Stained-glass composition by J. Le Breton (glass studio of Gaudin, Paris), 1933. Cathédrale d'Amiens.

Demons? We’re talking about casting out…demons? We’re Episcopalians; we’re not comfortable with demon talk in Church.

That’s why in the film The Exorcist, the family seeking an exorcism didn’t call for an Episcopal priest to drive out the devil. We’re Anglican’s: we don’t do demons.

Yet here they are in the first Chapter of Mark: And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Believing in demons and devils is one of those “parts of the Bible” that makes many Episcopalians uncomfortable. As it should.

Reading the Bible in a literal sense, reading scripture as if this Gospel is historically accurate, backs you into a corner where you must believe in demons and miracles like the one recounted in today’s Gospel.

That’s why some Christians feel belief in demons is an important part of being a “real” Christian. Their theology suggests this bumper sticker: “Real Christians Believe In Demons.”

That’s not a bumper sticker we would find on many cars in our parking lot. Why? Because as Episcopalians, we tend not read the Bible literally, we tend not to see scripture as history that is historically accurate.

We need to remember the today as we read this teaching from Mark’s Gospel. If we forget, we will wander off into a dense thicket of conflicting theological claims and miss the lesson Jesus was teaching us.

If, for example, you employ Google in a quest to understand demons in Mark, you will soon see that some well intentioned souls have spent time trying to locate where this “events” actually “happened.” They argue about the location of the “deserted place” where Jesus prayed. That’s not the point. It doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant. The Gospel of Mark is not history. It is a story of salvation: yours, mine, ours.

Jesus isn’t playing the first century exorcist here to emphasize the importance of demons in Christian theology. He is teaching us something much subversive: so subversive his lesson must be told in terms of demons miracle cures to survive in the Roman Empire; subversive enough that some misdirect our attention to avoid the point.

One popular misdirection of our attention is the claim this lesson reinforces the role of women as cooks and housekeepers. But in real life, Jesus doesn’t support the patriarchal hierarchy in the first century. Why would we think he supports the patriarchal hierarchy in the 21^st century?

Another way to read this lesson is to focus out attention on the contrast between how Simon’s mother-in-law responds to Jesus and the way the Simon reacts. Simon’s mother in law gets what Jesus is up to: when she is healed she gets up and begins serving others. She shows us – and Simeon – how following Jesus centers on serving others. Simon, and the other disciples, often does not get what Jesus is saying – at least not in the Gospel of Mark.

Still, it is hard for us in the 21^st century to understand how radical Jesus is being in Mark. He is a nobody – he is not the first born son of a priestly family, he is not even a native of Jerusalem – yet Jesus is going “throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” Mark tells us Jesus is teaching with authority and healing people. Teaching and healing: healing and teaching: in those words stand the core of Jesus’ ministry, the example of how we live as disciples of Jesus the Christ.

In his book Who is Jesus: Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan writes: “Jesus not only discussed the Kingdom of God, [he] enacted it, and that enacting meant healing people in a context that posed a challenge to both social authorities and imperial power.”

“Jesus not only discussed the Kingdom of God, [Jesus] enacted it.” That is still a radical idea.

Perhaps that is the lesson of this Gospel story, a tale written in a time of great persecution of the Christian community in Rome. Perhaps here Mark shows Jesus calling us to follow him in both discussing and enacting the Kingdom of God, right here in Alameda, right here in Christ Church, right here in our lives.

How do we discuss and enact the Kingdom of God?

By healing people, by bringing healing to our part of the world, by being a healing presence for those we encounter, those we love, and perhaps even those with whom we disagree.

What would this world look like if the world’s Christians focused on healing the community where they live?

What would our church look like if we offered healing to our neighborhood and our community? What would our lives look like we oriented our spiritual life around healing others and ourselves? These questions point us toward a new way thinking and talking and being Christian, a way of welcome instead of judgment, of healing instead of hurting.

This vision is a radical for our time as Jesus was in the first century. Far too many of our brothers and sisters have been injured by self-proclaimed Christians. Too many are still being pained by the pronouncements of pontiffs and preachers, pontiffs and preachers who miss this central teaching: the Kingdom of God centers on healing – not hurting – people.

The exception proves my point. In an online post  this week, the president of a California-based group called USA Christian Ministries claimed all Christians and their churches should boycott Starbucks because Starbucks Hates God.

“Starbucks can follow Satan if they want to,” he thundered before hoping “Christians will quickly share this boycott with their church.” He also argued that “pastors across the USA should speak up.”

So I am doing my part here today: I am quickly sharing word of this boycott; and I am speaking up. USA Christian Ministries continues: “Don’t expect to hear sermons with ‘grab your Starbucks’ or to see Starbucks served at churches. Starbucks is no longer fashionable.”

All this is in response to Starbuck’s support for a same gender marriage bill under consideration in Washington State.

I am not here to tell you to boycott this coffee company or buy from that coffee company. No: when preaching, I wouldn‘t tell anyone here not to “grab your Starbucks.”

I recognize and respect the diversity of deeply held personal opinions in our congregation. I know better than to take a firm position on sensitive issues and deeply held personal beliefs while preaching.

So let me be clear: there no way I am going to tell anyone in this parish they should “grab your Peets” instead of Starbucks or “grab your Julie’s coffee instead of Starbucks,” or “grab your Blue Dot coffee instead of Starbucks.” I am simply not going to walk into the minefield of personal coffee preferences. Not when I am preaching.

Of course, I’m not really just talking about coffee. I am pointing out how some Christians continue to use scripture to claim that others are just not good enough to be Christians and must therefore be excluded from the Body of Christ. I am pointing to the pain caused by this kind of misreading of the Gospel, to the kind of teaching that enables pastors to play God. And I am contrasting “read scripture my way or you are not a Christian” theology with the theology of this Episcopal Church.

Whether we are talking about same sex marriage or Planned Parenthood or the best coffee in Alameda, people in our congregation hold a wide range of opinions. And that is OK – no it is more than OK: diversity of opinion is a very good thing.

If God wanted us to all agree on everything, then the Yellow Pages would not list an array of Christian churches that ranges from A for Assembly of God and B for Baptist through E for Episcopal and L for Lutheran to O for Orthodox and R for Roman Catholic. Etc, Etc. Etc..

How do we discuss and enact the Kingdom of God? God has helped us fashion our church into one of the few places around where people with wildly differing beliefs can be in community. Our challenge is not to all think alike, but rather to be a safe place where a range of opinions are voiced and respected. This may be one of the most important ways we help people heal: by showing how divergent beliefs in can be safely heard and respected in community.

As for Starbucks, well, Valentine’s Day is coming up later this month. Back on Valentine’s Day in 2009, Alex and I stood with family and friends in St. Bede’s Episcopal Church for the blessing of our civil marriage. I wouldn’t be surprised if this year his anniversary present includes a pound of Starbucks coffee. Nor would I be surprised if my path follows in the footsteps of Simeon’s mother, following the way T. S. Eliot described in this way:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.

Let us pray that our lives together reflect the “sharp compassion of the healer’s art” on this and every day. Lets us go forth, rejoicing, to heal the world one day at a time. May the people of God say: Amen.

—————–

Preached at Grace Cathedral Auguust 4, 2009.

Today we remember three artists whose paintings “helped the peoples of their age understand the full suffering and glory of your incarnate Son.” They painted a human face on Christ, one their contemporaries could recognize.

All three of these men lived in during the mid 1550s, when the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation swept across Northern Europe. Paintings of Jesus by these three men are a dramatic change from the older styles.

These new works seem to be “paintings that preach Christ.” Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting that stands over the altar at the St. Peter and Paul Church in Weimar, Germany is marked by radiance and realism.

Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, Alsace puts a human face on the Crucifixion of our Lord.

Albrecht Duerer's Lamentation for Christ

Albrecht Durer’s Lamentation for Christ, a painting showing Jesus being taken down from the cross, makes clear with chilling realism that this Messiah is truly dead. Each of these artists painted a human Jesus, one which their contemporaries could recognize.

Looking at images of Jesus though the time makes this much clear: through the ages, many people think Jesus looks very much like them.

Think about it: in icons from the Greek Orthodox Church, doesn’t Jesus look just a little … Greek?

In altar panels from medieval Italian churches, doesn’t Jesus look just a little … Italian?

Remember The Head of Christ by Chicago illustrator Warren Sallman – the one that has sold more than 500 million copies – and ask yourself if Jesus doesn’t look just a little like a white Anglo-Saxon protestant who grew up in Chicago?

Back in 2002 British scientists, assisted by Israeli archaeologists, used modern forensic science to envision the dace of Jesus. At least their image looked like a Palestinian Jesus and not a blond, blue eyed Jesus.

We can never know what Jesus really looked like. Some would say all we have to do to see Jesus is to look at the stained glass in this great cathedral. But I say we must look elsewhere. Some would say we can see Jesus in icons that have been venerated for centuries. But I say we must look elsewhere. Some would say we can see Jesus in paintings by great artists. But I say we must look elsewhere.

I see Jesus in the face of another person: perhaps a woman picking up food for her family at the church or a husband holding the hand of his dying wife or a person surprised by an act of kindness from a passing stranger. That’s where I see Jesus.

Typically this is where I would tell a story from parish life or my work as a hospital chaplain to bring these words to life. Today is different.

Yesterday I was driving down the Peninsula to pick up a prayer blanket from the quilters of the Church of the Epiphany and deliver it to a woman who is fighting for her life in an intensive care unit.

I was stopped waiting for a light to change, glad for the breeze flowing through my open windows – I haven’t had air conditioning in that car since I started seminary- when a little red Subaru pulled up in the next lane. I was sitting there contemplating my place in the universe when the driver of the little red Subaru yelled out “Go Giants!”

I almost jumped out of my seat. I looked over and the other driver explained “I’m going to the game today!” He had a smile on his face that reminded me of a boy who has just been given the puppy he always wanted.

I’m not much of a sports fan – I barely know who the Giants are – but I had to say something. So I said: “You’re going to the Giants game.”

