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God the Vinedresser -- Sermon for Mother's Day 2006

Sometime in the late Fifth Century, the area of the Roman Empire called "Gaul," what we now know as "France," suffered a drought and, while there doesn't seem to have been wide-spread famine, there was apparently some belt-tightening required. After the drought had continued for several years, a local bishop decided to hold special prayers after the Spring planting was completed. He called for three days of fasting, prayer and supplication just before the Feast of the Ascension; these fell on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday since the Ascension is always celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth actual day after the celebration of Christ's Resurrection. He called these "Les Jours du Rogation," Rogation Days.

"Rogation" is a funny sort of word that we don't use very often, although we know it as part of the word "interrogation," which simple means "asking." The Rogation Days were set aside to ask God to bless the farmers and their farms, to ask God to grant a fine harvest from the seed which had just been planted, to thank God for the bounty of the earth anticipated in the Fall.

Rogation Days seemed like such a good idea, that they were adopted not only in that Bishop's diocese but throughout the French church and, eventually, throughout western Christianity. They seemed like such a good idea in fact that the Sixth Sunday of Easter, which is next, which immediately precedes them, was taken over by this activity of seeking God's blessings on farms and harvests, and came to be called "Rogation Sunday." Today is not Rogation Sunday – next Sunday is and, since I won’t be here next Sunday, I thought I’d give you that little bit of church history today.

Actually, what made me think of Rogation Sunday this week is that our Easter season lectionary this year is a little bit out of alignment! The lesson I just read from St. John's Gospel, in which Jesus describes God the Father as a vintner, a keeper of a vineyard, and the pruner of grape vines, is the traditional Rogation Day lesson, but this year, for some reason, we find it in the lectionary for today.

Today also happens to be Mothers' Day. As I thought about the juxtaposition of the image of God as vine dresser with the reality of motherhood, I was reminded of a time in my life when pruning and maternal (or actually grand-maternal) activity coincided.

It was the summer of my tenth year. I was spending it, as I had spent many Summers, with my paternal grandparents in Winfield, Kansas. My cousins Bob, a year older than I, and Randy, a year younger, were also there. We decided we wanted to build a tree house and so we asked our grandfather if we could and he said we could, so we did.

Apparently there was some miscommunication. I'm not sure what tree Granddad thought we would build our fort in, but we knew exactly where we wanted it .... in my Grandmother Edna's prize cherry tree! That was a great cherry tree. Grammy made all sorts of things from the fruit of that tree ... she made cherry pies and cherry cobblers, canned cherries, cherry preserves, even a cherry cordial (for medicinal purposes only, of course, as befit a good Methodist).

Well, building a tree house in the cherry tree required a good deal of pruning .... pruning my grandparents described as "butchering." Grammy was just about as mad as I ever saw her get. It seems funny to me now to look back at the vision of a 4'11" white haired woman administering corporal punishment to three large pre-teen boys ... but she did it and, believe me, it wasn't funny at the time.

Not quite a year later, Grammy admitted she had to apologize to us because, it seems, that cherry tree had been in need of a rather drastic pruning. The next Spring cherry harvest after our tree house construction was the largest she had ever had. Bushels and bushels of cherries ... lots and lots of pies and cobblers and preserves and, I suppose, gallons of that medicinal cordial.

And that, of course, is the point of pruning: to encourage the production of more and better fruit. Which brings us to today's Gospel lesson in which Jesus says, "I am the vine. You are the branches. My father is the vine dresser and he's going to cut some of you completely away and the rest of you he's going to trim back a bit and encourage you to produce spiritual fruit."

I know nothing about the care of grapevines, which is the image our Lord uses here. So I went on the Internet and found a Web Site that details the care of grapevines. According to this Web page, the pruning of grapevines is a cyclic three-year process. If you want to prune, it says, you must follow a three-year plan. The first pruning comes right after planting; the vine is pruned back to one to three buds. The second Spring, after the shoots are 6" long, you select the strongest shoot to form the permanent trunk. It lives. The rest get cut off. The survivor is anchored loosely to a post and allowed to grow. The second Summer, the vine dresser selects the strongest branches and ties them to the trellis. In the third year, four canes are selected to grow; these will produce the fruit for that year. After the third year, in late winter, the vineyard keeper cuts out the old canes and replaces them by tying new canes to the trellis. This process is then repeated year after year, cutting out old unproductive canes and allowing strong new canes to grow to produce a strong vine which will yield good fruit. .

The goal of motherhood is the same: to produce a strong child who will yield good fruit. This requires the skillful pruning back of habits, behaviors, and attitudes that are nonproductive or, worse, inhibit the growth of good fruit.

The fruits God the vine dresser seeks to be produced by the branches of his vine, that is to be produced by you and me, are well-known to us. St. Paul listed many of them in his epistles: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23); "all that is good and right and true" (Eph. 5:9); and "every good work" (Col. 1:10). The fruits a mother seeks to find produced by her children are the same.

As I thought about God's work, and a mother's work, in terms of this "pruning" metaphor, I could contrast the production of my grandmother's cherry tree, and other fruit trees she had in her garden, with the apple trees Evelyn and I used have growing on the back part of our property in Kansas. We ignored those trees: we didn't water them, fertilize them, or pay much attention to them... and we certainly didn't prune them. Grammy Edna's trees produced wonderfully full, sweet, luscious fruit; our apple trees produced shriveled up, bitterly tart, tiny wild fruit. A mother's work, like God's, is to produce the spiritual equivalent of my grandmother's cherries.

But, one must speak a word of caution about the vine dresser's (and a mother's) expectations. Charles Ryrie, the American evangelical Bible scholar, wrote about Christians bearing fruit in his book So Great Salvation. First, he says, "Every Christian will bear spiritual fruit. Somewhere, sometime, somehow." But, he cautions,

This does not mean that a believer will always be fruitful. Certainly we can admit that if there can be hours and days when a believer can be unfruitful, then why may there not also be months and even years when he can be in that same condition? Paul exhorted believers to engage in good works so they would not be unfruitful (Titus 3:14). Peter also exhorted believers to add the qualities of Christian character to their faith lest they be unfruitful (2 Peter 1:8). Obviously, both of those passages indicate that a true believer might be unfruitful. And the simple fact that both Paul and Peter exhort believers to be fruitful shows that believers are not always fruitful.

God knows this and so, like the vine dresser who tends the vineyard and prunes and trains the vines over a period of years, God is patient. So to must mothers (and fathers) be patient. It may take some time, perhaps a long, long time, for your efforts to pay off, but pay off they will.

Ryrie goes on, "a certain person's fruit will [not] necessarily be outwardly evident. Even if I know the person and have some regular contact with him, I still may not see his fruit. * * * His fruit may be very private or erratic, but the fact that I do not see it does not mean it is not there." God sees whether there is fruit; mothers can sometimes see it when others can't. Don't be too critical of the way another mother or father seems to be rearing her or his children; perhaps they, like God, can see some fruit you cannot. And Mom and Dad ... you may not even be able to see the fruit; don't despair -- keep on with your best efforts, with the hard work of tending and pruning -- perhaps only God will see the fruit of your labors produced by that child, but see it God will.

Finally, cautions Ryrie, "My understanding of what fruit is and therefore what I expect others to bear may be faulty and/or incomplete." Most lists that we humans devise are too short, too selective and too prejudiced; even St. Paul's lists couldn't include everything. "God," says Ryrie, "likely has a much more accurate and longer list than most of us do." God's children, you and I, I think, probably surprise God from time to time with the fruits we bear; I know for certain that our children surprise us. Moms (and Dads) be open to the surprises you'll get from your kids -- they may bear fruits you can't even dream of!

