were to ask what Christmas was all about, most certainly to be listed would be the gathering. It is time for families to talk again, and for friends to reunite. If you look at popular Christmas movies and songs, this gathering around hearth and table is certain to be noticed and celebrated. Popular Christmas seems to be a time to be together, to put old wrongs away, to reconcile and to share the joys of the season. What we do together this evening is very much a part of that idea, as we gather around Crèche and Table to remember the One who came and who is to come, and to receive him in the humble guise of bread and wine.
This notion of togetherness is nothing new to Christmas. It is part and parcel of the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, where Isaiah proclaims, “For a child has be born for us, a son given to us.” St. Paul, in writing to Titus has a similar emotion when he says, “He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own. In Luke’s birth narrative, Jesus’ birth takes place in the midst of a huge Roman census – a knowing of all the tribes, clans, and families that were under the rule of Roman law. I this huge context of extended families and tribes, the birth of Jesus is set, witnessed by a community of common shepherds, and a company of angels. Our togetherness as Christmas reflects the iconic reality of both Luke and Matthew, and of countless prophets and poets, who constantly reminded the whole nation of their common choseness, a whole people close to God.
Into this gathered scene, another note is struck. “But Mary treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart.” What brought you here this evening? And when I say “you”, I mean the singular you – YOU. I don’t have the advantage of being able comfortably to distinguish the southern You all, or the All of You All from those whom I wish to address this evening – you! The sometimes forced togetherness of the holidays leads some to bouts of acute loneliness, depression, and even suicide. All of which makes me think that there is or ought to another aspect to the manner in which the Christian celebrates Christmass. It is a compelling part of the story to think that numbers of people came to worship the Christchild – but what if it was only one? What if it was only you? Only you who knelt down and adored, and understood the significance of the gift?
The Blessed Virgin Mary gives us some hints as to how to appropriate our individual Christmas, the Christmas that is celebrated by ourselves with the Holy Child. Luke tells us that she “treasured all these words.” When was the last time that you read the Christmas story – to anyone? And secondly, when have you ever read the story, aloud, just to yourself? The question that Mary’s treasured words asks of us, is what all of this means to you, apart from family and friends what are these treasured words all about – for you?
The Christian story is so full of corporate events: at Pentecost, many were baptized, at Palm Sunday, hundreds rejoiced, 5,000 were fed, several hundred were healed. The center of our Christian life is in Assembly in places such as this, gathered such as we are, ready to feast as we all shall do. But what about you, your faith, your response? I hope that I am not setting up our assembled life contra our individual faith – because that is not my intent. What I am hoping is that in the midst of all the meals, photography, and gift-giving, there will be a moment for pondering, for that is Mary’s second skill. It is building a place for your faith – a space uniquely your own. It is a space where like Thomas or John the Baptist you can wonder, or like Mary you can ponder, or like Jospeh dream dreams.
I hope that I have brought you away from all of this, deeply into your private and individual self. If you are there, then, listen to this verse from Martin Luther’s wonderful Christmas hymn, Von Himmel Hoch, and make it your, your, Christmas prayer:
O dearest Jesus, holy child
Prepare a bed, soft, undefiled
A holy shrine, within my heart,
That you and I need never part.
December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve Children's Service
Luke 2: 1-20
The Reverend Ellen Ekstrom
When I was a young girl, Christmas Eve was the most exciting day of the year. Everyone was so busy, people seemed happier, people greeted one another and said goodbye with a lot of Merry Christmases. The days to Christmas had been counted down, aunts and uncles and cousins arrived with grandparents, the house started smelling like roast beef, gingerbread, turkey and we children were reminded constantly to stay away from the hall closet, often followed by, “And I mean it,” or “I was talking to you, Ellen Louise!” We’d been getting ready for weeks for something wonderful. Maybe it was that something exciting, something different was going to happen.
Before school let out, we practiced Christmas carols about a baby in a manger for our Christmas concert; we made big gold stars out of foil paper, Christmas trees out of construction paper that were decorated with colored foil ornaments and glitter – loved the glitter. Once home, we put up these decorations and got a tree, and the most wonderful thing of all – we had a little manger where we set up little porcelain figurines of Mary, Joseph, three kings, some sheep, a donkey and a camel – and angels. Oh yes, the baby Jesus. My mother would put the manger in a special place so everyone could see it. There was a place in the back of the manager where you could put a light. That would be the great star. She’d wrap the scene ‘angel hair,’ something that looked like cotton. The light shined through it and it looked so, so, heavenly. I’d sit and stare at the scene for hours. When no one was looking, I’d move the figures around and have them act out the Christmas story – what I knew of it from watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
And of course, there were presents – they didn’t show up under the tree until Christmas morning. I didn’t quite understand why my sisters, brother and I were given presents by a mysterious old man with the ridiculous name of Santa Claus. I had been taught not to talk to strangers, so why was this stranger bringing me toys, sometimes new shoes or slippers, or a coat?