“Yes!” he said. “This morning I was in South Tahoe and now I’m here and going to the game!”

“You drove all the way from South Tahoe to go to the Giants Game – you are a big fan of the Giants,” I said.

“Well the Giants and the Cardinals,” he replied. “My Dad pitched for the Cardinals in the 60s, but then he quit and went to business school.” His obvious lack of enthusiasm for business school said a lot.

“That happens to a lot of good people,” I ventured. “But it is a great day to go a Giants game.”

“Yeah: it is!” The radiant smile returned.

The light changed, and as he drove away I said “Go Giants!” – and that is undoubtedly why the Giants ended their five-game losing streak yesterday with an 8-1 victory over the Arizonian Diamondbacks. Whoever they are.

What strikes me is that, while stopped at an intersection for a few short minutes, I heard another person speak his truth, and his joy. For that short time the barriers that keep us from sharing what is really important in our lives disappeared and we had real conversation, conversation about something that animates part of another man’s life.

The radiance in his face illuminated a side of Jesus I don’t often see as a hospital chaplain. For no one calls the chaplain to rejoice when a baby is born healthy, we are only called to help cope with tragedy.

It is easy for a preacher to say: go look for Jesus in the hungry or the sick or the poor. God is bigger than that: God is bigger than suffering. God takes delight in God’s creation. God enjoys our company. It is harder to say: rejoice with someone who is radiant with happiness. It is difficult to preach that you can bump into God while being filled with joy.

Today we will share a meal at this table and then head out to do the work God has given us to do. May we be open to both the suffering and joy of our brothers and sisters as we live our lives looking to see Jesus in the faces and lives of others. Perhaps this is exactly what the artists we remember did when they painted a human face on Christ, one their contemporaries could recognize. May we do as well in our time and place.

Let the people say Amen.

And “Go Giants!”

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by Wilhelm Morgner

Today we mark a day distinguished by two very different processions that entered Jerusalem many years ago. One, comprised of cavalry with shiny armor and troops with weapons gleaming in the sun, heralded the return of Pontius Pilate to the holy city. His was not a pilgrimage of faith: instead the Roman governor wanted to impress crowds gathering for the high holidays. His message was a show of pomp and power that clearly said anyone disturbing his status quo would be crushed.

As the Governor appointed by the Roman Emperor, Pilate gave little thought to ideas of justice voiced in by Israel’s ancient prophets or men like John the Baptizer. Pilate’s priority was simple: maintain the status quo established in Rome. To do this he worked through the High Priest and Temple system of worship. Thus the Roman Governor appointed the high priest, and the governor could dismiss him and name a replacement at will. Unsurprisingly, the High Priest was more concerned with the words of Pilate rather than Jeremiah or Isaiah.

The second procession was more in tune with, and in fact was designed to fulfill, an ancient prophecy. “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Led by Jesus, this parade was the polar opposite of Pilate’s grand entry. It aimed to remind people of that God’s vision of justice had not yet arrived. This parade echoes the prophetic themes we heard on Ash Wednesday when we began our journey through Lent. Remember Ash Wednesday?

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” Isaiah asked in our Ash Wednesday reading.

“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Isaiah said on Ash Wednesday.  That is the kind of change the prophets – and Jesus – sought: a revolution of the spiritual status quo. So the procession into Jerusalem we commemorate today presented Jesus as a king, but not the earthly monarch embodied by the Roman emperor. Instead, Jesus’ claim challenged the religious role of the High Priest and the place of the Temple as the center of Jewish religious life.

Perhaps that’s why Pilate did not take the lead in arresting Jesus: the Roman governor could see that Jesus was threatening the Temple system but not Rome’s imperial power. Had Jesus threatened the empire, Pilate would never have tried to release him in place of Barabbas.

Today it is hard to gauge the extent of the threat Jesus posed to the Temple system. Then, if a man born blind wanted to atone for his sins – say to seek God’s forgiveness and so gain his sight –he would travel to Jerusalem and make a sacrifice in the Temple. But Jesus the radical rabbi healed this man born blind far from the Temple and without requiring any Temple sacrifice. The triumphal entry of Jesus into this holy city was another volley in a centuries old conflict. On one side were those like the high priest who sought Godliness through temple worship. On the other stood those who – like the prophets and Jesus – centered worshipping God by living a just life. One group wanted to maintain the religious status quo of temple worship. The other worked to change the way people live, to make so radical a change that, to paraphrase Amos, justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

What are we to make of this today here in Alameda? Answering this question reminds me of a story. When planning my time in seminary, I decided to try and learn three things: how to worship like an Anglican, study scripture like a rabbi, and preach like a Baptist. So I studied homiletics at the American Baptist Seminary of the West with the Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Senor, pastor of the Allen Baptist Temple in Oakland.

Each Wednesday Dr. Smith would walk in slowly and begin speaking quietly. Then he would build up momentum and begin teaching. Then he would build up momentum and begin preaching. Then, an hour and a half later, he would suggest we take a break. His class always seemed to speed by as we

In one of his lectures, Dr. Smith told us of his favorite Palm Sunday sermon. The sermon started, Dr, Smith said, by retelling the Gospel story of the puzzling Palm Sunday procession. Jesus decides to ride into Jerusalem so he sends two disciples off to fetch the colt of a donkey. The men do as they are told and return with the donkey. Jesus rides the donkey into Jerusalem. It must have been a slow trip: the road was crowded with other pilgrims, and all along the way people “spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.” Others raced ahead shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

All that putting down of cloaks and palms and crying Hosanna must have taken a long time. So it seems safe to say that day was drawing to a close when Jesus finally arrived. As his procession stopped some asked “Who is this?” and the crowd answered, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

I can almost see the scene now. It is that time just before sunset when the all creation is bathed in a special luminescent light, a light that can cause even a plain stucco wall to glow and appear beautiful and almost alive. Jesus rides up, the donkey stops, and people begin to quiet down. Soon the street is quiet, filled with people peering over each other’s shoulder to see what will happen next. The disciples pause and turn to watch silently, wondering what will happen next. Above all heaven holds its breath as angels and archangels wonder what will happen next. Even the little donkey turns his head toward Jesus, almost asking what will happen next.

For nothing can happen ¾ no crucifixion, no resurrection, no redemption ¾ nothing can happen until Jesus gets up off his donkey and changes all creation. Nothing happens until Jesus gets up off his donkey. That is what Dr. Smith preached and he is right.

That’s also true for you and me. We’ve just completed our personal journey through the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent. Some of us have been challenged by giving things up while others by taking new things on; some of us have been challenged by sermons or classes while others have found spiritual challenges in the day’s news.

That’s what Lent is about: challenging our spiritual status quo: the status quo that keeps each of us from doing those things which we know we ought to do and allows us to do those things that we know we ought not do.

Palm Sunday is about responding to the challenge of Lent, it is about taking what we have learned or relearned and applying it to change the status quo of our spiritual life. Responding to Lent may even bring about change that allows us to live more justly. We can ride thru Lent on a donkey, but when we reach Palm Sunday we face the same dilemma as Jesus: nothing will happen until we get up off the donkey and embrace change.

My task this morning is not to tell you what to change. Instead my goal is to remind you we cannot find the new life of Easter without first going thru Lent and then getting up off our own donkey. That is the path Jesus walked: let us walk it together during this Holy Week.

Lets us pray. Caught between joy and despair, we yearn for the fulfillment of God’s desire beyond the brokenness and neediness of this life. Lord, heal us and help us move beyond our past and be the people you created us to be. God of wilderness and water, your Son was baptized and tempted as are we. Guide us through the holy week ahead, that we may not avoid struggle or change, but open ourselves to blessing, renewal and growth, through the cleansing depths of repentance and the heaven-rending words of the Spirit. Amen.

Today we mark a day distinguished by two very different processions that entered Jerusalem many years ago. One, comprised of cavalry with shiny armor and troops with weapons gleaming in the sun, heralded the return of Pontius Pilate to the holy city. His was not a pilgrimage of faith: instead the Roman governor wanted to impress crowds gathering for the high holidays. His message was a show of pomp and power that clearly said anyone disturbing his status quo would be crushed.

As the Governor appointed by the Roman Emperor, Pilate gave little thought to ideas of justice voiced in by Israel’s ancient prophets or men like John the Baptizer. Pilate’s priority was simple: maintain the status quo established in Rome. To do this he worked through the High Priest and Temple system of worship. Thus the Roman Governor appointed the high priest, and the governor could dismiss him and name a replacement at will. Unsurprisingly, the High Priest was more concerned with the words of Pilate rather than Jeremiah or Isaiah.

The second procession was more in tune with, and in fact was designed to fulfill, an ancient prophecy. “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Led by Jesus, this parade was the polar opposite of Pilate’s grand entry. It aimed to remind people of that God’s vision of justice had not yet arrived. This parade echoes the prophetic themes we heard on Ash Wednesday when we began our journey through Lent. Remember Ash Wednesday?

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” Isaiah asked in our Ash Wednesday reading.

“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Isaiah said on Ash Wednesday.  That is the kind of change the prophets – and Jesus – sought: a revolution of the spiritual status quo. So the procession into Jerusalem we commemorate today presented Jesus as a king, but not the earthly monarch embodied by the Roman emperor. Instead, Jesus’ claim challenged the religious role of the High Priest and the place of the Temple as the center of Jewish religious life.

Perhaps that’s why Pilate did not take the lead in arresting Jesus: the Roman governor could see that Jesus was threatening the Temple system but not Rome’s imperial power. Had Jesus threatened the empire, Pilate would never have tried to release him in place of Barabbas.