This great old Victorian stained-glass window of ours here [referring to a large window behind the church's altar] is an illustration of St. Paul's sermon to the Athenians in which he tells them that their altar “to an unknown god” is really an alter to God in Christ. In that sermon Paul says, "We are all God's offspring." He is, thus, reminding the Athenians of the words of their own philosophers, but he is also stating the great and wonderful truth of Christianity ... that we are not merely creatures, but children of God. So it is in any and every parent-child relationship that we see some of the qualities and characteristics of the relationship that God wishes to have with us.

John Killinger, a now-retired Methodist seminary professor, has written several books, one of which several of us studied a few months ago as we were learning about prayer. One of his books is Lost in Wonder, Love and Praise includes this affirmation:

I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, who was born of the promise to a virgin named Mary. I believe in the love Mary gave her Son, that caused her to follow him in his ministry and stand by his cross as he died. I believe in the love of all mothers, and its importance in the lives of the children they bear. It is stronger than steel, softer than down, and more resilient than a green sapling on the hillside. It closes wounds, melts disappointments, and enables the weakest child to stand tall and straight in the fields of adversity. I believe that this love, even at its best, is only a shadow of the love of God, a dark reflection of all that we can expect of him, both in this life and the next. And I believe that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a mother who lets this greater love flow through her to her child, blessing the world with the tenderness of her touch and the tears of her joy.

So on this day we ask God the vinedresser to bless all mothers as they go about tending and pruning their children, encouraging them to produce the good and healthy fruits of love, forbearance, patience, good works, righteousness, and all the rest. Amen!

"Yes, but...." -- Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday (Easter 4, May 7, 2006)

We’ve been here before. We are here every Fourth Sunday of Easter. We come here and sit with Jesus and we hear him say, “I am the Good Shepherd” and we say the 23rd Psalm and we try to figure out what it means, what Jesus and the biblical authors are saying to us in all this metaphorical sheep-and-shepherd stuff.

The problem is not with Jesus’ metaphor. The problem is with us urban, high-tech, sophisticated twenty-first century Christians that we are. When we encounter the rudiments of the Christian Faith in Holy Scripture, they are presented to us in agrarian metaphors that are simply foreign to us. So when we come into church on Good Shepherd Sunday, and Jesus goes to great pains to describe his relationship with us as that of a shepherd to his flock, most of us are completely lost. The only shepherds we have ever met have been characters in Sunday School pageants, and we are more likely to encounter sheep as a sweater or as an entree than as a bleating animal on a farm.

There is a rather quaint custom of referring to the clergyperson and congregation as shepherd and flock. Indeed, this is the meaning of the word “pastor” frequently applied to parish clergy – a term, by the way, that I don’t particularly care for. My professor of pastoral theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific was Fr. Charles Taylor suggested that that metaphor has given rise to the practice of clergy treating the congregation as lower-rank animals for whom the shepherd has responsibility. He argued that we abandon the idea of referring to the priest as “pastor” or shepherd, and refer to him or her instead as a sheepdog. In one of his books, Charles wrote: “The sheepdog image reminds us that laity and clergy are animals on the same level, while maintaining the insight that they are different. It also points to the fact that both sheepdog and sheep are under the leadership of the same high being: The Shepherd.”

In his metaphor, Jesus describes not only himself, but the flock. In other words, we ought to pay attention to this Gospel lesson not only because of what it tells us about Jesus, but because of what it tells us about the church, about ourselves. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus envisions a church characterized by unity.

As we Episcopalians look forward to our General Convention, we may well ask ourselves: How do we measure up? Canon Harold Lewis of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has observed:

In the Episcopal Church a generation ago, the most serious divisions we faced were between those described as the "low and lazy," the "broad and hazy," and the "high and crazy." The Morning Prayer crowd found those of a more sacramental bent a little extreme, perhaps. The Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, believed the Evangelicals to be somehow deficient. But there was nonetheless a mutual respect. There was ample room in the fold for a variety of sheep for whom Jesus was the bishop and shepherd of their souls. But things have changed. Today, Christian sheep seem more intent on differentiating themselves from other Christian sheep than they are with following the same Shepherd. They create little folds here, and little folds there, each of which has its own "true" leaders, each believing that its interpretation of the Shepherd's voice is the authentic one. Words like "heretic" and "apostate" have been rescued from obscurity, and Christian sheep are hurling them at other Christian sheep with what we used to call gay abandon. The fold now seems to be divided between the so-called orthodox and unorthodox sheep; between traditionalist and revisionist sheep, even sheep accused of Biblical literalism and others labeled as secular humanists.

***

The flock (or combination of flocks) known as the Episcopal Church seems more scattered than usual. Sometimes its members seem to be milling about like sheep without a shepherd. The office of bishop, long the symbol of unity in the church, which St. Cyprian described as the glutinum, literally the glue which kept the church together, now often seems to be a symbol of disunity. Bishops are being barred from entering churches in their own dioceses, and in at least one case, a Bishop was refused the Body and Blood of Christ at the communion rail! Too often, clergy have forgotten what it means to be set apart, consecrated for service. The pulpit, in some instances, has become not so much a place from which the gospel is proclaimed, but a place from which the clergy see fit to regale the people of God with stories of their own personal struggles. Too often, our parishes have become places, not where people bring them "selves, and souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice," but a place where they bring instead them baggage of every kind, in an effort to work out their issues, sometimes at the expense of other members of the community.

I think Canon Lewis is right. Our part of the flock of Christ has been infiltrated by and is increasingly being torn apart by those who have agendas other than the spread of the Gospel. I think that what Canon Lewis is describing is what a modern metaphor might call “wolves in sheep’s clothing” or in some cases “wolves in sheepdog’s clothing.”

But wringing our hands and bemoaning division is not going to do any good. What we have to do is take responsibility and start acting like another kind of animal one finds in the sheepfold these days: Llamas.

As many of you know, I'm originally from Nevada. One of the big ranching activities in Nevada is sheep ranching. There are large flocks in Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Montana.... it's a mountain desert sort of activity. One of the biggest problems sheep ranchers have is coyotes; they kill sheep, especially lambs. There are a lot things you can do to keep coyotes from taking your lambs. You can use good sheep dogs, odor sprays, electric fences, and “scare-coyotes.” You can sleep with your lambs during the summer; you can corral them at night and herd them at day. Nonetheless, you'll lose scores of lambs – I know of one rancher who lost fifty in one year alone. But the sheep ranchers have discovered the llama – the aggressive, funny-looking, afraid-of-nothing llama...

Now sheep are stupid ... I don't know if llamas are dumber than sheep or smarter, but whichever, llamas don't appear to be afraid of anything. When they see something, they put their head up and walk straight toward it. Apparently llamas know the truth of what the writer of the Epistle of James writes: "Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you" (4:7). Their heads-up, check-in-out behavior is an aggressive stance as far as the coyote is concerned, and they won't have anything to do with that ... Coyotes are opportunists, and llamas take that opportunity away.

Those among us who stir up division are like those coyotes, opportunists looking for a chance to tear apart the flock. Often, there is a kernel of truth in what they have to say but, somehow, they have taken that bit of truth and twisted it, so that that little bit of truth becomes infected with a lie. This is the way the devil worked with Jesus. Think, for example, of his forty days in the desert. Every one of the devil’s temptations was based on a correct assertion. Jesus way of answering those temptations was to acknowledge the truth in what the devil said, but challenge the twist. “Yes, Satan, it's true that I could make stones into bread, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that God’s angels would protect me from death, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that I have been given dominion over the kingdoms of earth, but....”

That “yes, but...” attitude is the posture of the Llama. Their heads-up, check-it-out behavior is “yes, but....” behavior. That is how we can answer those who preach division, “Yes, part of what you say is true, but ....” The llama attitude follows the example of the Good Shepherd.

