1 Samuel 17.1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49
Psalm 9.9-20
2 Corinthians 6.1-13
Mark 4.35-41
Today’s lessons made me think about the final episodes of a couple of television series I’ve seen in the last year or two. One was the Sopranos and the other was the new Battlestar Galactica. Most of you know something about the former. For those of you who don’t know about Battlestar Galactica, it’s a tv show that explores, among other things, the question: what if the end of the world ended up being not all that different from everyday life.
We know from all of the commentary that followed upon it that the final episode of the Sopranos had a lot of people looking at the televisions asking “is that it?” The ending pointed two a couple of possibilities, but didn’t tell you which of them actually came about. And one of those possibilities was that life went on for the Soprano family (both immediate and extended) not terribly differently than it had before – dealing with emerging crises, finding new ways to generate income and getting together for dinner on Sunday afternoon. Violence and sorrow struck the family in shocking ways, but you could argue that such things were fairly commonplace for them. There was no great moral reckoning on screen.
The same was true of the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. Crisis was once again upon the crew of the ship and its leaders had to make an agonizing life and death decision, but they had been doing that on a weekly basis, if not more frequently, for several years by the end of the series. When Nelson and I came to the end of the final episode, I turned to him and said “is that it?”
We like a hollywood ending. We’re probably accustomed by now to it being something other than “they all lived happily ever after” but we like some closure at the end of a story. But the truth is, in real life, closure is elusive and the hunt for it is frequently futile if not tragic.
The story of David and Goliath does have that Hollywood ending. God vindicates the underdog Israelites. The boy David defeats goliath in an unconventional way, against all the odds and then goes on to become the greatest of all their kings. There are stories like that in the New Testament also – Jesus is preaching outside a town, the crowd becomes hungry and nobody has any food, but they are fed from a few loaves of bread and a few fish.
But much of the time, the Bible is a lot like real life. Look at today’s epistle and gospel lessons. The Corinthians are still squabbling, despite Paul’s best efforts, so he tries again – tells them how much trouble he has and is willing to endure to persuade them to live in peaceful community. He pleads with them to open their hearts.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus’ disciples are flying off the handle again. Their boat is caught in a storm and this crew of professional fishermen wake up the building tradesman turned itinerant preacher to ask him what they should do. He calms things down, literally, and urges them to put aside their fears and live in faith.
It would be possible to say that the overarching theme of these stories is that God is on our side. The description of David’s triumph over Goliath certainly seems to have been interpreted in that way, and Paul all but says as much to the Corinthians. I am reluctant to claim God’s partisanship for a whole variety of reasons. There are plenty of Christians who disagree with that position and plenty of them are far more famous and brilliant than I am. They may turn out to be right and you may agree with them. What I do believe is that God is love and our best expression of that love is life lived in relationship to others with a commitment to share the divine love that we have experienced.
The David and Goliath story does have that final sense of moral vindication – the segment from 2nd Corinthians leaves us hanging. And, even if the storm does subside, giving Jesus’ disciples a relative sense of security, they are all still out there on the water at night headed for their next challenge, moving, inexorably toward his death and the time when they will be on their own to continue his work.
In our lives, moral vindication is incremental. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward the realization of our ideals, but it’s good reason to be cautious about believing that some kind of ultimate moral vindication is an all or nothing proposition – a war to be won at any cost. George Tiller’s death did not end the occurrence of genetic abnormalities or horrific instances of abuse that motivate women and girls to consider whether or not it is best to terminate a pregnancy. The fracture of the Anglican Communion hasn’t put an end to the circumstances that motivated it. Life will go on, people will have differing opinions, sometimes they will behave badly, terrible things will happen, some of them completely beyond our control.
The lessons of the gospel teach us how to live with each other during those times in between those fleeting but satisfying moments of moral vindication and relative security. We are encouraged to speak the truth in love, with perseverance and courage. We are taught to respond to human need, to be honest about our limitations but to be generous in the face of them. We are encouraged to open our hearts, even when doing so poses a challenge to our principles. Our options will rarely offer us a clear-cut, morally perfect solution. In this life we will always face risk and struggle, compromise and the tendency to error with all of its consequences.
But we can still create communities that are characterized by faith and courage; we can still offer open our hearts to those who would enter into our community of believers; we can still step into that boat and go out on to the water at night, braving the storm and moving toward the next challenge. Once in a while, David will defeat Goliath; once in a while a great leader will bring about a change that makes us believe that we will never again have anything to fear. In the times between those moments of great inspiration, we continue to learn how to live faithfully and well.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Corpus Christi
Deuteronomy 8.2-3
1 Corinthians 10.1-4,16-17
John 6.47-58
The feast of Corpus Christi – the body and blood of Christ, has its origins in 13th century Belgium. It began as a local festival in the diocese of Liege, at the suggestion of a young woman named Juliana, who later became a saint. A few years later, the scope of the celebration was enlarged to encompass the entire western church. The original day selected was the Thursday following the conclusion of the great 50 days of Easter. Thursday was chosen because it harks back to the liturgy of Maundy Thursday during Holy Week and its story of the institution of the Eucharist. A wordsmith no less prominent than Thomas Aquinas himself was appointed to create the official prayers of the feast. They have been set to music and appear in our hymnal. We sing them on Maundy Thursday and at benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which will follow the conclusion of our Eucharistic celebration this morning.
As frequently happens, the iconic representation of the feast of Corpus Christi becomes the ceremony surrounding it, rather than what it represents. It became the tradition to process with the consecrated bread of the Eucharist through the neighborhood surrounding the church. The trappings of the procession became increasingly elaborate and took on greater and greater emphasis and attention – canopies, gold and bejeweled monstrances, elaborate orders of march with dozens of persons. The means by which respect and honor were shown the consecrated elements of the Eucharist became the focus of attention and the representative image of the festival. You might argue, though, that the truth was ultimately told in these elaborate processions – the church, the body of Christ gathered together in celebration and mission, was present to the world outside the church’s walls in those elaborate processions.