Today it is hard to gauge the extent of the threat Jesus posed to the Temple system. Then, if a man born blind wanted to atone for his sins – say to seek God’s forgiveness and so gain his sight –he would travel to Jerusalem and make a sacrifice in the Temple. But Jesus the radical rabbi healed this man born blind far from the Temple and without requiring any Temple sacrifice. The triumphal entry of Jesus into this holy city was another volley in a centuries old conflict. On one side were those like the high priest who sought Godliness through temple worship. On the other stood those who – like the prophets and Jesus – centered worshipping God by living a just life. One group wanted to maintain the religious status quo of temple worship. The other worked to change the way people live, to make so radical a change that, to paraphrase Amos, justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

What are we to make of this today here in Alameda? Answering this question reminds me of a story. When planning my time in seminary, I decided to try and learn three things: how to worship like an Anglican, study scripture like a rabbi, and preach like a Baptist. So I studied homiletics at the American Baptist Seminary of the West with the Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Senor, pastor of the Allen Baptist Temple in Oakland.

Each Wednesday Dr. Smith would walk in slowly and begin speaking quietly. Then he would build up momentum and begin teaching. Then he would build up momentum and begin preaching. Then, an hour and a half later, he would suggest we take a break. His class always seemed to speed by as we

In one of his lectures, Dr. Smith told us of his favorite Palm Sunday sermon. The sermon started, Dr, Smith said, by retelling the Gospel story of the puzzling Palm Sunday procession. Jesus decides to ride into Jerusalem so he sends two disciples off to fetch the colt of a donkey. The men do as they are told and return with the donkey. Jesus rides the donkey into Jerusalem. It must have been a slow trip: the road was crowded with other pilgrims, and all along the way people “spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.” Others raced ahead shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

All that putting down of cloaks and palms and crying Hosanna must have taken a long time. So it seems safe to say that day was drawing to a close when Jesus finally arrived. As his procession stopped some asked “Who is this?” and the crowd answered, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

I can almost see the scene now. It is that time just before sunset when the all creation is bathed in a special luminescent light, a light that can cause even a plain stucco wall to glow and appear beautiful and almost alive. Jesus rides up, the donkey stops, and people begin to quiet down. Soon the street is quiet, filled with people peering over each other’s shoulder to see what will happen next. The disciples pause and turn to watch silently, wondering what will happen next. Above all heaven holds its breath as angels and archangels wonder what will happen next. Even the little donkey turns his head toward Jesus, almost asking what will happen next.

For nothing can happen ¾ no crucifixion, no resurrection, no redemption ¾ nothing can happen until Jesus gets up off his donkey and changes all creation. Nothing happens until Jesus gets up off his donkey. That is what Dr. Smith preached and he is right.

That’s also true for you and me. We’ve just completed our personal journey through the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent. Some of us have been challenged by giving things up while others by taking new things on; some of us have been challenged by sermons or classes while others have found spiritual challenges in the day’s news.

That’s what Lent is about: challenging our spiritual status quo: the status quo that keeps each of us from doing those things which we know we ought to do and allows us to do those things that we know we ought not do.

Palm Sunday is about responding to the challenge of Lent, it is about taking what we have learned or relearned and applying it to change the status quo of our spiritual life. Responding to Lent may even bring about change that allows us to live more justly. We can ride thru Lent on a donkey, but when we reach Palm Sunday we face the same dilemma as Jesus: nothing will happen until we get up off the donkey and embrace change.

My task this morning is not to tell you what to change. Instead my goal is to remind you we cannot find the new life of Easter without first going thru Lent and then getting up off our own donkey. That is the path Jesus walked: let us walk it together during this Holy Week.

Lets us pray. Caught between joy and despair, we yearn for the fulfillment of God’s desire beyond the brokenness and neediness of this life. Lord, heal us and help us move beyond our past and be the people you created us to be. God of wilderness and water, your Son was baptized and tempted as are we. Guide us through the holy week ahead, that we may not avoid struggle or change, but open ourselves to blessing, renewal and growth, through the cleansing depths of repentance and the heaven-rending words of the Spirit. Amen.

—————————————

Jesus said: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”(1)

My father and his first born son, Wallace Jr.

My father was a man of finite resources and infinite resourcefulness, a man schooled and shaped in the urban chaos we call New York. You have to understand he was a city boy for the rest of this to make any sense. His memory of New York was so ingrained that, toward the end of the ‘50s, when he took me to revisit his youth in New York City we visited only three places.

First we went to the Statute of Liberty where he said “the boat ride over is better than the Circle Line and you get to see what Great Grandma Martin saw when she first sailed over from the old country.” Then past the neon lights of Times Square to Radio City Music Hall where he said: “the last vestige of the vaudeville shows I used to see when I cut class at Cooper-Union.” Finally we dined at the Automat where he said: “when I couldn’t afford to eat, I came to this condiment table to make a sandwich of bread and butter and then went to that counter to make lemonade from water and the lemons left out for use with ice tea.” To this day I prefer a slice of lemon in my water, a remembrance of that day in New York.

My father was such a city man he eschewed camping for most of my years in Scouting. His idea of roughing it was a motel. But our troop required that each parent camp out with their son on an annual basis. This was a problem for me.  So I carefully delayed my Dad’s first camp out until the troop’s first spring excursion. We were camping in Fort A. P. Hill – a fort so far south it was named for a famous Confederate general. I was sure it would be warm and comfortable enough for Dad to have a good camping experience.

On the first night it started snowing. All night long the snow fell. Dad slept in the car, turning it on when he got too cold so the heater would work. Next morning the Scoutmaster – who had been a movie stunt double for Tarzan – complained about the “wimp” who kept running their car all night. I never expected Dad to camp again.
So you can imagine my surprise a decade when later my father – this child of the Big Apple – decided we would vacation by camping out for a week alongside Maine’s Moosehead Lake. I was stunned. As the lone Eagle Scout of our family, I felt responsible for saving the family from this bad decision. So I spent the first day rushing about to get the campsite ship-shape.

After dark, after I turned off the Coleman lantern and was about to turn in, Dad called me down to the lake. I started down with my flashlight but he said “Turn off your light.” I did and soon arrived at the dock where he stood.

He waited for my eyes to adjust to the night. There wasn’t a single electric light in sight. Yet on that clear cold New England night it was not dark.

“Look up,” he said. And there, cast against the infinite blackness of interstellar space, were more stars than I ever imagined: millions and millions– no billions and billions of stars. I stood in silent awe of God’s heavens.

“Look down,” he said. And there, reflected on the still surface of the dark water, were just as many stars. I was struck dumb. We stood there, impervious to the cold, silent for the first time in memory, and watched with abject wonder.

Neither of us had ever seen as dark a void nor as many stars. We were as far as one can go from the lights and sounds and constant activity of New York City. Standing at the water’s edge, I wondered: is God the nothing of space, the blackness against which we see the stars; or is God in the light reflected from the stars; or is God the stars themselves; or is God all of these things? I wondered: how small is my place in God’s great and unbounded universe. I stopped thinking. Slowly, as my sense of self ebbed, I felt one with all creation. I was safe, I was home; I was in perfectly still, speechless and in awe.

Listen to what the great Jewish teacher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshel said about awe:

“Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.…Awe is a sense of the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe…Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. ” (2)

Heschel – who was a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – says that awe enables us to sense in small things – and few things appear smaller than stars far above us in the darkness of interstellar space – we can also begin to sense the stirrings of infinite significance. I remember that night when I look up at the stars above Alameda’s beach. I remember my sense of awe of that night long ago.

I also recall that for millennia these same stars that suggest the infinite majesty of God have also served as points of reference enabling sailors to navigate across the sea and traders to find their way across the desert. Could we serve a similar function for people today? Could our lives enlighten the darkness around us? Could our good deeds serve as points of reference for those who are adrift, those who search for spirituality, those who as scripture says, live in darkness?

Remember that gospel song:

This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine.

Jesus says we are the light of the world.

Jesus says we are to let our light shine before others, so that they may see our good works and know God.

Jesus says we are to be like those stars, our good works reflecting God’s light so others may navigate through treacherous times and high seas.

Jesus says our reflected light will give glory to our Father in heaven, that together the light of our lives may be awe-inspiring, enabling others to find their faith and find their connection to God.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Heschel wrote: God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.” (3)  Jesus calls us to be people of light, so our lives may help others see the light that is God and know that God is good. That’s what Jesus says in today’s Gospel. Today in Alameda we say:

This little light of ours,
We’re gonna let it shine
Let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine.

Let us pray: Perfect Light of revelation, as you shone in the life of Jesus, whose epiphany we celebrate, so shine in us and through us, that we may become beacons of truth and compassion, enlightening all creation with deeds of justice and mercy and illuminating a way to you.
Let the people say: Amen.

Preached by the Rev. Thomas C. Jackson At Christ Church Alameda Feb. 6, 2011

(1) New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Matthew 5:13-20.
(2) Abraham Heschel, Who Is Man? (West Memorial Lecture) (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), 88-89.
(3) Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 75.

Christ the Good Shepherd, from 5th century, In Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna

Welcome to ‘Good Shepherd Sunday.’

You may have noticed this theme already in our worship. I grew up amidst a plethora of Victorian prints portraying Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus the Good Shepherd was nailed to the Sunday School wall, an aging print showing Jesus with a cute little lamb in one hand and a shepherd’s crook in the other, gazing benevolently at us with his piercing blue eyes, the sun shining on his light brown hair and making his skin look almost glow in its whiteness. Now you can understand why in recent years some have searched to recover the “historical Jesus.”

Coming of age in this setting prevented me from really appreciating the 23^rd Psalm. Even in seminary, our class on the psalms gave short shrift to number 23, for “it has already been done to death.”

I didn’t focus on this psalm until last summer, when Father Hester, the Roman Catholic Chaplain at Stanford Hospital, asked me to help with a patient in the ICU who was terminally ill. Over the course of the week, Fr. Hester and I spent time with the family as they came to grips with the young man’s approaching death. Fr. Hester and I led a short bedside service before the machine stopped breathing for our unconscious patient. We both returned after he passed away to say a few prayers. I walked into the room, now strangely silent, and Fr Hester said: “Here: they want you to read the 23d Psalm.” So I walked to the foot of the bed, paused to at the family members gathered around, and began to read:

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.