Let me end with the story of a young woman, a preacher's daughter, who was the pride of her little rural community. She was the first to go off to college, and it was to a prestigious Ivy League institution, at that. When she returned for Christmas vacation, her daddy asked her if she would read the Twenty-third Psalm during the service. She mounted the podium, and with all the erudition and elocution she could muster, she enunciated the familiar words. But the people were totally unmoved, and she could tell they were unimpressed. She felt so humiliated, she couldn't even finish and left the podium. Then an octogenarian woman who did not even have the benefit of an elementary education, mounted the podium, and she recited the psalm with such passion and fervor, that the people were moved to tears. When she finished, there was not a dry eye in the house. The young woman complained to her father how unfair it was that this uneducated old woman could have such a profound effect on the congregation, while she herself had done so poorly. Her father answered, “Yes, child, you may know the psalm, but Sister knew the Shepherd.”

“Yes, but....” The Llama knows and follows the Shepherd. Be a Llama! When someone tries to draw you into one of those conflicted, divisive situations, follow and emulate the Shepherd!

“Yes, but....”

Have You Anything Here To Eat? Sermon for Easter 3 (April 30, 2006)

If you have ever watched the Food Channel’s Japanese cooking competition show called Iron Chef, you knew that it begins with a screen graphic showing a quotation from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an 18th century French politician who once said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." The 19th century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said something similar, "Man is what he eats."

These observations have been distilled into our modern idiom: "You are what you eat" is a saying one hears or reads pretty regularly. And it's true. Eating shapes our identities, defines who we are. A particular food and drink may highlight ethnicity, nationality, or age: tacos, lasagna, Coca Cola (over fifty), Pepsi (under thirty,) hamburgers, sushi. Food and drink defines the great holidays and important celebrations of our lives: champagne on New Year's Eve, turkey at Thanksgiving, plum pudding at Christmas, hot dogs on the Fourth of July, eggs at Easter.

An ordained colleague of mine once commented that the Sacramental presence of the Eucharist has shifted location in the modern church. Once the table-fellowship of the church was centered on the altar; now, he said, it is found elsewhere depending upon denominational tradition. For Baptists, it is now found in the fried chicken dinner; for Methodists, in the potluck supper; and for Episcopalians, at coffee hour. He was kidding, of course, but there is an element of truth in his humor.

Gathering for a shared meal, of whatever kind, is a fundamental part of the human experience. We must eat together to be human and to become human. We must also, it appears, eat together to know God. President Woodrow Wilson, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, once noted that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. "No one," he said, "can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach."

Food plays a very important role in the great story of God and God's people told in the Scriptures. Eating and drinking can be the occasion for sin, for separation from God and from others. Remember, the misuse of food, the fruit of a tree, caused the human fall into sin. A difference over which kind of food was a better offering to God, vegetable produce or animal flesh, led to the first murder, Cain's killing of Abel. The Hebrews rebelled against God in the wilderness because of their doubt as to whether God could feed them. Satan's first temptation of Jesus was to urge him to ease his hunger by turning stones into bread. Judas was revealed as Jesus' betrayer when he dipped his bread in the dish after Jesus.

On the other hand, many of the good and wonderful parts of God's story involve food and drink. There was a second tree in that first garden, a tree giving eternal life. Abraham entertained angels unawares, providing food for them and learning that he and Sarah will have a child whose descendants will be a blessing to all humanity. God, in spite of that rebellion in the wilderness, fed the Hebrews with manna and quail, and quenched their thirst. Jesus took one boy's picnic lunch and fed five thousand men, together with their wives and children. The culmination of God's plan for humanity and, indeed, for the entire creation is described as a great feast which last forever and to which all humanity is invited.

Today we have a Gospel lesson in which food plays an important part: Jesus "showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence." (Some ancient manuscripts say that they also gave him a piece of honeycomb which he took and ate; the Authorized Version includes this reference.) And this is not the only post-Resurrection appearance in which food plays a part. We have already heard the story of Cleopas and his companion, to whom the Lord was revealed in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:30-32) In another post-Resurrection appearance, John records that Jesus cooked a grilled fish breakfast for the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:9-13) The traditional interpretation of these incidents, particularly the one we heard of in today's Gospel, is that they were meant to demonstrate to the apostles, and are recorded in Scripture to demonstrate to us, that Jesus' Resurrection was actual and physical, not merely a ghostly appearance.

I'm sure that's true, but I have always thought that the particular incident we heard today has an additional significance. Jesus, asking this question, "Have you anything here to eat?" sounds like a teenager coming home from a hard day at school, a construction laborer returning from the site, a farmer coming into the kitchen after hard work in the fields. It has always seemed to me that there is a suggestion in this that Resurrection, redemption, salvation is hard work! You and I and the rest of our race are so darned stubborn, we are so obstinate in our sinfulness, that saving us must have taken a lot of energy!

One supposes that God could have accomplished the work of redemption in anyway God chose, including just waving his almighty arm and being done with it. But, as Frederick Buechner noted in his book Listening to Your Life, that isn't God's way. God does not wish to be up on high, separated from God's people. In Christ, God has "pitched his tent among us"; God has dwelt with us where we are and as we are. As Buechner put it: "[Jesus] never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks." Real life questions like, "Have you got anything to eat?"

I believe that that is a question Jesus continues to ask. Just as he stood in that room and asked it of the first disciples, he stands in this room and asks it of us. Last week, we received the materials for The Bishop’s Annual Appeal through which Episcopal Community Services is funded. Among the many ministries ECSF supports are a variety of food banks and feeding programs, including our own Free Farmers Market. As I read through those materials, it occurred to me that in the need of hungry people here in our diocese, here in our town, Jesus stands in our midst and asks us the same real life question: "Have you got anything to eat?"

And the answer to the question must be, "Yes." And what we have to offer them is not simply our money, which is what the Bishop’s Appeal is asking for, but what our money represents – ourselves, our life and labor. "You are what you eat," said Savarin and Feuerbach, but the idea was not original to them. In the Eucharistic prayers of every Anglican prayer book are the words penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549:

We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.

Many centuries earlier, St. Augustine of Hippo said,

You are the body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be blessed, broken, and distributed; that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of the eternal charity.

In answer to the question always asked by the Risen Christ present in the suffering of the Poor, "Have you got anything to eat?" we must always respond with sacrificial giving: "Yes. We have ourselves to offer, to be blessed, broken, and distributed." I encourage you to respond generously to the Bishop's appeal on behalf of the hungry whom ECSF, Free Farmers Market, and other ministries feed and, whenever you can, to all those in whose need Christ stands asking, "Have you anything here to eat?"

Easter Changes Everything: A Sermon for Resurrection Sunday, April 16, 2006

Sermons are bit out of order.... things got whacky, and I got a bit behind on posting things, around Easter. So I'm getting things posted as I can, and not necessarily in the order in which they were preached.

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that “pierced” died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

When Updike writes that the Resurrection of Christ was real, and bodily, and solid, and definite, and monstrous, and inconvenient .... what he means is “Easter changes everything!”

We aren’t really sure who went first to that Tomb in that Garden that Sunday morning long ago. John seems to suggest that Mary Magdalen went there alone ... Matthew says she was accompanied by “the other Mary,” and Mark says that Salome was there also, and Luke reports that the mother of James and Joanna were there. Whoever the women may have been, what we do know is that something incredible happened to them, that is - they encountered the Risen Christ, that they were terrified by this confrontation, and for some time they said nothing to anyone about it. Mark says pointedly, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Someone has suggested that these women were the first Episcopalians: They were blown away by the best news ever revealed in the history ofv he world, before and since – and they don't tell anyone! We Anglicans have remained faithful to this scripture ever since! It's been said that the only commandment we've ever obeyed is Jesus' command to secrecy, "Don't tell anyone!" Give us another 2000 years and we might start spreading the news.

We know the news today because Mary Magdalene and her friends eventually did tell someone and the news spread. But it is easy to understand why they were so afraid and why they wouldn’t have said anything right away. Consider....