The Eucharistic teaching of the Episcopal Church is that the real presence of Christ is in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. Unlike some of our sister traditions, such as the Roman Catholic and Lutheran, we don’t have an official teaching about how that takes place. As persons of the Anglican persuasion we are at liberty to believe in a doctrine of transubstantiation or consubstantiation if we choose to do so, but we are also free to regard the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as a mystery that we need not nor cannot explain. What we all know it to be is the gift of the whole person of the risen Christ in whom we dwell and who indwells us when we receive communion. It is why we treat the consecrated bread and wine with particular respect and why we hold it in reverence regardless of the place in which it is received and consecrated – be it one of the altars of this church, a hospital room or a prison cell. It is why we do not make a required age, membership in our tradition or the ability to form an intellectual understanding of the Eucharist barriers to participation. We invite all the baptized to gather around Christ’s table.
The tradition of going forth from the church with the elements of the Eucharist is a reminder that Christ’s real presence among us is more than a focus for our gathering – it is a command to go forth into the world with mission and purpose. In doing so we take with us the whole person of the risen Christ who receives the work of our hands, minds and hearts, our triumps and failures, our joy and pain, our understanding, confusion and doubt into himself, making us one body and one spirit.
1 Corinthians 10.1-4,16-17
John 6.47-58
The feast of Corpus Christi – the body and blood of Christ, has its origins in 13th century Belgium. It began as a local festival in the diocese of Liege, at the suggestion of a young woman named Juliana, who later became a saint. A few years later, the scope of the celebration was enlarged to encompass the entire western church. The original day selected was the Thursday following the conclusion of the great 50 days of Easter. Thursday was chosen because it harks back to the liturgy of Maundy Thursday during Holy Week and its story of the institution of the Eucharist. A wordsmith no less prominent than Thomas Aquinas himself was appointed to create the official prayers of the feast. They have been set to music and appear in our hymnal. We sing them on Maundy Thursday and at benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which will follow the conclusion of our Eucharistic celebration this morning.
As frequently happens, the iconic representation of the feast of Corpus Christi becomes the ceremony surrounding it, rather than what it represents. It became the tradition to process with the consecrated bread of the Eucharist through the neighborhood surrounding the church. The trappings of the procession became increasingly elaborate and took on greater and greater emphasis and attention – canopies, gold and bejeweled monstrances, elaborate orders of march with dozens of persons. The means by which respect and honor were shown the consecrated elements of the Eucharist became the focus of attention and the representative image of the festival. You might argue, though, that the truth was ultimately told in these elaborate processions – the church, the body of Christ gathered together in celebration and mission, was present to the world outside the church’s walls in those elaborate processions.
The Eucharistic teaching of the Episcopal Church is that the real presence of Christ is in the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist. Unlike some of our sister traditions, such as the Roman Catholic and Lutheran, we don’t have an official teaching about how that takes place. As persons of the Anglican persuasion we are at liberty to believe in a doctrine of transubstantiation or consubstantiation if we choose to do so, but we are also free to regard the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as a mystery that we need not nor cannot explain. What we all know it to be is the gift of the whole person of the risen Christ in whom we dwell and who indwells us when we receive communion. It is why we treat the consecrated bread and wine with particular respect and why we hold it in reverence regardless of the place in which it is received and consecrated – be it one of the altars of this church, a hospital room or a prison cell. It is why we do not make a required age, membership in our tradition or the ability to form an intellectual understanding of the Eucharist barriers to participation. We invite all the baptized to gather around Christ’s table.
The tradition of going forth from the church with the elements of the Eucharist is a reminder that Christ’s real presence among us is more than a focus for our gathering – it is a command to go forth into the world with mission and purpose. In doing so we take with us the whole person of the risen Christ who receives the work of our hands, minds and hearts, our triumps and failures, our joy and pain, our understanding, confusion and doubt into himself, making us one body and one spirit.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
If you go looking for the word “trinity” in the Bible, you’ll never find it. You’ll find the names of the three persons of the trinity, but the way they fit together took some centuries to work out. And even after it became official, people still argued about it. Many would say that it is what makes Christianity distinct from the world’s other major religions. Judaism and Islam interpret monotheism in a manner that excludes the possibility of a triune God. The polytheistic religions understand their various deities as distinct and separate from one another. Still other religions do not personify the divine. We know God as three persons, father, son and spirit, of the same substance undivided. it has been argued that this description make much more sense in the third and fourth centuries when the categories and definitions of greek philosophy were more familiar to Christians. Regardless of how well any of us can articulate it, early in the 14th century, John XXII, who was the bishop of Rome at that time, declared that a feast of the holy trinity would take place on the Sunday after Pentecost in the western church.
The idea is that Trinity Sunday is the punctuating mark, or the line drawn under all that we have learned and experienced about the persons of the trinity from the first Sunday of Advent through Pentecost. Consider the advent prophesies of the coming of the messiah; the stories of Jesus’ birth and the prologue of John’s gospel during Christmas; they are followed by the gospel lessons describing Jesus’ ministry, his arrest, trial, and death and the celebration of the resurrection at Easter. Those stories continue through Easter season, which culminates with the story of the ascension, followed by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The feast of the trinity weaves all of those stories together and presents us with a doctrine that presents three essential aspects of our faith: that which is ultimate – the father, a material manifestation of the ultimate, the son and that which makes them known to the faithful and the seeker, the spirit.