3 He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.

4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Somewhere during the psalm, the patient’s mother-in-law began to weep quietly. And the dead man’s mother, whose grief had fueled vitriolic attacks on almost everyone in the room, walked over and embraced the sobbing woman, holding her in a heartbreaking gesture of sorrow and compassion. I remember them now whenever I think of the 23^rd psalm, or of Jesus as the good shepherd, or how we are each called at times to be a good shepherd of each other.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus seems quite taken with the good shepherd metaphor. He paints a beautiful picture of the Good Shepherd, saying: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

But the people Jesus is speaking to don’t seem to understand this metaphor. Perhaps they were people who knew about sheep, people like my friend Jesse in the Lutheran seminary who grew up on a ranch where sheep were raised. Jesse says the only thing sheep are good at is finding new ways to commit suicide. That’s a novel way of saying sheep are not as smart as cats. Perhaps that’s why those first century folk didn’t like that first vision of Jesus as a good shepherd.

So Jesus tries again, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep….I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” Unfortunately, gates only work in a fence or a wall. Remember the words of Robert Frost in his poem Mending Wall:

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’”

Metaphorically speaking, Jesus may have seen himself as the gate for those seeking a closer walk with God. But like Frost, Jesus seems to be one “that doesn’t love a wall,” who wants us to tear down the walls that separate one from another and from God, At the very least Jesus was one of those who stood with those on the wrong side of the wall, the poor, the marginalized, the “other.” But Jesus “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

The gate metaphor was apparently understood by Jesus’ audience. But over time it changed from metaphor to – in the eyes of some – a literal fact. Focusing on the gate, some early Church fathers felt empowered to serve as gatekeepers. As if they could control Jesus. But Jesus “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

In time, Church fathers moved farther from Jesus as Good Shepherd. Instead, they declared that joining their church was the only way to gain salvation, attain spiritual enlightenment, or “get into heaven.” Non-Christians stood outside the gate, condemned to damnation. In time those outside the church were viewed as less than human, “godless infidels,” Jews stood outside the church gate. Muslims stood outside the church gate. Thus Christian theology justified, no sanctified, massacres of Jews and killing Muslims in the Crusades.

Today we still hear some Christians say that anyone who is not “born again in Jesus” cannot gain salvation, attain spiritual enlightenment, or “get into heaven.” The Dali Lama stands outside their church gate. Others say that you have to belong to their church to gain salvation. Desmond Tutu stands outside their church gate. Others say that even if you are part of their church, you have to abide by their way of reading the Bible to gain salvation. New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson stands outside their church gate. As do many of us. As Bishop Gene recently noted, Jesus always stands with us outside their church gate. Remember: Jesus “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

The question of gates and who is in and who is out is important as we move toward this summer’s Lambeth Conference. There, Anglican bishops from around the world will gather to study scripture, worship together and …. well, we don’t really know what else the bishops will do. Optimists see a half full glass: a Lambeth where American bishops could explain why we have an openly gay bishop and measures are not passed to inflame the situation. After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said he does not want any major resolutions approved at this gathering. Pessimists, however, see a half-empty glass, one where the schedule could allow another round of last minute resolution making to slip beyond the archbishop’s control. I am cautiously optimistic, which means I am praying for the best and organizing for the worst.

Claiming the Blessing folks await dinner in Bishop Gene's home

Preparing for Lambeth, the Claiming the Blessing board met in New Hampshire. Claiming the Blessing is a coordinating forum of leaders who work for the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments. That night, we celebrated at the home of Bishop Gene and his partner Mark Andrew. Together, they cooked us a meal from the Sliver Palette Cookbook. You see, we needed to have a gay bishop in order to have a man who can cook in the House of Bishops! Sitting around Gene and Mark’s dining room table, we were, a lot like those mentioned in our lesson today from Acts, for we “broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God.”

Mark and Gene

After the meal, we had a shower of sorts for the boys in preparation for the upcoming blessing of their civil union. I wish I could describe the delight in their eyes as they opened the card from St. Johns and promptly pinned on their purple More Love buttons. A photo of the happy couple is on the St. John’s Facebook page, More Love buttons firmly attached and card in hand.

Preparing for Lambeth – and visiting my youngest daughter – I spent a week in London last month. I was surprised to realize that Anglicans outside North America understand why we have a gay bishop of New Hampshire. They Know Bishop Gene was elected by a majority of the clergy and lay leadership of that diocese. They also don’t know New Hampshire is not a hotbed of gay activism. They don’t know that Gene Robinson was elected because people wanted him to be their bishop, not that they wanted to make a point and elect the first openly gay bishop. They don’t know because we haven’t told them, we have not been able to work through the Listening Process, a process started almost a decade ago to put human faces on our story.

Preparing for Lambeth, Oasis California has just launched Letters to Lambeth, a web site that enables you to tell your faith story to those at the Lambeth Conference who will listen. You can tell what it is like to be Episcopal and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Or you can tell what it is like to be a straight member of a congregation with many LGBT people. We’ll take your story and deliver it by hand to the Lambeth listening project. If you like we’ll post it on the Letters to Lambeth website to encourage more people to tell their story. You can tell your story anonymously. Or you can tell us to use your first name or send us a picture to include or a link to a video of you telling your story on YouTube or a similar service. It’s a way that you and I, who are free to live an open life, can serve as a good shepherd to others who cannot. Please remember this request is firmly in the Anglican tradition that “all may, some should, none must.”

I thought of inviting you to join in preparations for Lambeth while I was doing the most dangerous thing a seminarian can do: reading. To be specific, I was reading for a course titled “God: Postmodern and Eco-feminist Approaches” Richard Kearney wrote the book, titled “The God Who May Be.” At the bottom of page 51, Kearny took my breath away. He wrote:

“The message of transfiguration is so easily disfigured. How ironic it is to observe that so many monotheistic followers are still failing to recognize the message: that God speaks not through movements of power and pomp but in stories and acts of love and justice, the giving to the least of creatures, the caring for orphans, widows and strangers; stories and acts which bear testimony – as transfiguring gestures do – to that God of little things that comes and goes, like the thin small voice, like the burning bush, like the voice crying out in the wilderness, like the word made flesh, like the wind that blows where it will.”

Or perhaps like the good shepherd in all of us, the one prompting us to do justice, to help others, to speak for those who cannot be heard, to stand out for those who cannot. For, it is Jesus who “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out,” calls us to be both his sheep and good shepherds to each other, calls us to do justice and walk humbly with our God.

When Jesus calls, will you follow?

Preached on April 13, 2008 in the Church of St. John  the Evangelist, San Francisco, CA.

Photos by author and:

On the day appointed a venerable priest who preached once a month rose to the pulpit on Trinity Sunday. “This is Trinity Sunday, a day of great theological significance in our faith. Much has been written about the Trinity, many sermons have been preached about the Trinity. It is a very important element of our theology.” He paused for effect. “In fact, it is so important that, if you have any questions at all about the Trinity,” he here paused and scanned the congregation, “any questions at all – I encourage you to … talk to the rector. Because my sermon today is not going to be about the Trinity.” And it wasn’t.

I thought briefly of using this approach today, but then our rector sent me an e-mail saying “I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the Trinity!” So I am forced today to talk with you about the Trinity. Whole forests have been leveled to make paper for the thousands of papers written about the Trinity. Saints and world famous theologians have preached on it. So where do we begin discussing what the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes as “the central dogma of Christian theology,” this formulation of the one God as the unity of three persons: “Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”

Perhaps we should follow Richard Hooker’s approach. Hooker was one of the great Anglican theologians who formed Anglican theology. Living during the Elizabethan era, he suggested we use scripture as our foundation and then apply as vitally important authorities both reason and tradition. Using Hooker’s approach, what can the scripture appointed for today tell us about the Trinity?

Painted in 1400 by St. Andreĭ Rublev, ( d. ca. 1430) this illustrates the medival, patriarchial view of the Holy Trininty.

Together today’s sacred texts tell us of encountering each of the three entities in the Trinity. In the first, Isaiah is commissioned to serve as God’s prophet. One of the Psalms appointed for today – Psalm 29 – paints a stirring picture of encountering God’s power. In today’s Epistle from Romans, Paul says all who “are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” and “joint heirs with Christ.” In our Gospel, John tells us: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  But what does this tell us of the Trinity?

Perhaps our problem in looking to scripture is that the word “Trinity” never appears in the Bible. In fact, the first use of “Trinity” in reference to God was made by Tertullian, an early church father and ecclesiastical writer in the second and third centuries,. Although early stages of development of this idea can be seen in Christian scripture, our formulation of the Trinity evolved during the first few centuries of the Common Era. While some see the Trinity reflected in Matthew 28:19 (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”) our concept of the Trinity did not come into clear focus until the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. Efforts to find in Christian scripture a detailed description of the Trinity as we understand it are thus destined to wander endlessly in search of a definite text. Quests to find proof of the Christian Trinity in the Jewish scripture of the “Old Testament” are doomed to be seen as retrospective interpretations of dubious merit. Can Christians really expect that Isaiah, the great prophet of Israel, was thinking of our idea of the Trinity when he wrote of his encounter with the divine? Such a Christian-centric approach to Jewish sacred text boggles my mind.

Following Hooker’s dictum, we should now augment scripture with reason and tradition. But how can we apply reason to the Trinity, the idea that the one God is three persons. Logically, that sounds like a contradiction in terms. Reason and logic help us know things: how many apples are in the bowl, what is likely to happen if we turn on the light switch, what 2 plus 2 equals. Is the Trinity something we can know through logic and reason? Or is it a mystery, something we accept by faith?

Star Trek’s Spock would find the Trinity “highly illogical.” And he would be right: we believe in the Trinity by the power of faith, not reason. To be able to fully understand the Trinity, we would need the mind of God. The first thing I learned in Seminary is a that we are not God. Thus developing a reasonable description of the Trinity seems impossible. What we cannot know about God we can only accept through faith. As Jesus said in today’s Gospel: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” So it must be with the mystery of the Trinity.