My mother said the reason we gave presents to one another was to remember how the wise men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus – gifts that people gave a king – as a symbol of respect and honor, and of love. We give presents to show our love and respect for our family and friends, and to honor them.
Which leads me to ask you – what is the one present you always remember getting? What made it special?
As I got older, I started to read the Bible more, understand more; I listened and paid attention in church. And then I started to get it. I realized that the best and most important gift I could ever receive was what God gave you, and me and all of us who believe - the Baby Jesus. The wonderfulness, the mystery and excitement of Christmas is the birth of a child who will fulfill the prophecies and bring us close to the Kingdom of Heaven.
How might a baby that was born two thousand years ago be a special and important gift to us now, when we have more senators and governors, more presidents and prime ministers than kings and emperors? When we have celebrities and rock stars?
It’s what that child did when he became an adult. He was baptized and started the ministry God called him to. Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven was near and that we should turn to God. He taught people about how important it was to love God and listen when we hear God’s voice. Even more important, Jesus taught people a different kind of love than we’re used to – not just loving our families and friends, and what we have, but loving everyone just because.
Just because what?
Because it makes people happy and makes them want to be a part of God and creation¸ and makes them want to love others. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was that we should love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our might, and, that we love one another as he loves us. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we live, what color are our eyes, our hair, our skin, or how much money we have.
How do we love another?
Do you remember a time when you helped someone? It doesn’t matter what you did to help, but do you remember the smile or the look? The words ‘thank you’? Do you remember how it felt?
Perhaps by your being helpful and caring, loving, you inspired that friend to pay it forward – do that same kindness for someone else. That’s how Jesus wants us to love. The kingdom of heaven is like that.
Jesus also taught us a new way to think about life. He turned things upside down. The poor, the sick, the lonely, the people outside of society, he said, were as important to God as any king. All people are important to God, and there will be time when kings and rulers, presidents and senators won’t matter – God will be in charge and everyone will be equal, but we have to believe in Jesus Christ and follow what he teaches us so that time will come to Earth. When will it come? We don’t know, but it’s good to be ready, isn’t it?
He taught us that when we are sad, and feel alone, he will always be with us.
Christmas is all about love.
If we love one another, and we follow the teaching of Jesus, just like the angels sang to the shepherds, there will be peace on earth and good for all people. We can be like Jesus, who was the most important gift we have from God, and give these gifts, very important gifts, to everyone we meet.
December 5, 2010
Advent II, Rev. Common Lectionary Year A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
St. Matthew 3:1-12
The Reverend Father Michael Hiller
“Repentence”
The Story of the Tree
We bought our home in 1998, and we bought it because it had both a front and a back yard. Too small for a lawn, which was the upside, and large enough for two lovely gardens. Against one of the walls and the gate, the builders had planted a banksia rose bush, whose long canes love fencework and walls. Soon it had climbed up to grant us a level of privacy from the neighbors who closely surrounded us. Some months later we decided to plant a lemon tree, and it too soon began to flourish, and provide fruit. Over time, the banksias began to insinuate itself into the canopy of the lemon tree, and there was a beautiful mix of lemon and banksias leaves and branches. So let that image rest in your mind – we will return to it later.
Now come with me to the Jordan River, near Jericho and not that far from Qumran, and the community of Essenes who lived on the shore of the Dead Sea. The scene is one of pilgrims doing a reverse of the usual pilgrimage from the lowlands up to Jerusalem. Here the pilgrims are descending into the Dead Sea/Jordan basin there to meet the prophet who preached with strong words and who baptized. John the Baptist doesn’t mince words. He lays into the religious leadership that has followed the pilgrims down to his holy place. There they hear his words of repentance and challenge. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
Another scene – Isaiah, an older prophet is having a vision. It is a vision of an ideal kingdom. The roots of this vision are deeply set in the kingship of David, and to some extent Solomon. Isaiah’s vision is perhaps the source for John the Baptist’s vision of the “axe laid to the root”. And it is here that we can begin to develop our own particular vision of what it means to be Advent Christians, or an Advent Church. It is here that we can set our own roots. Isaiah’s vision was rooted in David, and in that rootedness, Isaiah saw three essential things. He saw that what was necessary for good government, and citizenship, as well, were wisdom, right judgment, and piety. The wisdom is full of the breath of God, the spirit who awakens and recreates all things. The right judgment is borne of words that do not deceive and that are not afraid to speak the truth. The piety is such that the actions of wisdom and right judgment are as close as the clothes next to the skin, “righteousness hsall be the belt around his waste.”