The trinity is a source of dynamism for our beliefs. It is the engine and the fuel that allows our faith to be a journey rather than a stopping place. We know God the father as our beginning and ending, where we live and move and have our being. Our experience of our own humanity is both shared and perfected in the person of Jesus. Our faith is made new in the work of the spirit who unites us with all those who in every age have been and will be the community of Jesus’ followers. Whether or not we can readily articulate or understand a doctrine of the trinity in the categories of fourth century greek philosophy or the language of the Nicene Creed, we know it is there shaping and teaching us from one day to the next. It is a reminder that what we believe is not trapped within the realm of imagination, but can be made real with God’s help. Today as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Trinity let us give thanks for a faith that is rooted in the divine, before us in daily living and made real and alive in the relationships and communities in which we share it.
Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
If you go looking for the word “trinity” in the Bible, you’ll never find it. You’ll find the names of the three persons of the trinity, but the way they fit together took some centuries to work out. And even after it became official, people still argued about it. Many would say that it is what makes Christianity distinct from the world’s other major religions. Judaism and Islam interpret monotheism in a manner that excludes the possibility of a triune God. The polytheistic religions understand their various deities as distinct and separate from one another. Still other religions do not personify the divine. We know God as three persons, father, son and spirit, of the same substance undivided. it has been argued that this description make much more sense in the third and fourth centuries when the categories and definitions of greek philosophy were more familiar to Christians. Regardless of how well any of us can articulate it, early in the 14th century, John XXII, who was the bishop of Rome at that time, declared that a feast of the holy trinity would take place on the Sunday after Pentecost in the western church.
The idea is that Trinity Sunday is the punctuating mark, or the line drawn under all that we have learned and experienced about the persons of the trinity from the first Sunday of Advent through Pentecost. Consider the advent prophesies of the coming of the messiah; the stories of Jesus’ birth and the prologue of John’s gospel during Christmas; they are followed by the gospel lessons describing Jesus’ ministry, his arrest, trial, and death and the celebration of the resurrection at Easter. Those stories continue through Easter season, which culminates with the story of the ascension, followed by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The feast of the trinity weaves all of those stories together and presents us with a doctrine that presents three essential aspects of our faith: that which is ultimate – the father, a material manifestation of the ultimate, the son and that which makes them known to the faithful and the seeker, the spirit.
The trinity is a source of dynamism for our beliefs. It is the engine and the fuel that allows our faith to be a journey rather than a stopping place. We know God the father as our beginning and ending, where we live and move and have our being. Our experience of our own humanity is both shared and perfected in the person of Jesus. Our faith is made new in the work of the spirit who unites us with all those who in every age have been and will be the community of Jesus’ followers. Whether or not we can readily articulate or understand a doctrine of the trinity in the categories of fourth century greek philosophy or the language of the Nicene Creed, we know it is there shaping and teaching us from one day to the next. It is a reminder that what we believe is not trapped within the realm of imagination, but can be made real with God’s help. Today as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Trinity let us give thanks for a faith that is rooted in the divine, before us in daily living and made real and alive in the relationships and communities in which we share it.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
In the book of Acts, there is an ongoing struggle about what one has to do to be a member of the community of Jesus’ followers. Peter and James and the church in Jerusalem are inclined to believe that one must be a Jew first before being a member of the church. Paul and his colleagues see it differently – gentiles need not first make full conversion to Jewish faith and practice before becoming members of the church. So we hear the text today: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.” And Peter changes his mind.
After a recent discussion about preaching on Facebook, I am cautious about the use of humor in preaching – so think of the following as more of a footnote than an attempt at a joke. You may be familiar with the joke about the man newly arrived in heaven. He is met by a guide who gives him a tour of endless beautiful rooms, sparkling bodies of water, green fields and endless gardens filled with people interacting with joy and harmony. Then they come to an elegantly appointed room full of people enjoying each others’ company. The guide cautions the man to be quiet as they approach the room. They observe it silently for a while and move on. Once they’re far enough away not to be heard, the guide says “those are the Episcopalians, they think they’re the only ones here.” Depending on the audience, you might say those are the Baptists, or Presbyterians or the Fraternal Order of Moose, but you get the idea of this footnote. When it comes to what we believe in, many of us are certain that we’re the only ones who have it right and that we will be rewarded for it.
We become increasingly aware of the variety and diversity of religious belief and practice in which we function as a community of believers. Among some of our brothers and sisters in Christ there is still an insistence that we are right and “they” – that being anyone who believes different from me and those who agree with me are wrong. Some go so far as to say they’re really, really wrong and God is going to punish them for it. Others simply believe that it is their responsibility to set the wrong ones straight and get them on the right path. Like Peter, in today’s lesson from Acts, they may eventually be very surprised upon whom the spirit falls.
Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar who was a bishop of the church of Sweden and a Professor at Harvard Divinity School had some important words of caution about judging the truth and validity of religious beliefs and practices other than our own. He noted that if you wish to understand another religion you can only truly do so by consulting one of its believers. He cautioned against comparing the best characteristics and achievements of one’s own religion against the least admirable ones of another faith. Finally, he said - Leave room for "holy envy." Make an effort to recognize elements in another religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.
The days of Christianity as some sort of default assumption for our culture are over, and that may be just as well. Whether religion as such is in decline, I don’t know. People seem to be talking about it a lot right now. And although much of that discussion is critical of what has been the role of religion in public life in our country, it’s still part of the conversation. It’s much better to be the target of criticism than it is to be considered irrelevant.
We who gather here weekly and who do the work of this community outside Sunday worship have made a decision about what we believe and a commitment to the church to live according to the baptismal covenant. We sense the presence of the spirit here among us and each of us senses it as we live out the many aspects of our lives. Let us reflect with joy and thanks upon the presence of the divine in our lives and let us acknowledge with generosity that we share that presence with many and diverse others with whom it has the power to unite us in peace and good will.