What can tradition tell us of the Trinity? Our tradition includes sometimes finding a new way to look at scripture or a theological idea. Jews have hundreds, if not thousands, of Midrash, or teachings exploring the meaning of scripture or of ideas found in holy text. I ran into a Midrash just the other day at the Clinical Pastoral Education Program at Stanford Hospital. One of my colleagues was pressing another, who happened to be a rabbi, to describe his personal theology. Finally the rabbi stood, walked to the board and drew a triangle.

God

Torah                                                                                                                                 Israel
Talmud                                                                                                                             Community
Tradition                                                                                                                          Us

Then the rabbi made a wavy line running around in the middle of the triangle

I looked at the rabbi’s triangle and was struck by a simple thought “That’s the same symbol Christians use to reflect the Trinity. Could it be we are called to live inside the Triangle too, to live within the Trinity? What would that look like? What would that feel like? How could we pull that off?

An old hymn suggests what living inside the Trinity might look like:

“Christ be with me,  Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort  and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of  friend and stranger.”

An experience I had aboard the Sloop Clearwater suggests what living inside the Trinity might feel like.

Pete Seeger

An American folksinger named Pete Seeger lives in a cabin he built with his own hands high above the Hudson River. He has a breathtaking view of the river, one that sparked concern over the river’s continuing degradation by pollution. To end pollution of this great American river, Pete decided to built a reproduction of the Hudson River sloops that once plied the river carrying cargo and passengers from Albany to New York City. It was a crazy idea – it was absurd – it would never work! But of course it does work, carrying a little more than 100 people out on the water at a time to learn hands on marine science.

The Sloop Celarwater Under Sail

Back east I signed on to help the Sloop Clearwater run cruises and waterfront environmental festivals on along the Connecticut coast. The same thing always happened to me on every trip whether we were sailing on a wine and cheese sunset cruise with affluent suburbanites or an environmental science cruise with kids form an inner city school. We’d start with a word about safety from the Captain, then cast off and motor out to deeper water where we would head into the wind and prepare to raise the mainsail.

Hoisting the Sails

We’d all line up and hoist the sail – it is the largest mainsail afloat today – and then the captain would call for silence. The captain would cut the motor – in the silence that followed all I could hear was the sound of the ship, her rigging, and faintly the sound of water running under the hull. I’d look up and see the giant sail slowly filling with wind – wind the ancient Psalmist call God’s breath. Then I’d realize from the sound of water running under the hull that we were gaining speed, that this ship with its large sail and all the people aboard were being moved through the water by the wind, by God’s breath.

At that moment I felt I was living in the heart of the Trinity, moved by God’s breath as the ship interacted with wind, tiller and currents formed by geological formations laid down by the last ice age. That’s one example of a Trinity moment.

How could we pull off living in the Trinity? Perhaps by being open to encountering God in unexpected places, by being quiet enough to hear God, and by simply paying attention to what is going on around us. For we live in the midst of God’s creation, and we need only reach out to touch the kingdom of God.

How close? An old Celtic prayer, recalled by J. Phillip Newell in his book Listening for the Heartbeat of God, provides one answer. He writes:

“The Three who are over me,

The three who are below me,

The three who are above me here,

The three who are above me yonder,

The three who are in earth,

The three who are in air

The three who are in heaven,

The three who are in the great pounding sea.”

This fragment of an ancient prayer celebrates the presence of a triune God in all things without confusing God with creation. By surrounding us, God gives us leave to live at the center of the Trinity, to live enfolded in God’s love, to be held on the palm of God’s hand. Let that thought be in our hearts and minds this Trinity Sunday.

Let the people say: Amen!

Preached on Trinity Sunday, 2009 in St. Bede’s Episcopal Church,. Menlo Park, CA

Art:

Photos: Sloop Cleaerwater

Photos from the 2009 General Convention of the Episcoapl Church. As a reporter for the Pacific Church News, I covered the convention, reporting through web postings, tweets and the pages of Pacific Chruch News.

We who are many are one body
because we all share one bread, one cup.

Until recently, I prided myself on being a “first adopter,” the kind of fellow who quickly found ways to use new technology for my own purposes. Starting with e-mail and moving on through to web sites to blogs, I was always among the first on the block to figure out how to use the “world wide web.” I ran out of inventiveness when the latest wave of “social networking sites” came into vogue. I couldn’t see why anyone would be interested in following my life on Facebook or Twitter.

My life isn’t that interesting, I thought. Who would care if I went to a movie or shopping? I was genuinely stumped. I started to feel old.
When I finally gave in and started using Facebook and Twitter, I wrote about the only interesting part of my public life: dining out. Not that I go to fancy restaurants, but rather that I figure the Lake Merritt Bakery & Restaurant deserves a good word once and awhile. After about a month of my posts and tweets, a friend from Connecticut wrote: “All you ever seem to do is eat! ”

I thought of her observation when reading the lessons for today. For the past two weeks, Jesus has been talking about food. Last Sunday we heard of His feeding the 5,000. Today, in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus also says: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life” and “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”Tally that up with the other miracles where Jesus feeds crowds of hungry people and the many times we read of Jesus eating with the ritually unclean, and we might say to Jesus: “All you ever seem to do is eat!”

General Convention Daily Euicahrist

In a few minutes, at the altar we call the “Lord’s Table,” we will celebrate another meal, a meal of remembrance. As we do twice each Sunday. And then we are off to coffee hour. Did you ever think: “All we ever seem to do is eat!” Why did Jesus institute the “Lord’s Supper” as our principal way of remembering Him? What’s up with all this talk of bread and manna and food?

Consider what happens when we celebrate the Eucharist: we pray together, speaking as one; we sing together, breathing as one; and we all share the same loaf and cup. After we are done, if someone is taking communion to someone who cannot be with us here, we say together: “We who are many are one body because we all share one bread, one cup.” I think of that each time I share communion with someone in the hospital or in their home.

Queen Elizabeth the First understood this theology well. “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” she once said. Rather than demand theological conformity, she insisted that everyone worship through the same Book of Common Prayer. That is why our church, and the Anglican Communion, has never been a creedal church. That is why becoming an Episcopalian does not entail accepting a long list of detailed theological points.

We have the creed and articles of faith and Holy Scripture. But that comes with a great more latitude for individual thought than one would find at say Pastor Rick Warren’s church. Rather than require members to abide by a detailed covenant, we are content to know that:

“We who are many are one body because we all share one bread, one cup.”

In the House of Deputies

When Bishop Marc asked me how I found the General Convention, without thinking I replied: “This has been a very spiritual experience.” That is both true and not at all what I expected to experience in Anaheim. Given what had happened at the last convention, I expected a conflict filled, divisive session that fell far short of full inclusion of all of the baptized in all of the sacraments. After all, we were a stone’s throw from Disney’s Magic Kingdom and not far from the Tinsel Town of Hollywood. My expectations were far different from what happened.

The House of Bishops

Today I want to share with you what is was like to observe the House of Bishops as they considered and approved a controversial resolution that opened the way for partnered lesbian and gay priests to be considered as a diocese decides who to call as their next bishop. I’m not going to delve into the details of what passed, who said what or why. That talk – a report on General Convention 2009 – is set for our Soul Work session Sunday, August 9, 2009.

Today we need to talk about a fundamental shift in our church, a spiritual sea change that may signal a dramatic re-dedication of our church to the Mission Jesus sets out in the Gospels.

Stephen Bates, a UK journalist, served as the Guardian newspaper’s religious affairs correspondent for many years. During the Convention, he wrote for his UK readers that within these resolutions “lies the potential for a Christian milestone that may ultimately rank the Los Angeles suburb alongside the Council of Nicaea, the Synod of Whitby, or the Edict of Nantes. Or possibly not.”

What could he mean?

Perhaps he suggests our church’s resolutions pave the way for schism. That is certainly the impression many conservative clerics are working to convey. Consider these dramatic headlines:

• In The London Times, Ruth Gledhill writes: Schism ‘inevitable’ after US bishops approve gay ordination;
• In the Times of London, Bishop of Durham Tom Wright claims: The Americans know this will end in schism;
• From the Telegraph Martin Beckford predicts: Archbishop of Canterbury faces final divide in Anglican Communion over gay clergy; and my favorite
• David Virtue on his ‘orthodox’ news site: GC2009: Rowan Among The Ruins: What Should the ABC Do Now?

Interestingly, none of these authors attended the same General Convention that I attended. Oh, Mr. Virtue was there for some of the sessions, but he seems to have skipped the daily Eucharist. Remember: “We who are many are one body because we all share one bread, one cup.” For me, that was true at the General Convention as it is across the Episcopal Diocese of California and here at St. Bede’s.

Debate in the House of Bishops

That sense of being “one body” was especially true as the House of Bishops debated and voted upon two resolutions regarding gay bishops and the blessing or marriage of same gender couples.

Just before one of those votes I unexpectedly – and literally – bumped into the Rev. Jim Bradley, who was then rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, CT. Jim was once my priest at St. Paul’s Church in New Haven, CT where I served on the vestry. He captured what I think is important about General Convention in his blog. He writes of the House of Bishops debate on this controversial resolution:

“The ‘debate’ they had for over an hour was remarkable for how cordial and moving it was. The highlight for me was after several bishops had spoken in opposition to the resolution, pointing out how it would so, so offend the Anglican Communion, Bishop Prince Singe of Rochester (I swear that’s his name) got up and said something like this: I AM the Anglican Communion. I grew up in India and the Anglican Church in India was the only church who ministered to the ‘untouchable’ caste. They did so, starting churches and schools in the ‘untouchable’ castes villages knowing they would lose the upper castes who would not come to those churches and to those schools. 80% of the Anglicans in India are ‘untouchables’. It is time the EC realized our ministry is to the ‘untouchables’ in our culture.”
Jim writes: “He had me from the first mention of ‘untouchables’. Right now I have never felt so committed and connected and involved in our church as I am right now. … I haven’t yet fully appreciated what has happened and I am moved to tears when I try to imagine it. …”

“We may ‘walk separately’ for a season with some of our brothers and sisters in the AC. There will be a cost to what the AC does in reaction to [this resolution]. But, for the first time in my life as an Episcopalian, we have told the TRUTH about who we are. Such truth telling allows us to enter into dialog with the rest of the AC with nothing hidden.”