Like Isaiah, John the Baptist has a vision of the ideal as well – but it is not kingship that interests him, but rather citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. John’s essential components are simple and doable. First there is the ideal of repentance, the notion of turning away from what ever it is that distracts us from the Divine, and looking at God, face to face. The second is the notion, that the citizen, the denizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, will naturally bear and produce good fruit, and that they will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. These bear a resemblance to Isaiah’s traits of the righteous ruler.
The Banksia
Let’s go back to that banksias in my front yard. It is a beautiful plant, arching over the outdoor stairs that climb the “street” in front of our house. In the spring, and again in the late summer beautiful pale yellow blossoms would cover the plant that loomed over the yard, and the walkway and gate. Of course these blooms would soon loosen and fall like a kind of “snow” all over the yard. We made the decision to remove the banksias, and asked our friend Raul to pull it out – a difficult and arduous task. Slowly he removed the plant – and our neighbors gently complained. They enjoyed the privacy that the huge bush had provided as well. What truly stunned us however was the extent to which the rose had inhibited the lemon. Once the banksias had been removed the remaining lemon tree was gangly and spare. Huge areas were bereft of branches, leaves, and fruit. This image will be helpful as we explore the next idea.
While the ideals of Isaiah and John the Baptist are attractive, I wonder, and I suspect that you wonder as well, why they seem to be so difficult to accomplish. Sometimes an obstacle can be so beautiful, that we dismiss the damage that it does. I wonder if we recognize what inhibits us from being fruitful, wise, honest, and preparers of God’ advent into our world. There are some seductions that are so beautiful that we do not see them as leading us away from our mission. The first is the seduction of status. John the Baptist recognized this obstacle when he berates his audience for feeling so special, so chosen, if you will. “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” God does not see us as Anglicans, Muslims, Fundamentalist Christians, or Jews. God loves us in spite of our distinctions.
There is a scene in Mary McCarthy’s play “The Group” in which one of the young women, Dottie, is having a hopeful date with a handsome artist. He notices that a cross hangs around her neck, and he inquires about her life as a Christian. She replies, “Oh, I’m not a Christian, it’s the liturgy that I love.” Sometimes the things that the Church gives us in our worship and music, in the “beauty of holiness” become obstacles to our seeing God face to face. Luther had an idea about this. He called it incurvatus in se, an understanding that we are often tempted to curve into our selves and not see the God who stands with us, or the world that surrounds us. What community are we in here? Who are the people who walk the sidewalks that surround this church? What mission and ministry might we be missing because we are devoted to our history, or uniqueness, or our tradition.
The Lemon Tree
When Raul removed the banksia, the lemon tree rejoiced. Within days there were hundreds, if not thousands, of new buds and leaves, filling out the spaces where the rose bush had intruded. The bright sun now reached to the heart of the tree, and it responded with a flowering and the hope of fruit – a nice Advent thought. Isaiah has a similar image of the stump of Jesse with one vital, fecund branch thrusting skyward, offering the hope for the continued life of the Line of Jesse.
What can draw us out of our fascination with ourselves and our status in this world? John the Baptist talks about resources that are part and parcel of the Kingdom of Heaven. There is the washing of repentance – that is completed in his mind by Jesus’ baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. I’m looking at the window on the south wall – it’s a nice image. Fire is not the exclusive product of hell. It is that thing that purifies, that alighted on the heads of the apostles at Pentecost, the fire that emanated from the bush that captured Moses, the fire that is the Spirit – the breath that can destroy or give life.
That fire, and that water of repentance does strange things to people. It sent Moses back into the snare of Pharaoh, there to preach a hard message – “let my people go”. The same was true of Peter and the Apostles on Pentecost. The crowd dismissed them as drunks, but they knew the truth about the crucifixion and the resurrection. The fire of the Spirit was visible to those round about them.
What fire graces our heads, and whom do we allow to see it? What are the fruits of the fire that burns in our hearts of faith? Will others know of our fervent love? Isaiah, or someone wanting to complete Isaiah’s hope added this comment to the first lesson: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.” Let us be a signal – a sign, not only to ourselves, but to those who come here to hear our glorious music, participate with us in the beauty of our worship, and to hear the comforting words of the Gospel. And let us be a signal, persistent and prophetic, the those whom we do not know who pass us by everyday. Let us be voices in the “wilderness” and let us cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”