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
In the book of Acts, there is an ongoing struggle about what one has to do to be a member of the community of Jesus’ followers. Peter and James and the church in Jerusalem are inclined to believe that one must be a Jew first before being a member of the church. Paul and his colleagues see it differently – gentiles need not first make full conversion to Jewish faith and practice before becoming members of the church. So we hear the text today: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.” And Peter changes his mind.
After a recent discussion about preaching on Facebook, I am cautious about the use of humor in preaching – so think of the following as more of a footnote than an attempt at a joke. You may be familiar with the joke about the man newly arrived in heaven. He is met by a guide who gives him a tour of endless beautiful rooms, sparkling bodies of water, green fields and endless gardens filled with people interacting with joy and harmony. Then they come to an elegantly appointed room full of people enjoying each others’ company. The guide cautions the man to be quiet as they approach the room. They observe it silently for a while and move on. Once they’re far enough away not to be heard, the guide says “those are the Episcopalians, they think they’re the only ones here.” Depending on the audience, you might say those are the Baptists, or Presbyterians or the Fraternal Order of Moose, but you get the idea of this footnote. When it comes to what we believe in, many of us are certain that we’re the only ones who have it right and that we will be rewarded for it.
We become increasingly aware of the variety and diversity of religious belief and practice in which we function as a community of believers. Among some of our brothers and sisters in Christ there is still an insistence that we are right and “they” – that being anyone who believes different from me and those who agree with me are wrong. Some go so far as to say they’re really, really wrong and God is going to punish them for it. Others simply believe that it is their responsibility to set the wrong ones straight and get them on the right path. Like Peter, in today’s lesson from Acts, they may eventually be very surprised upon whom the spirit falls.
Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar who was a bishop of the church of Sweden and a Professor at Harvard Divinity School had some important words of caution about judging the truth and validity of religious beliefs and practices other than our own. He noted that if you wish to understand another religion you can only truly do so by consulting one of its believers. He cautioned against comparing the best characteristics and achievements of one’s own religion against the least admirable ones of another faith. Finally, he said - Leave room for "holy envy." Make an effort to recognize elements in another religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.
The days of Christianity as some sort of default assumption for our culture are over, and that may be just as well. Whether religion as such is in decline, I don’t know. People seem to be talking about it a lot right now. And although much of that discussion is critical of what has been the role of religion in public life in our country, it’s still part of the conversation. It’s much better to be the target of criticism than it is to be considered irrelevant.
We who gather here weekly and who do the work of this community outside Sunday worship have made a decision about what we believe and a commitment to the church to live according to the baptismal covenant. We sense the presence of the spirit here among us and each of us senses it as we live out the many aspects of our lives. Let us reflect with joy and thanks upon the presence of the divine in our lives and let us acknowledge with generosity that we share that presence with many and diverse others with whom it has the power to unite us in peace and good will.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
This week my personal experience coincided with the lesson from Acts in today’s lectionary. I had someone come to me to inquire about being baptized. The conversation was friendly, but it included one statement that left me momentarily not knowing how to respond. When I asked “have you been baptized?” the response was “I haven’t been, but I’m a Christian.” For those of us within the church, our way of thinking makes that statement a contradiction. But apparently, there are those who understand it differently than we do. What I have frequently heard from people new to the church, or returning after a long absence is that when they come to the church seeking to learn or be included, the response is little more than a recitation of the rules and requirements that must be fulfilled in order to be considered or an explanation of all that they have done wrong in being absent from the church. I didn’t want this person to have that experience. So we simply continued to talk for a while. We left it that if she hadn’t visited on a Sunday by the end of this month, I would call her back to find out how she was doing.
The metaphor of the vine in today’s lesson from John’s gospel is a brilliant one for explaining the central ideas of the fourth gospel. John is determined that the reader clearly understand the relationship between Jesus and God. Its author is also struggling with issues of community – who is inside it and outside it, and what the consequences will be for that latter group. The richness of his metaphor and the clarity of his vision have made his words and ideas compelling to Christians through the centuries. The fourth gospel is full of quotable phrases like “I am the way, the truth and the life,” “nobody comes to the father except through me,” “ love one another as I have loved you.” They are statements that set clear boundaries; a community that embraces them is sure to be identified as standing for something specific and unambiguous.
But a lot of different kinds of things grow on vines – things as diverse as grapes, flowers, sweet potatoes, and ivy. My sense is that there are a lot of different kinds of spiritual foliage out there claiming to lie within John’s clear cut boundaries and making pronouncements about who is about to be pruned.
All three of today’s lectionary texts are about the importance of community for teaching and growing people’s faith and religious experience. I don’t think there’s any doubt that we uphold that ideal here. The church made it work relatively effortlessly for centuries. Our challenge now is to figure out how to preserve it within a larger culture, the presumptions of which are all about individuality, its expressions and demands. John points out the importance of the attachment of the fruit to the vine. The world we live in is focused on celebrating the variations in size and color of each grape and developing marketing strategies to meet their individual needs. The church’s way of doing things isn’t an easy fit with the expectations of a consumer culture. I can begin to understand why, when someone comes to one of my colleagues saying something like “I’ve never been baptized, but I’m a Christian,” his first impulse is to set that person straight about the traditions of Christian initiation.
What Philip does in today’s lesson from Acts may be an example for us. He looks for opportunity to bring a new person into Christian community. His spirit is open to the encounter with the Ethiopian. He makes the approach, but leaves room for questions. He responds with generosity. He realizes that the spirit moves others in the same way it does him. He allows its leading to move the Ethiopian to ask for baptism, rather than presuming to order the man’s spiritual life for him.