“I also realize that there are some in the EC that will be offended and pained by this resolution. I would direct them to the last ‘resolve’:

‘Resolved, that the 76th GC acknowledge that members of the EC as of the AC, bases on careful study of the Holy Scriptures and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters.’ “That is my understanding of Anglicanism. We need not agree on matters of the interpretation of Scripture or Doctrine so long as we are willing–in our disagreements–to worship as on Body.”

After that vote, the Bishops went on to other business. Once their agenda was completed they prayed and as a last order of business began to sing: “O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world…”

I think: they should have sung: Amazing Grace.

Why?

Because something very strange and wonderful had happened in the House of Bishops. Their debate was marked by grace and equanimity. The discourse was polite, varying views were respected; no one tried to convert others to their own way of thinking or to their own heartfelt beliefs. Instead the house seemed like one large place where members were free to tell their own story without fear of rejection or personal attacks.
It wasn’t just the absence of ill will. Throughout the debate, there was something positive in the house: bishops on both sides of the issue spoke of a new respect for the theological diversity in the Episcopal Church. Several suggested amendments based on a desire to reflect this new-found respect in the resolution under consideration.

This is why I think this General Convention is important, perhaps as UK journalist Stephen Bates suggests, on a par with “the Council of Nicaea, the Synod of Whitby, or the Edict of Nantes.” What we did may be less important than how we did it. What we said may be less important than how we lived out the Gospel.
For we have finally learned that diversity is more than skin deep. We now act based on our belief that real diversity includes tolerance and respect for people who think differently – and who reach different conclusions – than the rest of us. That feels like a good example of Amazing Grace. What does the hymn say: “I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.”

In today’s reading, St. Paul tells us what we should see if we are to live as church. We are, he writes, to:

“lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

That was the miracle I felt at General Convention, a time when our lay leaders, clergy representatives and bishops worked with “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Perhaps that miracle came about because:

“We who are many are one body because we all share one bread, one cup.”

Let the people say: Amen!

We who are many: The Deputation of the Diocese of California

Preached on August 2, 2009 in St. Bede’s Episcopal Church, Menlo Park, CA.

Photos by author & from Episcopal News Service.  Amazing Grace link leads to
JUDY COLLINS with the Harlem Boys Choir singing that hymn in 1993 and is found on YouTube.

The beach at Ocean Park, Maine, a CHAUTAUQUA-BY-THE-SEA.

I’m still basking in the afterglow of our vacation in my favorite place to unwind. We go to a Ocean Park, a coastal Chautauqua community in Maine, the place where my family has been going for four generations. A high point this year came when my kids decided we should celebrate my birthday. Yes it is true: I am now officially old enough to know better. But I’m also old enough to start claiming I don’t remember what that is.

We made our celebration on the front porch, a block from the sea, as we feasted on lobster, mussels and clams. When it came time for the obligatory singing of Happy Birthday, some folks walking by stopped and joined in the song. I thought of them standing there, signing in harmony for a stranger, as I started wrestling with this week’s scriptures.

Their random act of kindness reminded me of my Aunt Dot, a woman who spent most of her summers in that seaside resort. Aunt Dot’s house was full of little frames contain words from a hymn or psalm or payer. Often the words would be illustrated by a drawing of a pastoral scene, a cute little kitten or an adorable child. On her walls you could find the Lord’s Prayer, many versions of Psalm 23, and several copies of a hymn that I remembered when reading this week’s texts.

I remember singing this hymn in Vacation Bible School there on the Maine coast. And I recall seeing the refrain, illustrated with a smiling, red cheeked blond girl, in Aunt Dot’s house. The refrain is simple:

Brighten the corner where you are!
Brighten the corner where you are!
Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;
Brighten the corner where you are!

It is not found in our Hymnal. It was written in 1913 by Ina D. Ogdon, a woman whose dreams of being a preacher were dashed by the responsibility of caring for her ill father. Rather than dwell on this setback, Miss Ogdon decided to write hymns. Unable to preach the word from the pulpit, she ended up speaking through the words others sang. Stuck in her corner, she brightened it with hymns that fulfilled her call to ministry. That act, the act of people finding a way to fulfill their personal ministry, is woven into each of today’s scriptures. And each text makes clear we don’t have to go to seminary or be ordained to serve as a minister.  There: it’s before noon and you’ve already saved the cost of a Seminary degree.

Consider our reading from Numbers this morning.

Moses is burnt out. He tells God: “I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me.”  So God tells Moses to gatherer 70 of the top elders of Israel in the tent of meeting. There the spirit descends and the elders prophesize.  But two elders who remained in the camp also start to prophesize. There are not in the right place to prophesize, they are outside the tent! Joshua, serving as Moses’ personal assistant, is alarmed. He has to defend his boss’ turf. So Joshua says: “My lord Moses, stop them!”

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!” Even then, “all the LORD’s people” – that’s you and me – were called to be prophets, to minister in God’s name.

I know our next text well:  as a hospital chaplain, I read the first paragraph of this excerpt from the Epistle of James each time I anoint a patient. Overall, the author of this letter to the “the twelve tribes in Dispersion” seems to oppose a kind of Christianity that enabled Christians to overlook their obligations to the poor and suffering. Some see in this epistle a contrast between the way James and Paul view the question of faith and works. They suggest James was rebutting Paul. I think it is more likely that James was aiming at those who misuse of Paul rather than that Paul’s teachings on justification by faith. The emphasis James places on action, the emphasis he places on living out our faith, is reflected in the last paragraph of today’s reading:

My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Once again, in this letter to the whole church, we hear the call for each of us to minister to one another. James does not say only elders of the church or the bishop can save one who has wandered from the truth. No: James says that “whoever brings back a sinner from wandering” will receive a blessing that covers a “multitude of sins.”

This theme continues in our Gospel reading today, a teaching that mirrors the text we read from Numbers with Jesus filling the same role as Moses. This time, John is the one concerned about outsiders muscling in on Jesus’ turf. John says: “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Jesus answers:

Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

So there you have it: we don’t have to be an apostle to follow Christ – we don’t even have to follow a specific creed or teacher.  All we have to do is minster to one another. That is – in fact – what we promise to do this in our baptismal vows, a promise we renew each time we join in baptizing a new member of our community.

Consider the final three questions and responses from our vows:

So  scripture and our faith call us – whether we worship in the pew or at the altar – to minster to one another. What does that mean, exactly?

For the past year I worked at Stanford Hospital as a Resident Chaplain in Stanford Hospital’s Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE, Program. One goal of CPE is to help students learn how to provide pastoral care. Sometimes we minister to patients other times to their family or their doctors and nurses.

In CPE each chaplain is assigned to cover one or more units. I worked in units providing intensive care, cancer care, cardiac care and just about everything in-between. One of the most difficult lessons I learned is that sometimes I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to fix things, I didn’t have to help people feel better, I didn’t have to stop someone from crying or morning or hurting. I didn’t have to fix anything; I simply had to be present with them, to walk with them as they went though the dark valley of the shadow. I learned this by accident one day in an intensive care unit.

There were two people with the same last name, one was a patient the other a visitor. Responding to a page, I went to the patient’s room instead of to the waiting room where the visitor who wanted to see a chaplain was waiting. The patient I visited was not an Episcopalian, Protestant or Christian. I expected the family only wanted help contacting their chaplain. That’s what I expected when I visited this family – the family who had not paged for a chaplain.

The husband was too worried about his wife’s condition to notice my confusion. He said: “Thank you for coming” and “No we don’t need our chaplain: my wife is going to get well. That’s why we brought her to Stanford!” Then he asked: “Could you pray for her?”

“I’d be glad to. Do you want me to to pray in your faith?”

“No, you pray as a Christian,” he said. “She needs all the help she can get.” So I did. From then on, I stopped in a couple of times a day to see how things were going.  There were bad and good days as she slipped some then rallied than slipped again. After a particularly good day, she died an hour before the first visiting hour began. I was paged to the unit after her husband arrived.

He was sitting outside the unit as I walked down that long corridor. He was asking the chaplain who specializes in decedent care for advice.  He looked up as I arrived.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” I said. I know that sounds trite, but at times like these well worn words like “I am so sorry for your loss” work if you mean them. He looked at me for a moment then slowly stood so were formed a right angle. Once standing, he slowly leaned over until his head rested on my shoulder.  As he started to weep, he carefully positioned his head so his tears would not dampen my shirt. I looked down and saw two pools of tears slowly forming at our feet. All I could do is stand there as he started going through his valley of the shadow.

Standing there, I thought of the Tree of Life that some use to illustrate the Kabala of Jewish mysticism.  I wondered if metaphorically, by standing as a tree I could draw in the tears at my feet and through a process like a tree’s respiration help my brother catch his breath.

As we stood there, life in the hospital swirled on around us. As we stood there, new patients arrived, and in other units someone gay birth as others prepared to leave for home. As we stood there, my work was to stand with him until he was ready to move on. When we gather as church, we say we are part of Christ’s body, that we are part of Christ’s continuing incarnation. As we stood there, for that brief moment I served as a part of Christ’s continuing incantation – you might say I was briefly standing in for Jesus.

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Greco, 1541?-1614, Head of Christ

From time to time, each of us is called to stand in for Jesus. Sometimes we will be called like Moses to speak a word of prophetic truth. Sometimes like James we will be called to speak for those who have no voice in places of power. Sometimes as Mark writes we will be called to do a “deed of power.” Perhaps we will help someone in our family, neighborhood, church or a stranger in the community.  In our baptismal covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is our call, to brighten the corner where we are by standing in for Jesus as we walk with those who are traveling through their own valley of the shadow. So today as we move on through sharing of Communion and then back out into the world, let us remember the call from today’s scripture, the call for us to stand in, stand in for Jesus!

May the people say Amen!