They had bought the oils and spices required to prepare the dead. They planned to anoint Jesus. As they walked to burial place they were probably talking about what they would find there. The women had a specific tasks to accomplish ... they had carried them, their Franklin-Covey Day Planner or their Palm Pilot would have had the following in their “to-do list”:

1) Go to the tomb
2) Find someone to roll away the stone
3) Prepare Jesus' body

Their anticipated day, though sad, was planned and simple. They would remove the linens in which Joseph of Arimathea had wrapped Jesus. They would carefully wash their rabbi’s body anoint it with the oils and the herbs, wrap it again, and place it in the tomb in the manner prescribed by the Law. It would be a sad and painful task, but it also be a familiar and comforting one.

And then God changed everything. No wonder alarm and terror and amazement seized them. Until now the women (and all disciples, in fact) only had to mourn the loss of a great teacher and friend whose only fault may have been to mislead them into thinking he was something he obviously was not. Since he had died, he couldn't be the one for whom they had hoped. They had been wrong about him.

Until now, their feelings had been those of mourning and perhaps mingled with regret that they had followed a man whose life had ended in failure, being tried and executed as a criminal. Until now.... Now they have to deal with the very scary thought, the very real fear that maybe they have been following not the wrong guy, but the right guy. A guy more right than they had ever imagined. And if that was true, consider the implications about how they would have to live and what they would have to do. Their routines would have to be thrown away.

Faced with such a reality, I'd be terrified too. And like them, I would probably not want to say a whole lot to anyone until I sorted a few things out! Eventually, they did sort it all out, eventually they shared the news of what had happened, and the world hasn’t been the same since. The resurrection changed everything.

Through Christ’s resurrection God give us reason laugh at our death sentence by punctuating it with a living exclamation mark. On this day and in days to come may we remember that there are many times and circumstances when God restates the joyful resurrection proclamation, when resurrection continues to change everything:

* Abilities faded and forgotten are channeled toward new creativity: that's resurrection.

* Friendships once killed by frosty misunderstanding bloom again in warm reconciliation: that's resurrection.

* Hopes glimmering and gone are rekindled by expressions of caring: that's resurrection.

* Faith, dulled by lack of exercise, dances again to God's everyday rhythms: that's resurrection.

We worship the God whose resurrecting power changes everything. That’s why Easter is really a holiday for adults more than for children. Children don’t yet have those faded and forgotten abilities to be brought back to new creativity. Children haven’t yet felt the pain of a dead friendship. Children haven’t yet lost hope nor had their faith dulled by routine and neglect. Children enjoy Easter, I’m sure – there are Easter egg hunts, and the story of the Easter bunny, and lots of candy ... but Easter really isn’t a children’s holiday.

The American Orthodox writer Frederica Matthewes-Green writes:

Easter just isn't fun in the same way Christmas is, a type of fun that could be better described as styled for children. It's a commonplace to say that "Christmas is for children," but what about Easter? Is it for children, too?

It sure didn't seem so to me, back then. Compared to Christmas, Easter was boring. Chocolate bunnies: good. Scratchy new crinolines: bad. Long blah-blah-blah at church. A lot of wordy grown-up buildup leading to, it seemed, no payoff. You could always count on Christmas to change a lot of stuff, especially in the toybox. Easter didn't change anything.

***

I remember my toybox, but not much of what was in it, and I don't retain any of those thrilling Christmas toys today. When I grew up, I put away childish things. When I grew up I began to be concerned with bigger things, many of them difficult to comprehend. Like Mitch, I saw suffering and death. I saw people live through situations so crushingly unfair that it was impossible that the universe bore no witness, impossible that there was no God who could wipe tears away and effect justice on the last day. I saw people find within themselves nobility to overcome, as well, and heard them say the strength came from a source beyond their own.

These are not things children have to think about.

Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness. Yet in the midst of this desolation we find Jesus, triumphant over death and still shockingly alive, present to us in ways we cannot understand much less explain. In him we find vibrancy of life, and a firm compassion that does not deny our suffering but transforms and illuminates it. He is life itself. As life incarnate, he could not be held back by death.

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?" wrote St. John Chrysostom, in a 4th century sermon still used in every Orthodox church on Pascha (our name for Easter).

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life reigns.
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.

On Pascha we will sing, over and over, dozens of times, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." It is not a children's song. But grownups are taller, and can see farther, and know what hard blows life can bring. Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection.

Easter didn't change anything? Easter changes everything.

Let me say that one more time. Easter changes everything. This makes Easter the most important Christian holy day. It’s the most important day because it’s the resurrection of Jesus that shows the world that he wasn’t just an extraordinary person, or just a wise prophet, or a great teacher. The resurrection, Jesus coming back from death, was God’s way of showing the world that he is in control of everything, life and death, the spiritual realms and the physical world.

Without Easter we wouldn’t have much. We wouldn’t celebrate Christmas! Think about it. Who would care about the birthday of a child born to a poor carpenter and his wife in a tiny backwater of village? As good a man as that child could have grown to be, if the resurrection hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t really care. If there hadn’t been a resurrection, there wouldn’t be any churches, no Christians, no ultimate meaning for life on earth, no hope of heaven. There would be a lot less peace in the world … if you can imagine that. There would be much more need, much more suffering, much more greed, much more hatred … without the resurrection. Easter changes everything!

And, without Easter all we would know about love would be it’s shadow. Without the resurrection what Jesus did on the cross wouldn’t matter. It would have been seen as just one more Jewish martyr dying for his faith. A noble act, but it would have been quickly forgotten. Jesus faithfully going to the cross may have been a great act of faithfulness, but it doesn’t mean much until Jesus comes back from death. Then we get to see that his death on cross was even more an act of love. You see, ultimately, Easter is the source of how we know that God loves us. It’s the event we can point to and say, “Because of the resurrection, I can know for sure that God is alive and well and loves me! Not only does he love me enough to die for me, he loves me enough to come back for me!”

This is why the Gospel writers report that the women left the tomb with mixed emotions. Luke says they were both perplexed and terrified; Matthew says they went away “with [both] fear and great joy;” Mark describes them as filled with “terror and amazement.”

G.K. Chesterton once wrote:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

So we, too, leave the empty tomb of Jesus with mixed feelings, with perplexity and terror, with amazement, with fear and great joy.

The Methodist missionary Earl Stanley Jones, in his autobiography A Song of Ascents tells of an African who changed his name to “After” immediately following his conversion. He reasoned that all things were new and different and important after he met Christ. Easter is what makes us “After” Christians. “After” Easter, nothing in life is ever the same again. Easter changes everything.

Change moves us into the unknown, but if we are truly living after Easter, propelled by a faith in a Lord who lives, then there will be times when Christ will plant our feet on solid ground, give us a solid footing on which to stand. There will be other times when he will lead us into new and unfamiliar territories. The footing there may not be so solid. But then our God, whose resurrection changes everything, will teach us to fly: that's what the prophet Isaiah promised: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles ....”

Easter changes everything! Most of all, Easter changes us!

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

A Transformative Process: Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter ("Thomas Sunday"), April 23, 2006

Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.” A Duke of Cambridge is reputed to have said that sometime in the late 1800s. “Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.”

But....

change is inevitable, irresistible, unstoppable, and yet human beings resist change, try to stop change and react very badly to change. That is, I suppose, understandable.

Several years ago, medical doctor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a little book entitled On Death & Dying in which she outlined a model of five stages in the grieving process, both the pre-death psychology of a person passing away from a terminal illness and in the experience of the survivors. Some of you may have studied these: they are denial, anger, bargaining, despair and, finally, acceptance. As her model was studied by doctors and psychologists, many began to note that these stages were experienced not only in the context of death but in regard to any loss. Then, a further step was taken when we began to notice that dealing with any change followed a similar course and, in turn, we started to recognize that all change entails loss, even change for the better. “The devil you know is always better than the devil you don't know,” and we must go through the human process of losing that known devil, even when we don't like it and don't want it.