Human nature being what it is, those who are inclined to quote John’s gospel seem to focus more on the parts about the unproductive branches being removed and thrown into the fire. But throughout the gospels Jesus’ message has much more to say about the patience and forgiveness of God, both for those who do and do not produce good fruit. We and our companions among the spiritual foliage will always be tempted to express an opinion about the growth and productivity of others, but the gospel makes it clear that God will always be more generous than any of us can imagine. The communities we build ought to be guided by that ideal of generosity and acceptance, no matter what challenges we face in making that happen. Fear of those challenges may tempt us to build walls rather than opening doors. But, as we are reminded in today’s epistle lesson there truly is no fear in love and we can love because God first loved us.
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
This week my personal experience coincided with the lesson from Acts in today’s lectionary. I had someone come to me to inquire about being baptized. The conversation was friendly, but it included one statement that left me momentarily not knowing how to respond. When I asked “have you been baptized?” the response was “I haven’t been, but I’m a Christian.” For those of us within the church, our way of thinking makes that statement a contradiction. But apparently, there are those who understand it differently than we do. What I have frequently heard from people new to the church, or returning after a long absence is that when they come to the church seeking to learn or be included, the response is little more than a recitation of the rules and requirements that must be fulfilled in order to be considered or an explanation of all that they have done wrong in being absent from the church. I didn’t want this person to have that experience. So we simply continued to talk for a while. We left it that if she hadn’t visited on a Sunday by the end of this month, I would call her back to find out how she was doing.
The metaphor of the vine in today’s lesson from John’s gospel is a brilliant one for explaining the central ideas of the fourth gospel. John is determined that the reader clearly understand the relationship between Jesus and God. Its author is also struggling with issues of community – who is inside it and outside it, and what the consequences will be for that latter group. The richness of his metaphor and the clarity of his vision have made his words and ideas compelling to Christians through the centuries. The fourth gospel is full of quotable phrases like “I am the way, the truth and the life,” “nobody comes to the father except through me,” “ love one another as I have loved you.” They are statements that set clear boundaries; a community that embraces them is sure to be identified as standing for something specific and unambiguous.
But a lot of different kinds of things grow on vines – things as diverse as grapes, flowers, sweet potatoes, and ivy. My sense is that there are a lot of different kinds of spiritual foliage out there claiming to lie within John’s clear cut boundaries and making pronouncements about who is about to be pruned.
All three of today’s lectionary texts are about the importance of community for teaching and growing people’s faith and religious experience. I don’t think there’s any doubt that we uphold that ideal here. The church made it work relatively effortlessly for centuries. Our challenge now is to figure out how to preserve it within a larger culture, the presumptions of which are all about individuality, its expressions and demands. John points out the importance of the attachment of the fruit to the vine. The world we live in is focused on celebrating the variations in size and color of each grape and developing marketing strategies to meet their individual needs. The church’s way of doing things isn’t an easy fit with the expectations of a consumer culture. I can begin to understand why, when someone comes to one of my colleagues saying something like “I’ve never been baptized, but I’m a Christian,” his first impulse is to set that person straight about the traditions of Christian initiation.
What Philip does in today’s lesson from Acts may be an example for us. He looks for opportunity to bring a new person into Christian community. His spirit is open to the encounter with the Ethiopian. He makes the approach, but leaves room for questions. He responds with generosity. He realizes that the spirit moves others in the same way it does him. He allows its leading to move the Ethiopian to ask for baptism, rather than presuming to order the man’s spiritual life for him.
Human nature being what it is, those who are inclined to quote John’s gospel seem to focus more on the parts about the unproductive branches being removed and thrown into the fire. But throughout the gospels Jesus’ message has much more to say about the patience and forgiveness of God, both for those who do and do not produce good fruit. We and our companions among the spiritual foliage will always be tempted to express an opinion about the growth and productivity of others, but the gospel makes it clear that God will always be more generous than any of us can imagine. The communities we build ought to be guided by that ideal of generosity and acceptance, no matter what challenges we face in making that happen. Fear of those challenges may tempt us to build walls rather than opening doors. But, as we are reminded in today’s epistle lesson there truly is no fear in love and we can love because God first loved us.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 4.5-2
Psalm 23
1 John 3.16-24
John 10.11-18
Psalm 23 has been a source of inspiration and comfort for centuries. The image of the shepherd in connection with spiritual leadership is an enduring one in the sacred writings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It appears in various parts of both the New and Old Testaments. It is an interesting coincidence that the lectionary offers us Psalm 23 and its words of assurance of God’s presence and providence as we contemplate the potential effects of an influenza pandemic and the ongoing world economic crisis.
The true historic context in which the Psalms were created is impossible to determine with any certainty, but it has been speculated that at least some of them were composed in exile. It is not difficult to imagine a poet giving voice to a desire for hope and consolation in a time of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. It has been suggested that those who created John’s gospel and the three epistles of John in the New Testament also found themselves in a situation of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. The image of the shepherd who offers his life for the sheep was a familiar one to the first century followers of Jesus who knew the Old Testament and it is not surprising that they wove it into their stories about him.
The passage from John’s gospel about Jesus as the good shepherd and the words of comfort offered by Psalm 23 have been taken by some as a motivation to put their troubles “in God’s hands.” I’ve never actually asked anyone who has said those words to me what he really meant by them. My sense is that one who speaks those words frequently imagines that human beings can figuratively hand over their problems to the divine with the expectation that God will sort them out and return the results promptly. Traditional teachings of the church emphasize our powerlessness to make ourselves righteous; they are filled with a strong sense of human sinfulness and the incompleteness of our nature. Such an outlook, coupled with images of God as generous and loving father have motivated some faithful people to take an outlook of moral passivity and assume that God can and will fix their lives for them. I would never say that humanity is free of sin or fully realized. But despite our imperfection, God has blessed us with the gifts of memory, reason and skill. Humanity can and has been characterized theologically as a created co-creator, doing the work that God has given us to do.