Preached Sept. 27, 2009 in St. Bede’s Episcopal Church, Menlo Park, CA

Photo by aurthor. Art:

“I’m going to Sodom and if they are as bad as I hear I’m going to wipe them off the face of the earth.” How does Abraham respond? Does he cheer the omniscient, all-knowing deity on? Does he ask for ringside seats to watch as the city is destroyed? Does he congratulate God for “getting it right?”

Abraham does none of this. Instead he thinks of the people of Sodom and asks God, “would you destroy that city if you find 50 good men?” God answers: “No for 50 good men I will not destroy the city.”

Abraham does some quick math and realizes he has a problem, he can’t think of 50 good men in all of Sodom. So Abraham asks: “What if there were 40 good men?” God answers: “No for 40 good men I will not destroy the city.” Abraham is still thinking of people he knows in the city and asks:”what if there are 30 good men? God answers: “No for 30 good men I will not destroy the city.” Still wracking his mental address book, Abraham asks: “What about 20 good men?” God answers: “No for 20 good men I will not destroy the city.” Now reduced to counting on his fingers, Abraham starts with the little finger on his left hand and ends at the same finger of his right hand. “What about 10 good men?” he asks. God answers: “No for 10 good men I will not destroy the city.”

What does this story tell us about Abraham’s way of relating to God? This encounter is unlike the myths many of us know about the Greek and Roman gods. Can you see Zeus patiently enduring this series of questions? Zeus most likely would have lost patience and hurled a thunder bolt at Abraham half way through the process.

For Abraham, God is approachable, a divine being Abraham can ask for help.

The psalmist concurs, writing “On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.” The psalmist continues “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.”

From the first two segments of scripture we see a developing pattern: we can call out to God for help. God will hear and help us. Prayer requests are welcome.

St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians tells us not to worry about meeting the expectations of society. Instead our task is to follow Christ. Through the spiritual “circumcision” of baptism we have been saved, Paul says, now we must follow Christ. Our prayers should be that we follow Christ’s way and not the standards of this world.

St. Luke focuses on instructing us how to pray, how we ask God for help. In what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer, Luke tells us to ask for our daily bread, ask for forgiveness of our sins, and to ask for deliverance from temptation. Sounds line more prayer requests.

Luke also tells us that God will hear and answer our prayers. God will be like the friend who gets up out of bed in the middle of the night to help us. God will be like a father who would not answer a child’s request for bread with stones or a mother who would not give her child a deadly scorpion. Then Luke works in one of my most favorites parts of his Gospel. I’d like to be able to say my affinity for these lines stems from Sunday School or seminary. Truth is, l learned this long ago when Pete Seeger repurposed this chorus from an old gospel song. The chorus is:

Seek and you shall find

Knock and the door shall be opened

Ask, and you shall be answered

When the love comes tumblin’ down

This chorus neatly summarizes my theology of prayer and life. Not that I expect that God will answer all my prayer requests. God doesn’t work that way. By “prayer requests” I mean those times when we ask God for help. Sometimes our prayers are made silently, sometimes aloud, sometimes through our actions, sometimes while we are at rest. Sometimes we may not see God’s involvement until we are well along with a new chapter in our life.

So how does God work with our prayers? God knows that sometimes our prayers are wrapped up in language from the Book of Common Prayer and sometimes they are reflected in our daily life and sometimes they are part of our internal dialogue about who we want to be when we grow up. A story from a man I knew back east may help.

Ages ago, I hired Catherine Liddell to work part time in our office. She was – and is – a virtuoso musician who plays the lute and theorobo. I suspect her music would sound especially nice here in St. Bede’s.

Cathy only wanted to work part time and I could only hire someone part time so we helped each other for many years. Each spring Cathy would invite us to see the daffodils at her father’s house in the next town. Initially, I wasn’t much interested: I figured you’ve see one daffodil, you’ve seen ‘em all. But one spring day I loaded the family into our old yellow Subaru and chugged across town to her dad’s place. She was right: as we lumbered up the hill we saw more and more daffodils. Hundreds of daffodils, thousands of daffodils, many different variations of daffodils, all blooming on that hill side farm. It was an amazing sight. And it was all the work of one man, Cathy’s dad, Bill Liddell.

While working on his doctorate in American History at Yale Bill planted a fateful few spinach seeds out in back of his apartment. After graduation he began writing the catalogues for the Asgrow Seed Company. Back in those days, the seed catalogue was a big deal. I remember anxiously waiting for ours to arrive so I could plan and plant a small city garden of tomatoes, eggplant and broccoli.

Now people don’t seem to plant seeds, we just go buy flats of young plants. Seeds are the antithesis of instant gratification, flats and potted plants offer a quicker, lower risk result.

I suspect Bill was a very effective in his job, for he had an infectious enthusiasm that made it seem perfectly reasonable to believe that if one bag of big boy tomatoes seeds was good, two bags was better and three would be best. Cathy thinks her Dad’s gardening began so he could know more about the seeds he described in the catalogues.

“Throughout our lives on the hill the garden just got bigger and bigger, ostensibly to feed the ever growing family. What we didn’t eat right off got frozen or canned, by him,” Cathy remembers.

After 39 years of writing seed catalogues, Bill retired. And I can almost hear him knocking around his hillside house wondering what he was going to do. I can almost hear him say: “Good God, what I am I going to do now?” Sounds like a prayer request to me. I can almost hear God whispering in Bill’s ear: “You like to grow things, right? So go ahead: keep the garden the same size as always.” And that is what Bill did, he put into practice his motto about is one is good, two are better and three is best. Only this time, his children were grown and he was alone in the house.

One of the lasting truths about home vegetable gardens is that there are only so many tomatoes or beans or peppers or corn or zucchini squash that one person can eat. After a very short period of time, when the home farmer starts up the walk to his neighbor’s house bearing gifts from earth’s bounty, they find the blinds are drawn down and begin to suspect their neighbors are hiding in the bedroom, pretending they can’t hear the doorbell.

Likewise after a very few weeks, when the home farmer walks into coffee hour at their church with a bushel of tomatoes people seem to disappear.

Bill had a problem: lots of well cared for, very happy tomato plants producing more fruit then he could handle. I can almost hear him say: “Good God, what am I going to do with all these tomatoes?” And I suspect that God helped Bill remember right about then the solution to his difficulty: the Connecticut Food Bank. Bill brought his produce to the Connecticut Food bank so they could pass it on to hungry people. The food bank folks though Bill’s first bushel was good, his second bushel was better and his third bushel was best of all. They weren’t really astounded until he said “See you again later this week.” That was how Bill Liddell spent his first summer of “retirement,” growing 7,000 pounds of produce for the Connecticut Food Bank.

Once the snow was too deep to garden, Bill started planning his next garden. Working with a degree of precision not seen since preparations for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Bill mapped out his plan. He started seeds under sun lamps in the basement before moving them on schedule to different rooms of the house and then out into the garden. The peas that went in by St. Patrick’s Day were replaced with a second crop and then a third as Bill planned to gain maximum production from less than an acre of land. He added kale and mustard greens to the mix because that is what his “customers” wanted.

Soon Bill came to a realization: this was took much work for one person. He could have scaled back, he could have given up. I can almost hear him say: “Good God, what am I going to do to get the help I need to make this work?” And I can almost hear God answering: “Ask and it shall be given.” People like Bill and me, we don’t like to ask for help. Somehow, asking for help seems like an admission of defeat or failure. But Bill may have remembered today’s Gospel:

So Bill started to seek for help. He started asking his friends and they answered by lending a hand. But it wasn’t enough.

Now Bill wasn’t a member of any church. But he knew his Bible. So he decided to put “Seek and you shall find” to the test, and thought of The Spring Glen United Church of Christ, perhaps from playing music there. So he decided to put “Knock and the door shall be opened” to the test. Out of the blue he contacted their minister and asked if he could make an appeal. The pastor said yes, so Bill put “Ask, and you shall be answered” to the test. He asked, and the people helped. They didn’t just help: they did yeoman service, becoming Bill’s “Volunteer Migrants.” And that’s “When the love comes tumblin’ down.”

How much produce do you think Bill Liddell and his “Volunteer Migrants” grew per season in a three-quarters acre garden? Do you think they grew 9,000 pounds – lettuce doesn’t weigh much, does it? Do you think they grew 13,000 pounds – cucumbers aren’t that heavy? Do you think in a good year they grew 18,000 pounds – even tomatoes don’t weigh that much.

Here’s the truth: on a lean year they grew 30,000 pounds of produce. On a good year they grew 50,000 pounds. That is a lot of food for hungry people. All possible because one man liked to grow vegetables and he wasn’t afraid to seek for a new answer, knock on doors and ask for help.

After many years as a “gentle man farmer,” Bill Liddell was forced by health problems to really retire. He died a few years ago. Last I heard his “farm” grows Christmas trees. But that isn’t what’s important to us here today.

For now, through our telling of his story, Bill may be still planting seeds, but in a different way.

Bill’s story shows what can happen if we live by this gospel. So I wonder. I wonder what would happen if people who like to growing things gathered friends from churches across America and planted gardens to feed the hungry. I wonder what would happen if home gardens across the Episcopal Diocese of California helped feed the Bay Area’s hungry.

I wonder what would happen here at St. Bede’s if we started to grow food for the food bank. What would it say about us and t he way we live out our faith?

Across the years, that chorus comes back to me:

Seek and you shall find

Knock and the door shall be opened

Ask, and you shall be answered

When the love comes tumblin’ down

None of us who ever held a tomato from Bill’s garden ever doubted that love had come tumbling down into our hands. I wonder if we can do as well here on our coast as we each strive to find our way of live in right relationship with God. Let’s ask and find out.

Let the church say Amen.

Today’s scriptures are:

• Genesis 18:20-32and Psalm 138
• Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
• Luke 11:1-13

Click here to play a sample from Cathy’s CD La belle voilée 17th Century Fcrench Lute Music by Jacques Gallot and Others which is available from Centaur Records or I-Tunes.