The wonderful thing about the story of our Lord’s Crucifixion and Resurrection is that it is a fully human story -- the stages of grief, both in Christ’s preparation for death at the hands of the authorities, and in the Apostles’ handling of Jesus’ execution during and after the events of Holy Week and Good Friday. All of the stages of grief, of handling change are there to be seen.

They are surely there as Jesus prepares to die; they are surely here in the story of Thomas, the doubting Apostle. Denial, anger, despair, bargaining and acceptance are all here.... neither Jesus nor his followers are spared the human experience of change.

Friday evening Evelyn and I attended the annual dinner fundraiser for Hospice of Medina and as part of that event there was an auction. Each couple was given a butterfly with a number on it to make our auction bids. The butterfly is the corporate logo of the hospice agency. It’s a great choice because butterflies are a symbol of change and have been adopted by the church as a symbol of the Resurrection for obvious reasons. Think about it.... a caterpillar lives a certain sort of live, munching away on leaves, and then has to “die” ... it enters what’s called the “pupal stage” when it forms a chrysalis or cocoon and lies there entombed for days, weeks or even months, but eventually that little tomb breaks open and the insect emerges completely changed! It is the same bug – the genes are the same, the species is the same, but the individual is gloriously changed.

Apparently this is what happened in the Resurrection of Jesus. Many times in the stories of his post-Resurrection appearances, including today’s Gospel lesson, he is not recognized until some trigger is struck – he shows the scars of the Crucifixion, he breaks bread, he says a name – in some way, this Resurrected Jesus is different but recognizable.

The Apostles, because of this, become different but recognizable, too.

Kubler-Ross’s five-stage model has been expanded by several different researchers, one of whom is cardiologist Stephen Yarnell. In Yarnell’s book Unpleasant Changes - What to Do he expands the model to ten steps, leaving out “bargaining” and adding some new understandings.

Yarnell’s first stage, like Kubler-Ross’s, is denial – “It can’t be,” “This can’t be happening to me,” “It’s not true”.... The first stage of reaction to any sudden, unexpected event tends to be denial. During and after our Lord’s trial and execution, this was the reaction of the Apostles. “I don’t know him.” “I won’t believe it.”

Yarnell follow’s Kubler-Ross in naming the second stage “anger” or “blaming” – “Whose fault is it?” “This makes me mad,” “This isn’t fair,” “Why me?” The second stage of reaction looks backward in hopes of finding the cause and someone or something to point the finger at, to blame it on. The Apostles certainly went through a stage like this is – Judas, the “Jews” (by which they meant the temple authorities), the governor.....

The third stage in both models is despair. This stage is characterized by feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and the grieving person tends to become withdrawn, to isolate him- or herself from others. The Apostles locked themselves in the upper room; Thomas withdrew even from his brothers and sisters amongst Jesus’s followers – we don’t know where he went off too.

Yarnell now differs from Kubler-Ross in adding a stage called “perspective.” In this stage, the individual begins accepting the change and is no longer caught up in denial, anger, blame, or despair. The loss is seen in its proper perspective. Although the sense of loss may be significant, the individual does not feel that all is lost.

Stage 5 in Yarnell’s model is called “relationships,” and this is where Yarnell’s ten-stage description of handling change, of dealing with grief begins to parallel the experience of the grieving Christian, of the believer who knows that all suffering can be redemptive. Coming out of the withdrawal and isolation that is inherent in the previous stages, the individual is able to talk and relate to other people and participate in normal activities. Thomas comes back to the other Apostles, ready to be with them and to share the experience.

The next stage is called “spiritual changes.” The individual’s relationship with the spiritual side of life is strengthened as a result of having lived through (and survived) the experience. The Apostles have new hope; they have seen Jesus. Thomas, still caught up somewhat in his feelings of denial, doesn’t believe them: he’s no longer despairing; he’s developed some perspective; he’s willing to be back in relationship with them; but he’s not quite willing to believe that something good can have come from this suffering... yet.

Yarnell’s seventh stage in dealing with change is “acceptance,” which is Kubler-Ross’s fifth and final stage. This stage involves the restoration of self-esteem, and the acceptance of the consequences and boundaries of the new reality. The Apostles, having seen Jesus, are approaching this stage; they are beginning to understand the boundaries of their new reality; Thomas, until he sees the Risen Lord, isn’t there yet.... but when he does see Jesus, when he does get there! Boy howdy! Does he get there! “My Lord and my God!” Thomas is the first to voice the new understanding.

Yarnell adds stages beyond mere acceptance; this accords with our Christian understanding of loss and grief, of suffering and its redemptive potential, of change and empowerment. One does not merely accept the loss or change and then continue on as if nothing happened. The world is changed and, therefore, we must be changed.

“Humor” is the eighth level in Yarnell’s model of handling grief. Smiles, laughter, and a sense of humor return to the individual and help in the healing process. There’s a renewed sense of joy in life. You can almost hear the humor in Jesus’s voice as he speaks to Thomas: “Do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who believe and have not seen.” (Interestingly, in some modern scholarship, the word translated here as “blessed” is also translated as “happy.” Those who believe reach the eighth stage quickly!)

Near the end of the process, at stage 9, there is “activity and action.” Where once the individual had been restricted or immobilized by the change, he or she now returns to activity, action, and improved productivity. Travel and group activities become more interesting. This is what will happen to the Apostles.... some of them are already traveling; Cleopus and his companion are on the road and will meet the Risen Jesus as the travel to Emmaus. The others will soon burst out of this upper room into the streets and alleys of Jerusalem, speaking all manner of foreign languages, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified, died and risen from the dead.

In Yarnell’s model, the final stage of the process is the setting of “new goals.” In this final stage, the individual is able to focus on the positive aspects of whatever change occurred, and on new goals and activities. He or she takes comfort in cartoonist Ashley Brilliant’s line, “I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent!”

This model is fuller and more closely resembles the experience of the Apostles and the experience of other Christians who have dealt with death, loss and change with the help and model of the Risen Lord. We really don’t move, as Kubler-Ross suggested, from “despair” directly to “acceptance” ... and the process doesn’t end with mere “acceptance.” There is a need to gain new perspectives, to enter into new relationships, to experience spiritual growth, to see things through the eyes of humor and joy, and, finally, to return to activities with new goals. The butterfly does these things in it’s metamorphosis ... it doesn’t go back to the life of a caterpillar; the Risen Jesus did these things in his Resurrection ... he didn’t just come back to life and return to his work as an itinerant rabbi; the Apostles went through this transformative process ... they didn’t go back to their prior lives as tax collectors, farmers and fishermen.

This is the Christian reality. The earliest Christians called the religion of Jesus Christ “The Way” because the understood that becoming Christian was not a destination, but a journey. Today, four young lives are to be started here on that Way, on the path of the Christian journey. Throughout their lives, change will be the one constant – they will always be undergoing some part of the transformative process that is the Christian reality.

“Any change, at any time, for any reason, is NOT to be deplored.” Not at all. Every change, at every time, for every reason, is to be celebrated. Every change, at every time, for every reason, holds within it the possibility of new relationships, of spiritual change, of humor, of action and of new goals. We prayed at the beginning of our Mass this morning for this to be so in our lives. In the Collect before the Lessons, we asked God for the Grace that we “may show forth in [our] lives what [we] profess by [our] faith.” In a word, we prayed that every loss, every change might hold what these baptisms hold today for these children, the promise of Resurrection. Because of the Resurrection of our Lord, we have the power to claim a relationship with the living God; this is what John wrote in his First Epistle, part of which we heard this morning: “our [true] fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” Every change holds in it the possibility ... the potential ... the PROMISE of Resurrection in fellowship with God!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Remember: A Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 13, 2006

At the end one of the Star Trek movies, Number 2 I think, Mr. Spock sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise and her crew. As he is dying from radiation exposure, he reaches up and touches Dr. McCoy’s face and in a variation of what Trekkies know as “the vulcan mind meld” he links his consciousness with McCoy’s and utters a single word, “Remember,” as he dies. It turns out that he has implanted into McCoy’s spirit a kernel of his own. It also turns out that because of something called “the Genesis device” he isn’t really dead and the next movie is all about recovering his body and getting that bid of his soul out of McCoy and back where it belongs.

That scene with Leonard Nimoy’s deep gravelly voice saying, “Remember” always comes back to me when I think about Maundy Thursday because all of our rituals and actions tonight are about exactly that, remembering. They are done because God instructs us to remember.

In our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, from Exodus 12, God tells Moses and Aaron, and through them all the People of Israel, how they are to remember and celebrate the feast of the Passover. For the Jews the Passover is a celebration of God's salvation. The name "Passover" came from a description of the events of that fateful night. A destroying angel literally passed over the Hebrews but brought judgment upon the Egyptians. God had sent nine plagues on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to let Israel go.

The tenth and last plague was on all the firstborn in the land. But before the plague, God instructed each Israelite families to sacrifice a lamb and place it's blood on the door posts as a sign on their faith in God. They were instructed to roast the lamb and eat it all by morning and also to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs. And that night an angel came and slew the firstborn of the Egyptians but it passed over the houses of the Hebrews.

Each part of this holy meal had a special meaning. The bitter herbs were to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. The unleavened bread was to remind them that they had to leave Egypt so quickly that they didn't have time to leaven their bread. They were to eat this meal in their traveling clothes to remind them of the journey out of slavery. The lamb reminded them of the sacrifice that protected the people from the destroying angel.

Each year afterwards the Hebrews were to remember the Passover and to celebrate it in this meal. It became their major celebration of God's salvation. God had spared those who were under the blood of the Passover lamb. God had defeated the mighty Egyptian masters and proven that the Egyptian god's were powerless. And God had brought the Children of Israel out of slavery.

It's no accident that the Lord's Supper took place during the Passover festival. After all Passover was celebrated to remember that God had saved in the past and to affirm the belief that God continues to save in the present. When the disciples gathered for that Last Supper with Jesus before his death, the Passover was in their minds. It was in this context that Jesus took bread and blessed it and broke it and said, "This is my body." And the disciples must have had in mind the blood of Passover lamb when he took the cup and said, "This is my blood." And it was during the slaughter of the Passover lambs the next day that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross.

Like Passover, the Holy Eucharist is a celebration of God's salvation. It reminds us how God has saved us through the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Each part of this meal reminds us of that salvation. The bread that is broken reminds us that Christ's body was broken because of human sinfulness. The cup reminds of Jesus' blood shed for humankind..

This celebration and remembrance of God's saving act is not that different from the Passover. The Passover reminds us how God saved Israel from slavery to the Egyptians. The Lord's Supper reminds us how God has saved us from slavery to sin and death. At Passover those who put their faith in God were under the blood of the Passover lamb sprinkled on their door posts. Today those who believe in the Lord are under the blood of the lamb of God that washes away our sins.

But the Lord's Supper is more than a memorial of what God did in the past. It is a reminder that God still saves and that God will continue to save. When we celebrate this meal it is more than a reminder of the past. In this meal Christ is present in the here and now. Different churches have different ways of expressing that, but we Anglicans call it “real presence”. Christ is present with, blesses, and dwells in those who celebrate this meal in faith.

This is because God is saving people today. God is still leading people out of slavery. The blood of Christ is still washing the stain of sins from people's lives. Today God is leading people out of slavery to sin and out of slavery to addictions. God is leading people out of slavery to abusive relationships.

God will continue to deliver people from slavery. In fact the promise that God gives us is that Christ will come again. And when Christ comes again he will do away with every form of evil that oppresses the human being. And there will be a feast. A feast of victory to celebrate God's victory over evil.

Come! Celebrate the victory of our Lord. Remember how God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Remember the bitterness of their slavery and the suddenness of their freedom. Remember how God protected those who in faith put the blood of the lamb on their door posts. And remember that God continues to free people from slavery to wicked masters.

Come! Celebrate how God, through the death and resurrection of his only-begotten Son, defeated death. Remember how Jesus handed over his body to be broken. Remember how his blood was shed. And remember that God continues to save and protect those who in faith have accepted the blood of the lamb to cleans their hearts.

Come! Celebrate the promise of the victory feast to come. Christ the Lamb of God will come again. And by the authority of his Father he will cleans creation of all wickedness and evil. Christ will destroy all wickedness but he will Passover those who have put themselves under his seal. And the faithful will sit at a table and share in the ultimate victory life and love.

A Meditation for Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006

I usually don't read other people's writings in full from the pulpit (although I do quote other folks in sermons). In fact, on Palm Sunday I usually don't preach at all. But this Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006, I'm going to do both. I am going to offer the following meditation entitled "Good Friday" from Flesh and Bones: Sermons by the Rev. Dr. A. K. M. Adam (Page 82; copyright A. K. M. Adam 2001; printed by Wipf and Stock Publishers)

The book has been published on line at the website of Seabury-Western Theological Serminary, where AKMA is a professor. It can be found at:

http://www.seabury.edu/faculty/akma/FleshBones.pdf

---------------------------------

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

In the Name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity on High— Amen.

I know a whole lot. I know the sweet kiss of a drowsy child, the scintillating misty hush of a summer sunrise. I know uses of the Greek participle, I know the forlorn plaints from the trampled heart of a student, a friend, a lonely visitor to my office. I know the psalms, I know the working of a well-practiced basketball team, I know contents of the heaps of paper on my desktop. I know fear and doubt, I know pain and desperation, I know joy and pride and satisfaction. In the age of expertise, I am an expert; in the age of “just do it,” I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I know what I am doing.

I know that we gather here this afternoon to recollect the trial of God, the day we put our Savior on trial — and executed him. Our trial of God is not in any way a presumption on our part; though we may want to demur, Jesus demands that we participate. Jesus came to Jerusalem, came here to the center of the world, and looked us in the eyes; and he asks, “Are my claims on you, on your life, on your whole being — are my claims on you just?” Today’s trial comes at Jesus’ own initiative, according to God’s own will; however much we’d rather recuse ourselves, we may not. Oyez, oyez, oyez.

The accused is charged with bringing God’s uncompromising word into human life. He stands before us, alone at the defense table, under indictment for making us feel awkward, for asking too much of us, for calling us to a way of life that puts us out of step with our more comfortable neighbors. He confesses as much; he offers no resistance to this trial. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to pronounce sentence: this disturbing deity must be put out of our way. For our own sake, he must be crucified.

In the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, it is written that the people said,

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness, nor discerned the prize for blameless souls.

This is what the Book of Wisdom says of people who find discipleship too inconvenient, of people who don’t want God butting into their lives with unrealistic expectations or awkward obligations, who are embarrassed to be seen with a God who keeps company with a lower class of people. Now, in so fair and reverent a church as Trinity Parish, we should feel aggrieved that the Book of Wisdom moves so rapidly from being inconvenienced by the Righteous One to plotting his torture and murder. We are well-intentioned people who would never have such a person executed, even if he did make our lives more complicated and more awkward. Wisdom rushes us along too far, too fast. We’re not that bad.

But it seems as though we don’t have that intermediate choice. All we want is some peace in which to do our daily work, to enjoy ourselves on weekends; all we want is some time when we don’t have to think about whether what we’re doing is right. But this inconvenient Righteous One keeps walking to his cross, because our God asks us not just for an hour on Sundays, not just to avoid high-handed felony, but this God asks of us our every breath, our every thought. Our God is a zealous God, who desires our all, and who does not willingly settle for the bits and pieces that we grudgingly concede. Certainly we don’t want to crucify Jesus; but if we will not invite this Righteous One into every moment of our lives, then we take our part among his judges who put him out of the way once and for all.

Can we bring ourselves to admit that when we ask for a God who permits us a little self-indulgence on the weekend that we do not know what we are asking for? Can we acknowledge that when we ask for a God who will not judge us at all, that we are rejecting the God who longs to forgive us? Can I, a modern person, a capable person, a person who knows what he’s doing, confess that perhaps I don’t know so much after all?

We still have time to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, and admit we choose the sumptuous wages of exploitation instead of the wages of holiness; we grasp for the glorious prizes of our savoir-faire rather than the prize for blameless souls; we did not know the secret purposes of God.

Almighty God, maker of all, judge of us all: remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not hold our waywardness against us, but prayed for us: “Forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.” Amen.

Creative Transformation: Sermon for 5 Lent, April 2, 2004

Last week, we read from the Gospel according to St. John a portion of Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, the member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who came to see him late at night. In that conversation, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up....” In today’s Gospel lesson John again quotes Jesus saying similar words, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” After quoting this, the Gospeler, John, adds this commentary, “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” Now this may be, but keep in mind it is only John’s interpretation. Might it not be that Jesus had another “lifting up” in mind? Are there not two other “liftings up” to come: the Resurrection and the Ascension?

Dominican preacher, Jude Siciliano has suggested as much in his comment:

It isn’t just Jesus’ offering on the cross that John invites us to gaze on with eyes of faith. This being "lifted up" also points us to Jesus’ resurrection. After all, if he just died what value would that have been for us? Death would have had the final word. Jesus would have been just one more victim of one-more repressive regime...one more dead martyr for a cause. Instead, God raised Jesus from the dead; he was "lifted up" for us. Now we look upon him and believe in our own future resurrection. But not just in the future. John writes in the present tense; he is speaking of something that is true for us now.

Episcopal priest and process theologian Paul Nancarrow offers a similar insight:

John conceives of Jesus’ death and resurrection as a creative transformation of earthly life into eternal life that animates the whole of Jesus’ ministry. To be crucified and to be glorified are, for John’s Jesus, not two separate things, but two simultaneous aspects of one single reality. Jesus’ whole mission is to reveal that reality and call others to share in that reality. Death-and-resurrection is a mystery not unique to Jesus, although to be sure he is the first of the human family to experience its fullness; but it is a reality of new life in which all are invited to share. Jesus underlines the universality of the invitation to resurrection with a very down-to-earth agricultural metaphor: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” To die is prerequisite to bearing fruit. That is why, for Jesus, to be “lifted up” on the cross in death is also to be “lifted up” to God in new life. That is why being “lifted up” is, as we saw in last week’s Gospel, the sign that will draw all people to new life in Christ. The Gospel passage thus serves to sum up the themes of Jesus’ ministry given to us in Lent, and to turn our attention ahead to the Passion and Resurrection stories of Palm Sunday and Easter.

“Death and resurrection [is] a creative transformation of earthly life into eternal life.” That’s a great way to summarize “liftings up” to which Jesus must be referring in this Gospel reading today.

Creative transformation is what God, through the Prophet Jeremiah, was offering to his people when he said, “I will make a new covenant with [them] ... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” It is our appropriation of that transformation, our claiming it as our own, that happens when we gather in worship each week.

Richard Norris, an Episcopal priest and theologian, wrote a book entitled Understanding the Faith of the Church. In it, he wrote this about the Creeds:

The creeds ... speak of the way in which the promise of creation and the Word of redemption take root in creaturely existence ... and transform it from the inside. This is the process customarily referred to as sanctification. That term ... means "making holy," and the same Latin root can be seen in the word saint, which signifies a holy person ....

When Paul calls his Corinthian friends "sanctified," he means that they are "called to be holy" and so belong to God (1 Cor. 1:22), not that they always do or think the right thing. People who are holy, then, are in the first instance people claimed by God. This means, though, that they are also made open and available to God. God has, as it were, tapped them on the shoulder to get their attention. A conversation has started, and it will be a holy conversation because God has begun it. To be sanctified is to be called to answer God consciously and explicitly, and so to be set apart for God's purposes and (God's) company.

[T]he conversation which God has started with us becomes one which flows more easily and calls up deeper and deeper levels of our selves. In the presence of (God's) Word to us we experience the disturbance of joy, and we reach out to God by agreeing with (God's) Word, by making it our own Word back to (God). Then two things happen. The way we live begins to be shaped from the inside by this internalized Word of God; and the promise of our nature is fulfilled in a sharing fo God's life.

This is the creative transformation promised in God’s commitment to write his law in our hearts, a commitment with which we are called to cooperate.

Another story from the Hebrew Scriptures also speaks of creative and cooperative transformation.

In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, we read the story of God taking Ezekiel to a valley filled with bones. “[T]hese bones,” God says to Ezekiel, “are the whole house of Israel.” (37:11) In God's eyes, his People had become (as the Mayor of Munchkin city describe the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy’s house fell one her) “morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, absolutely, positively, undeniably, and reliably dead!” So dead, were they, that their bones were completely dried up.

God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and that is what Ezekiel does: in the words of that great old Negro spiritual, “Ezekiel cried them dry bones, 'Now hear the word of the Lord.'” So toe bone connected to foot bone, foot bone to ankle bone, ankle bone to leg bone, and so on. Then God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the air, to the breath, to the Spirit, to that irritable and changeable wind that blows where it will. Ezekiel did so “and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” (37:10) And this was not just a rattling of the bones, but a resurrection of the House of Israel for the dry bones did not merely become walking skeletons: they received flesh - muscles and sinews and skin and everything else that goes along with being a living entity.

What we should note about this story is that God doesn't just do this on his own. He has Ezekiel engage in the spiritual practice of prophecy. God and Ezekiel accomplish this movement of air, of breath, of spirit, of life, of resurrection, together.

Charles le Roux, a professor of religious studies at the University of South Africa, has drawn on the Buddhist tradition to offer some insight into this cooperative activity of humans with God to accomplish the creative transformation. He writes:

Casting oneself into the house of God, one is activated by God (in the Spirit) for the Christ-life of resurrected existence – an existence marked by a radical self-giving love which reaches every place in total healing intimacy. With “reaches every place” we make a hermeneutical switchback to Buddhist enlightenment .. and a ... metaphor ... seen in the following story told by Dogen.

Ch'an Teacher Pao-ch'e of Mt. Ma-ku was fanning himself one day when a monk came and asked: “The nature of the wind is always abiding; there is no place to which it does not extend. Why do you still use a fan?”

The master replied: “Although you know only that the nature of the wind is always abiding, you do not yet know the truth that there is no place to which it does not extend.”

The monk said: “What is the meaning of 'there is no place to which it does not extend?'”

The master just kept fanning himself. The monk saluted him.

Now, “the nature of wind is always abiding/constancy,” that is, the Buddha nature cannot be consummated without the act of using a fan (practice). Practice, intrinsic practice is the “fan” that makes the wind of enlightenment eternal and existing everywhere.

Professor le Roux then returns to the Christian understanding:

[B]eing cast into the house of God means that one is activated by God's Spirit (wind) for the Christ-life that reaches every place - the wind of enlightenment existing everywhere. The Christ-event and the Spirit of God/Christ, are the God made known in every place of our life - saving and fulfilling it.

Thus, it is only with our cooperation, our involvement, our practice, our fanning, our giving voice to the prophetic spirit within us that God’s Spirit is truly activated, that God’s Word is written in our hearts, and that we are fully drawn to the lifted-up Christ. Salvation and fulfilment is offered by God, but we must appropriate it through our active cooperation with God. We must set our minds on the Spirit, as Paul suggested to the Romans, or as he put it somewhat differently when he wrote to the Philippians, we must work out our own salvation. God offers creative transformation, we appropriate it through our cooperation.

This is what our gradual psalm today is all about. Listen again to the Psalmist’s words:

How shall a young man cleanse his way? *
By keeping to your words.
With my whole heart I seek you; *
let me not stray from your commandments.
I treasure your promise in my heart, *
that I may not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O Lord; *
instruct me in your statutes.
With my lips will I recite *
all the judgments of your mouth.
I have taken greater delight in the way of your decrees *
than in all manner of riches.
I will meditate on your commandments *
and give attention to your ways.
My delight is in your statutes; *
I will not forget your word. (Ps. 119:9-16)

As we continue our Lenten preparations to celebrate Christ’s glorious Resurrection, let us continue our efforts to keep God’s words, to treasure God’s promise in our heart, to delight in God’s statues, to cooperate in God’s creative transformation of our lives. Amen.

Look Up! Sermon for Lent 4b, March 26, 2007

A website dedicated to safe bicycling includes a list of “top tips” for bike riders. The first of these tips is this: “Raise your vision higher and further. As far as you can see there is information to help you judge what's going to happen next.” (http://www.bikesafe-london.co.uk/toptips.htm) This is what the story of the Brazen Serpent is all about: raising our vision higher, above the immediate problems of the day, so that we can see where we are going. The Episcopal religion writer Phyllis Tickle has paraphrased today’s reading from the Book of Numbers this way:

The Children of Israel had fled Egypt to the accompaniment of mighty signs and wonders and had come to the borders of the Promised Land. Twelve spies were sent across the river into this lush and fertile land, but the reports with which the spies returned were not as promising as the land itself. The country across the Jordan was indeed rich and fecund, they said, but it was also filled with mighty warriors—giants almost in their size and strength. Ten of the scouts said there was no way that the Children, a rag-tag band of exhausted migrants, could conquer, much less evict, such warriors.

But two of the spies filed a different report. Joshua and Caleb said the Children must cross over and enter, for Yahweh had pledged them this land would be the strength of their hands and the defense of their lives. Ten almost always takes precedence over two, however, and the Children of Israel, freshly come from the glory of a parting sea and a Passover angel, decided to follow the advice of the ten fearful scouts. They broke camp and returned to the desert across which they had just come.

Yahweh was angry at this faithlessness and decreed that the Children of Israel were to wander for forty years in that desert they had chosen for themselves, until every single one of the Children, save only Joshua and Caleb, was dead. So they wandered and tested God and one by one they died, until indeed only their children survived.

It was those Children's children, then, whom near to the end of the forty years, Moses, along with Joshua and Caleb, began to lead back toward the Promised Land. But like their progenitors, the men and women of this second generation began also to doubt and complain. They said things like, "Let us go back to Egypt. At least there we were fed, had homes we could live in one place." They said also, "Who of us has seen God? To which of us has he spoken? Who among us can say he or she believes all the tales our fathers and mothers left us? Who?"

And the wrath of Yahweh lashed out against them again. This time, the story says, Yahweh sent snakes into the camps to kill his apostate people. There were droves of snakes moving through the camp of the Children's children…snakes in the tents, snakes in the breadbaskets and the cooking pots, snakes in the bedrolls and snakes in the cribs. Then Moses, falling on his knees, petitioned God's mercy on the Children. God told Moses then to take a consecrated brass vessel at the door of the Tent of Meeting and hammer it quickly into the image of the serpents that were attacking the Children's children. Moses did and he wound the brass snake around the crosspiece of his staff and then he ran through the camp, holding the staff aloft and calling out to the people in the throes of their agony, "Look up! Look up and be saved! Look up! Look up and be saved!"

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus says that this is what his ministry, his life, death, and resurrection are all about. We are all, I’m sure, familiar with at least on verse from today’s Gospel reading. It’s the one some guy with a rainbow wig displays written on a piece of cardboard at, it sometimes seems, every televised sporting event. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” These are good reassuring religious words. But we all too often forget that they were spoken to Nicodemus in the context of a much larger conversation and that there were some words spoken before them: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Writing about one hundred years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, John understands these words to be Jesus’ foreshadowing of his death on the cross, and certainly they can be so understood. But would Nicodemus have understood this before the crucifixion? Probably not.

Nicodemus, rather, would have remembered the story of Moses from the Book of Numbers, the story of how the Children of Israel were saved by raising their vision higher and further, so that as far as they could see there was information to help them judge and understand what was going to happen next. Nicodemus might also have remember the advice set out in the Book of Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish....” (Proverbs 29:18a [KJV]) This would seem to be where Jesus was headed in his conversation with Nicodemus, for he goes on to draw the distinction between those who walk in darkness and thus do evil, and those who walk in light and can see clearly, doing the work of God. Like Moses with the Brazen Serpent, Jesus is telling Nicodemus (and John, by including this story in his Gospel, is telling us) to look up! Stop focusing on the petty problems at our feet and start seeing the vision God has for us.

What is a “vision?” A vision is an idea or an image of a more desirable future for an individual or a group. Ideally, it is so compelling an idea that it, in effect, jump-starts the future by calling forth the skills, talents, and resources to make it happen. Vision always deals with the future. Vision is where tomorrow begins.

Bob Logan, a Baptist church developer with whom I once studied, has a pretty good definition of a "vision" for a religious group. Such a vision, he says, has "the capacity to create a compelling picture of a desired state of affairs that inspires the people to respond." A good vision, says Logan, portrays that "which is desirable, which could be, which should be, and which is attainable." But, he warns, a vision for a religious people must be a "Godly vision."

A Godly vision [he says] is right for the times, right for the church, and right for the people.
A Godly vision promotes faith rather than fear.
A Godly vision motivates people to action.
A Godly vision requires risk-taking.
A Godly vision glorifies God, not people.

Anyone who has driven a car or ridden a bike knows that there is a basic rule which must always be followed; it is the basic rule churchgoers must follow, too. That indisputable rule is the one set forth on the bicycle safety website. Another way to put it is this: “Look where you are going.” All other objects of our attention may be interesting, but they are never to become the preoccupation of the person driving the vehicle or riding the bike or attending church. However beautiful or interesting the scenery or the ambiance of the trip may be, the driver or bike rider or churchgoer, if the journey is to be successful, must watch where he or she is going. Not to keep this rule in mind could well produce some very unsatisfactory results.

Unfortunately, much of our time in the church is spent looking back. We may call this “remembering our heritage,” “reexamining our roots,” “remembering the faith of our forebears,” or even “learning the lessons of history.” This may sound like great fun or an exercise with much value. The memories undoubtedly create for many a wonderful, languid nostalgia. But the past should not unduly influence the future. Hope is a thousand timesbetter than heritage! Try as we will, we cannot chang the past, but with very little effort we cab dramatically alter or effect the presumed future.

Another way of diverting our gaze to listen to those who say, “We must look about us.” It is true that the passing scene through which we are moving is a fascinating thing indeed, especially in our present, amazing world. In these very days and weeks, a tidal wave of things, concepts, events, transpirings has come upon us with attendant, spectacular fascinations. What’s more, interesting events are multiplied by millions via international radio and television and the internet.

But Moses with the Brazen Serpent and Jesus talking to Nicodemus are no more calling us to gaze around at the passing countryside than they are calling us to look down at our feet or to look backward. Rather, that story and this conversation alludes to it are calling us to look up, to look ahead, to get our vision trained on where it belongs – where we are going!

We have a vision for St. Paul’s – a vision to bring people to Jesus Christ through this parish, to add to our “goodly fellowship of the saints” by inviting others to join us in worship, fellowship, study and service. I think this meets Bob Logan’s criteria and is a Godly vision which promotes faith; I hope it is a vision which motivates people to action; I know it is a vision which will require us to take some risks, but which nonetheless is right for the times, right for the church, and right for the people of this parish and of this community.

There is a Japanese proverb which says, “If you look up, there are no limits.” This is why the Son of Man was lifted up, so that we might look up and in him see the vision of what God has in store for us, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life, life without limits. If we look up, there are no limits. Amen.