The genius of the leaders of the first century church was in transforming peoples’ perceptions of Jesus’ death. The idea of a crucified messiah was, as Paul puts it, a stumbling block for the Jews and a joke for the gentiles. Anyone who might have become a follower of Jesus was going to have to find a way to get his mind around it. The leaders of the early church made that possible by helping their contemporaries understand Jesus’ death as a noble offering of himself in support of a new way of understanding the world and as a sacrifice that renewed the relationship between humanity and God. That is the teaching that has come down to us. The leaders of the early church used the image of the shepherd – already familiar from the Psalms and the prophets to help people make sense of what they were teaching.
The descriptions we have of those early Christian communities suggest that they used Jesus’ teachings to change the way people interacted with each other. Within the community they broke down barriers that existed outside of it. Paul refers in his letters to the prohibition of eating meat sacrificed to idols. He’s talking about the ritual meals that followed the sacrifice of animals in pagan temples. The ritual of sacrifice and the distribution of meat from the animal that was killed followed a prescribed pattern that reminded participants of the social and economic pecking order in which they had a role. The rich and powerful received the most and the best along with the power to give the prescribed portion to those whose loyalty and service maintained their wealth and power. The ritual meal of Jesus’ followers was very different. At that meal the sacrifice was rememorative – it made a present reality Jesus’ redeeming death which had made new his followers’ relationship with God. The participants gathered as equals, beloved of God and shared equally the food which was distributed. That is how we come together each week.
We share equally also in the responsibility for coming to this table for strength as well as solace and for renewal as well as pardon. We may know Christ as the good shepherd whose presence strengthens and inspires, but we also know him as the one who sends us forth into the world to be shepherds ourselves as it were, to live as a people who know what it means to gather around this table.
I can’t tell you exactly how you might do that. In general I can tell you that we are called to be a people who live in hope rather than fear. In a time of anxiety as we are experiencing now, we can be realistic and intentional about taking the kinds of precautions that promote health and prevent the spread of disease. We can offer that sense of realistic precaution to those around us who tend to let their fears overcome their reason. We can also offer our time and resources as we are able to those who are in trouble – we can be the body of Christ – eyes that observe need and suffering, hands and voices that take action and inspire others to generosity. We can do all of these things with a sense of God’s presence and power – not as the one who fixes our lives for us but who empowers us to lead and offer support to others who are struggling with helplessness, alienation, fear and sorrow.
We are a people who know ourselves to be always, as the Psalmist says, in the presence of God’s goodness and mercy. As you go forth from this place, the house of the Lord, take goodness and mercy with you and offer them to the world.
Psalm 23
1 John 3.16-24
John 10.11-18
Psalm 23 has been a source of inspiration and comfort for centuries. The image of the shepherd in connection with spiritual leadership is an enduring one in the sacred writings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It appears in various parts of both the New and Old Testaments. It is an interesting coincidence that the lectionary offers us Psalm 23 and its words of assurance of God’s presence and providence as we contemplate the potential effects of an influenza pandemic and the ongoing world economic crisis.
The true historic context in which the Psalms were created is impossible to determine with any certainty, but it has been speculated that at least some of them were composed in exile. It is not difficult to imagine a poet giving voice to a desire for hope and consolation in a time of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. It has been suggested that those who created John’s gospel and the three epistles of John in the New Testament also found themselves in a situation of helplessness, alienation, sorrow and fear. The image of the shepherd who offers his life for the sheep was a familiar one to the first century followers of Jesus who knew the Old Testament and it is not surprising that they wove it into their stories about him.
The passage from John’s gospel about Jesus as the good shepherd and the words of comfort offered by Psalm 23 have been taken by some as a motivation to put their troubles “in God’s hands.” I’ve never actually asked anyone who has said those words to me what he really meant by them. My sense is that one who speaks those words frequently imagines that human beings can figuratively hand over their problems to the divine with the expectation that God will sort them out and return the results promptly. Traditional teachings of the church emphasize our powerlessness to make ourselves righteous; they are filled with a strong sense of human sinfulness and the incompleteness of our nature. Such an outlook, coupled with images of God as generous and loving father have motivated some faithful people to take an outlook of moral passivity and assume that God can and will fix their lives for them. I would never say that humanity is free of sin or fully realized. But despite our imperfection, God has blessed us with the gifts of memory, reason and skill. Humanity can and has been characterized theologically as a created co-creator, doing the work that God has given us to do.
The genius of the leaders of the first century church was in transforming peoples’ perceptions of Jesus’ death. The idea of a crucified messiah was, as Paul puts it, a stumbling block for the Jews and a joke for the gentiles. Anyone who might have become a follower of Jesus was going to have to find a way to get his mind around it. The leaders of the early church made that possible by helping their contemporaries understand Jesus’ death as a noble offering of himself in support of a new way of understanding the world and as a sacrifice that renewed the relationship between humanity and God. That is the teaching that has come down to us. The leaders of the early church used the image of the shepherd – already familiar from the Psalms and the prophets to help people make sense of what they were teaching.
The descriptions we have of those early Christian communities suggest that they used Jesus’ teachings to change the way people interacted with each other. Within the community they broke down barriers that existed outside of it. Paul refers in his letters to the prohibition of eating meat sacrificed to idols. He’s talking about the ritual meals that followed the sacrifice of animals in pagan temples. The ritual of sacrifice and the distribution of meat from the animal that was killed followed a prescribed pattern that reminded participants of the social and economic pecking order in which they had a role. The rich and powerful received the most and the best along with the power to give the prescribed portion to those whose loyalty and service maintained their wealth and power. The ritual meal of Jesus’ followers was very different. At that meal the sacrifice was rememorative – it made a present reality Jesus’ redeeming death which had made new his followers’ relationship with God. The participants gathered as equals, beloved of God and shared equally the food which was distributed. That is how we come together each week.
We share equally also in the responsibility for coming to this table for strength as well as solace and for renewal as well as pardon. We may know Christ as the good shepherd whose presence strengthens and inspires, but we also know him as the one who sends us forth into the world to be shepherds ourselves as it were, to live as a people who know what it means to gather around this table.
I can’t tell you exactly how you might do that. In general I can tell you that we are called to be a people who live in hope rather than fear. In a time of anxiety as we are experiencing now, we can be realistic and intentional about taking the kinds of precautions that promote health and prevent the spread of disease. We can offer that sense of realistic precaution to those around us who tend to let their fears overcome their reason. We can also offer our time and resources as we are able to those who are in trouble – we can be the body of Christ – eyes that observe need and suffering, hands and voices that take action and inspire others to generosity. We can do all of these things with a sense of God’s presence and power – not as the one who fixes our lives for us but who empowers us to lead and offer support to others who are struggling with helplessness, alienation, fear and sorrow.
We are a people who know ourselves to be always, as the Psalmist says, in the presence of God’s goodness and mercy. As you go forth from this place, the house of the Lord, take goodness and mercy with you and offer them to the world.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48
Our 1st and 2nd century spiritual forbears have left us an interesting record of their struggle to build the church. It lives in the pages of the gospels, Acts of the Apostles, many of the New Testament epistles and other writings that are not included in the Bible. The meaning that their words and stories had for them is sometimes obscured by its distance from us in time and cultural context. We reach across 20 centuries looking to their words for meaning for our own lives. That’s a good thing for us to do. Because in many ways, their struggles are not dramatically different from ours.
The early church took its message in two different directions. We read about the disagreements between Peter and James of the church in Jerusalem, and Paul, the church’s persecutor who became its champion. Peter and James were leaders of a community that was evolving from a primarily Jewish culture. The members of that community understood monotheism. They were accustomed to setting themselves apart from the spiritual traditions of the Roman Empire. But their community attracted followers of Jesus who were not Jews. In the book of Acts you can read about their struggle over the question of what is required to be a member of the community of Jesus’ followers. Do you have to be a Jew first? Do you have to follow the law of Moses in order to be a follower of Jesus?
Even in this moment, our church is struggling with cultural distinctions that have threatened to dismantle the Anglican Communion. Our co-religionists in Africa and Asia tell us that they cannot achieve the respect of the majority muslim cultures in which their churches exist unless we in the west agree to exclude our gay, lesbian and bisexual members from full participation in the church. Do you have to be straight or at least act straight in order to be a follower of Jesus?
Those who undertook the mission of spreading the teachings of Jesus within the Jewish community struggled also with Jewish traditions concerning the messiah and resurrection. Jewish thought and tradition were no more monolithic in the first century than they are in the 21st, but the church’s teachings about Jesus as the messiah and about his resurrection were distinctly different from Jewish tradition. In very broad strokes, that tradition envisioned the messiah’s coming within the context of a messianic age – a time in which the world would live in peace and plenty and all (Jews and non-Jews, by the way) would be gathered into the presence of God. For Jews who believed in resurrection, it was an event in which all participated together. The resurrection of one man, and the claim that he was the messiah in the absence of a messianic age were challenges to traditional expectations. The stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were a means of attempting to deal with those expectations.
John’s three letters, one of which we hear from today in the epistle, and Paul’s letters were written to congregations dealing with internal conflict or struggling to define themselves in relation to others. Having no more knowledge of Jesus than they did, it’s not surprising that they interpreted his teachings in a variety of ways. Human nature being what it is, there was an inclination to draw boundaries around what the community would believe and do and what it would not. The trick was getting everyone to agree on where the boundaries would be. How often do you hear of different varieties of Christians condemning each other for false teaching.
The leaders of the early church took their message to an audience that was at the very least skeptical, and in many cases hostile. In addition to the discontinuity between Jewish and Christian teachings about the messiah and resurrection, the early church had other challenges to deal with when offering the good news to non-Jews. Church teachings prohibited such activities as eating meat offered to idols. Participation in the religions of Greece and Rome was important to the social and economic life of prospective non-Jewish converts to Christianity. The social life of the pagan temples was integral to maintaining one’s economic standing in the community. Worshipping in the temples of the gods identified with one’s city of residence was considered essential to public well-being and the common good. Were they to leave that activity behind, they would be judged as disloyal and perhaps even dangerous by friends and family. For many, becoming followers of Jesus meant leaving behind an entire way of life.
Since the first century, the church has had the experience of being the driving social and political force in western culture. We have been representative of the cultural majority and have had a voice in public life, for good and ill, depending on the circumstances. The church has also experience the challenge of the enlightenment and the rise of science as a means of explaining natural phenomena and human behavior. In our country we see now, on an almost daily basis demands that individual religious belief be taken into account in the formulation of law and the standards of various professions. We regularly hear religious faith ridiculed as fantasy by those who would seem to elevate science as a belief system on par with religion.
The 21st century church takes its message to a generation of young adults, a large proportion of whom have built lives and identities and communities for themselves in which Christianity is perceived as irrelevant and potentially destructive. The church is arguably at least partly responsible for those perceptions. Too much of our time has been spent in answering questions the world is no longer asking. Too much of our energy has been spent on defining boundaries and too little on finding ways to include people in our mission.
Last Thursday night and last Friday morning, St. Mary’s took an important step into our future. I’ve been talking to you for at least three years now about the need to restore and renovate our building. Last Thursday night the Vestry voted to allocate funds from the William T. Kemper grant for the first major project to that end. On Friday morning, the Landmarks Commission approved the design for that work. Our first project will be replacement of all of the exterior doors of the church building and repair or replacement of doorsteps and masonry surrounding the doors. This project will move us in the direction of making the building look open and active. Working first on the doors is an important expression of how St. Mary’s has defined itself during the last several years – as a place that is open and welcoming to all who come here.
We have many things in common with our first century church counterparts – we’re small, we’re short of resources, we have a few dedicated people doing a lot of important work. Most importantly though, we’re committed to communicating our mission outward, rather than holding it within and we greet with joy all those who visit with us and welcome them to stay and join with us in our work. Let us join together in giving thanks for the generosity, skill and devotion to our mission that have allowed us to come to this point and ask God’s blessing on the work on our building that we are about to undertake and upon all those who enter through our doors at this time and forever.
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48
Our 1st and 2nd century spiritual forbears have left us an interesting record of their struggle to build the church. It lives in the pages of the gospels, Acts of the Apostles, many of the New Testament epistles and other writings that are not included in the Bible. The meaning that their words and stories had for them is sometimes obscured by its distance from us in time and cultural context. We reach across 20 centuries looking to their words for meaning for our own lives. That’s a good thing for us to do. Because in many ways, their struggles are not dramatically different from ours.
The early church took its message in two different directions. We read about the disagreements between Peter and James of the church in Jerusalem, and Paul, the church’s persecutor who became its champion. Peter and James were leaders of a community that was evolving from a primarily Jewish culture. The members of that community understood monotheism. They were accustomed to setting themselves apart from the spiritual traditions of the Roman Empire. But their community attracted followers of Jesus who were not Jews. In the book of Acts you can read about their struggle over the question of what is required to be a member of the community of Jesus’ followers. Do you have to be a Jew first? Do you have to follow the law of Moses in order to be a follower of Jesus?
Even in this moment, our church is struggling with cultural distinctions that have threatened to dismantle the Anglican Communion. Our co-religionists in Africa and Asia tell us that they cannot achieve the respect of the majority muslim cultures in which their churches exist unless we in the west agree to exclude our gay, lesbian and bisexual members from full participation in the church. Do you have to be straight or at least act straight in order to be a follower of Jesus?
Those who undertook the mission of spreading the teachings of Jesus within the Jewish community struggled also with Jewish traditions concerning the messiah and resurrection. Jewish thought and tradition were no more monolithic in the first century than they are in the 21st, but the church’s teachings about Jesus as the messiah and about his resurrection were distinctly different from Jewish tradition. In very broad strokes, that tradition envisioned the messiah’s coming within the context of a messianic age – a time in which the world would live in peace and plenty and all (Jews and non-Jews, by the way) would be gathered into the presence of God. For Jews who believed in resurrection, it was an event in which all participated together. The resurrection of one man, and the claim that he was the messiah in the absence of a messianic age were challenges to traditional expectations. The stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were a means of attempting to deal with those expectations.
John’s three letters, one of which we hear from today in the epistle, and Paul’s letters were written to congregations dealing with internal conflict or struggling to define themselves in relation to others. Having no more knowledge of Jesus than they did, it’s not surprising that they interpreted his teachings in a variety of ways. Human nature being what it is, there was an inclination to draw boundaries around what the community would believe and do and what it would not. The trick was getting everyone to agree on where the boundaries would be. How often do you hear of different varieties of Christians condemning each other for false teaching.
The leaders of the early church took their message to an audience that was at the very least skeptical, and in many cases hostile. In addition to the discontinuity between Jewish and Christian teachings about the messiah and resurrection, the early church had other challenges to deal with when offering the good news to non-Jews. Church teachings prohibited such activities as eating meat offered to idols. Participation in the religions of Greece and Rome was important to the social and economic life of prospective non-Jewish converts to Christianity. The social life of the pagan temples was integral to maintaining one’s economic standing in the community. Worshipping in the temples of the gods identified with one’s city of residence was considered essential to public well-being and the common good. Were they to leave that activity behind, they would be judged as disloyal and perhaps even dangerous by friends and family. For many, becoming followers of Jesus meant leaving behind an entire way of life.
Since the first century, the church has had the experience of being the driving social and political force in western culture. We have been representative of the cultural majority and have had a voice in public life, for good and ill, depending on the circumstances. The church has also experience the challenge of the enlightenment and the rise of science as a means of explaining natural phenomena and human behavior. In our country we see now, on an almost daily basis demands that individual religious belief be taken into account in the formulation of law and the standards of various professions. We regularly hear religious faith ridiculed as fantasy by those who would seem to elevate science as a belief system on par with religion.
The 21st century church takes its message to a generation of young adults, a large proportion of whom have built lives and identities and communities for themselves in which Christianity is perceived as irrelevant and potentially destructive. The church is arguably at least partly responsible for those perceptions. Too much of our time has been spent in answering questions the world is no longer asking. Too much of our energy has been spent on defining boundaries and too little on finding ways to include people in our mission.
Last Thursday night and last Friday morning, St. Mary’s took an important step into our future. I’ve been talking to you for at least three years now about the need to restore and renovate our building. Last Thursday night the Vestry voted to allocate funds from the William T. Kemper grant for the first major project to that end. On Friday morning, the Landmarks Commission approved the design for that work. Our first project will be replacement of all of the exterior doors of the church building and repair or replacement of doorsteps and masonry surrounding the doors. This project will move us in the direction of making the building look open and active. Working first on the doors is an important expression of how St. Mary’s has defined itself during the last several years – as a place that is open and welcoming to all who come here.
We have many things in common with our first century church counterparts – we’re small, we’re short of resources, we have a few dedicated people doing a lot of important work. Most importantly though, we’re committed to communicating our mission outward, rather than holding it within and we greet with joy all those who visit with us and welcome them to stay and join with us in our work. Let us join together in giving thanks for the generosity, skill and devotion to our mission that have allowed us to come to this point and ask God’s blessing on the work on our building that we are about to undertake and upon all those who enter through our doors at this time and forever.
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