The artwork at the top of this post is titled Knocking at the Door by Dr. He Qi. He is a professor at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and a tutor for master candidate students in the Philosophy Department of Nanjing University. He is also a member of the China Art Association and a council member of the Asian Christian Art Association. The second illustration is titled The Insistent Friend and comes form JESUS MAFA is a response to the New Testament readings from the Lectionary by a Christian community in Cameroon, Africa. Each of the readings were selected and adapted to dramatic interpretation by the community members. Photographs of their interpretations were made, and these were then transcribed to paintings. See: www.jesusmafa.com and www.SocialTheology.com. Our use of this art is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike 3.0 License and are from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville.

 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863.

We are called to think and ponder God’s words until we recognize God’s continuing presence in our lives.

 

After all this rain, I feel a little like Garrison Keeler and his hometown, Lake Woebegone. For I feel we’ve just lived through an unsettling couple of weeks,
I knew something was off Thursday night when the rain stopped. I checked the weather radar and saw I had just enough time to walk to the park and move one of our cars so it wouldn’t be towed as part of Alameda’s street sweeping income program. I was right: the rain held off until I made it home. But as I was walking across the park toward the parked car I heard the telltale sound of sprinkler heads popping up out of the ground.

Then came the “psspft…psspft…psspft” heralding the progression of the sprinkler’s pulsating spray straight towards me. As I ran across the waterlogged lawn I thought: “Something’s just not right about this.” If only my being chased across a sodden lawn by a sprinkler was the worst of it.

We’ve all been shaken by the pain and suffering in Haiti following the massive earthquake. Many wondered why this evil came to pass. As the dust slowly settled, a prominent preacher answered this question with self-assurance. The people of Haiti, Pat Robertson said, were to blame for the earthquake.

He claimed that to win their freedom from France, the Haitians had made a “pact with the devil.” The earthquake was an inevitable result of this deal with the devil.
Unfortunately, Robertson is not the first to see natural disaster as God’s punishment for sin. In his recent Church Times article “Repent of a theology of blame,” the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, reminds us it was Charles Wesley who preached: “Sin is the cause, earthquakes the effect.” Yes, we are talking about “our” Charles Wesley. And yes, he belongs to the Methodists too. Giles is one of the Church of England leasers I have met in preparation for the Lambeth Conference. He was the vicar who invited New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson to preach in a London church. He now serves as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral and Director of the St Paul’s Institute. Giles concludes his article with a call to action: “It is morally shameful to say that the people of Haiti are to blame for their fate. We must exorcise our theology of such ideas.”

Today we need to start our “exorcism” by addressing that brand of Christian theology that creates a causal relationship between sin and suffering.

This “theology of blame” lives on in those Christians who see a terminal diagnosis or accidental tragedy as “God’s judgment” on the person who is hurting. Whether talking about a nation, city or individual, their theology is the same: “Sin is the cause, punishment the effect.” Worse, some preachers claim God’s wrath-filled judgment will send sinners straight to hell.

Unfortunately, we Episcopalians don’t talk much about hell, hellfire or damnation. In our church it seems almost impolite to preach about hell or damnation. As a result the only ones talking about hell are often only those who believe they know who is going there. Their view of who is headed for hell is often based on a secure but literal reading of scripture. They agree with the bumper sticker that states: “God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It.” But something’s bound to be lost in the process of boiling Christianity down into a nine word bumper sticker. One of the most important losses centers on how literalists read and interpret the Bible.

In her book “The Bible: A Biography,” Karen Armstrong writes that literal interpretation of Judeo-Christian scripture is a relatively new idea: an innovation that started in the 19th century. Armstrong sees literalism as a marked departure from the way people read scripture in ancient Israel and throughout most of Christian history. Despite their claims, authentic “old time religion” interprets scripture instead of relying on what those words seem to mean today. For literalists assume a word written centuries ago means exactly what it means to them today. Then they assume their understanding is exactly what God meant.

In contrast, older Jewish and Christian traditions see scripture as a resource for applying God’s revelation to our lives. Understanding scripture requires us to wrestle with revelation, much as Jacob once wrestled with an angel. This approach to scripture fits well within our traditions as Anglicans, a faith known for theology based on balancing scripture, reason and tradition. But why should we care if others use literalism to preach: “Sin is the cause, punishment the effect?”

We’ve already heard where Pat Robertson’s literalist theology took him. He has been mocked and condemned from many corners of the globe. Now let me share with you where our silence on hellfire and damnation left one of my patients. She was facing induced labor that would lead to the birth of a baby who was not expected to survive. Her decision to induce labor was not based on a desire to have a baby of a different gender or with a different eye color. Her decision was based on the best medical advice available. Her decision was made after prayer and anguished deliberation. Her decision was supported by her husband and mother.

In the hospital, she asked me to bless the baby before labor began so the grandparents could be part of the blessing. So in between contractions I prayed for the baby, her parents and her grandparents. After I prayed, as I prepared to move on to the next patient, my patient blurted out:

“AMIGOIONGTOBEPUNISHEDFORTHIS!?!” She spoke so quickly I could not understand her question.

“I didn’t quite get that,” I said.

“Am I going to be punished for this?” she repeated, slowly speaking each word.

“Punished for what?” I asked, still not understanding.

“For killing my baby,” she said with infinite sadness.

You have to understand that as chaplains we are trained to ask questions that help people find what they believe. We try not to short circuit this process by reciting church doctrine or sharing our own personal belief. So I asked: “You think you will be punished for killing your baby?”

“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t that what the Bible says?”

“What do you think the Bible says?”

“Thou shalt not kill!”

“You think the Bible says you should not allow labor to be induced?”
“That’s what the Bible says, right?”

She looked straight into my eyes. “What do you believe?”

“What’s important is what you believe.”

“But what do you believe,” she persisted. “Am I going to hell for this?”

“You think you are going to hell for this?”

She nodded, tears falling freely down her face.

“What do you believe: am I going to hell for killing my baby?”

There comes a time when truth must be spoken, and this was my time to speak my truth. “I don’t believe that God is going to send you to hell. I don’t believe in a God who would punish you for this.

“The God I know, the one who walks with me though the halls of this hospital, so loved the world he sent his only begotten son to save us. How could a God who loves you condemn you for recognizing medical necessity?

“This is hard for you. Yet you are not alone: your husband and your family are here. And the God I know is here with us, even when we walk through the darkest valley, God is walking right beside us. Maybe that’s why God understands and forgives us: because God has seen what we have gone through.”

She nodded, dried her tears and I moved on to the next call. Yet even as I continued through that shift, her questions reverberated. Her belief in a God of judgment and damnation was based on the way others in her family read their Bible. So how should we read God’s word and apply it to our lives? Today’s scriptures can help us answer this question.

First, in the Book of Nehemiah we hear from a time when Jews struggled to rebuild Jerusalem and rekindle their faith after the Babylonian exile. In a dramatic story we learn of Ezra’s reading from the Torah to the assembled people of Jerusalem. Our text includes: “So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”

They read “with interpretation” so “that the people understood the reading.” Clearly in this fourth century BC setting Ezra went beyond the literal meaning of scripture’s words and “interpreted” the Torah.

Our second reading is Psalm 19. A literal reading of Psalm 19 is fraught with difficulties. Consider verses two through four:

One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world.

Sounds like a metaphor to me. That’s one way we wrestle with scripture, by trying to make sense of metaphors in the text. By definition, we cannot find a metaphor’s meaning by a literal reading of its words.

Next in today’s readings we come to Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. Writing around 54 CE, Paul letter addresses problems he feels endanger the Corinthian church. His response includes a lengthy allegory portraying the Christian community as Christ’s body. Through Paul’s words we see an image of Christians forming Christ’s body and we understand the importance of different people pursuing different ministries. Our vision fades if we demand a literal interpretation of Paul’s words.
But what about today’s gospel? The meaning seems pretty clear as Jesus says:

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Finally it sounds like we have a text we can interpret literally.

Except that we have to decide what Jesus meant when he said “proclaim release to the captives.” Did Jesus mean we should empty the prisons or did he speak metaphorically of releasing all of God’s people from the prison constructed by their sins, sins which distance them from God? Did Jesus mean he would end physical blindness or did he speak metaphorically about helping us see how we need to change our lives and fulfill his two great commandments? And what did Jesus mean about proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor?” Was he suggesting his ministry marked the onset of a special Jubilee Year when the land would lie fallow, some property would be returned to its original owners and all indentured servants would be freed? If so what does that mean to us who live in a world where these aspects of the Jewish Jubilee Year have not been honored for centuries?

Once again we find the need to interpret scripture; once again we must dig deeper than the literal meaning of the words on paper to hear what God is saying to us today.
Some say revelation is done: that God has spoken and we are to follow God’s text to the letter. From this text they pick and choose “laws” they deem best for all of us. If we fail to follow their way then all of our misfortune is due to our sin of not following instructions.

I see God’s revelation as a continuing act. Our Anglican tradition suggests God’s revelation comes alive when we dig into sacred texts, when we are willing to wrestle with scripture until we find new meaning as God’s text speaks to us about our lives in our world. Like Jacob wrestling with an angel, we are called to think and ponder God’s words until we recognize God’s continuing presence in our lives.

Maybe that is what God wants: people who take this seriously enough to wrestle with God about what counts in life, about those times that really, really count in our life. I think my visit to that patient was one of those times that really counts in my life. She only knew one Christian voice, and in it she heard only judgment and condemnation. That voice reflected the “sin is the cause, punishment the effect” theology, the theology of Pat Robinson and Charles Wesley.

Why is their theology heard so clearly that it sometimes seems to be the only ‘Christian” theology around? Perhaps this is because so few of us in mainline Protestant denominations offer clear alternatives to literal interpretation of scripture or its conclusion that “sin is the cause, punishment the effect.”
Perhaps this means you and I together face another of those times that really count in life. Perhaps ours is a time when each of us is called to proclaim a theology of wrestling with angels found in scripture.

Perhaps this is a time when the words of our mouth, the meditations of our hearts and the actions of our lives must reflect our belief in a God of compassion and boundless love. How do we say it? “Not only with our lips but in our lives?” If so, let the exorcism of the “theology of blame” continue as we live out our baptismal covenant.

Let the church say: Amen!

Art: