Month: May 2008

Trinity Sunday, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Is an anatomy textbook more true than a C.S. Lewis novel?

These are not questions we can answer.  An anatomy text book and a novel are trying to do two completely different things.  An anatomy textbook certainly has lots of facts in it, (Did you know an adult human body contains 206 bones?), but a textbook tells us nothing about our soul.  A C.S. Lewis novel has not one fact in it, but it tells us an enormous amount about what it means to be human.

So why people look to the first chapter of Genesis for scientific information about the beginning of our world is a mystery to me.  The first chapter of Genesis is not a scientific text.  Remember, it was written somewhere between 950 and 500 BCE, and Descarte did not write about the scientific method until 1637 CE.  That is more than two thousand years later!  If the authors thought modern Christians were using their writings to argue scientific points about how and when the earth was created, I think they would roll their eyes.  After all, the authors did not even understand that the world was round.  The dome they refer to in this passage is the sky.  Their understanding was of a flat earth, with a bell jar of a sky laid upon it.  If you read Genesis with a scientist’s eye, you miss the point.

So, if the authors of Genesis were inspired by God to write this passage, but is not a scientific text, than what is it?  Our reading today is part of what Biblical scholars would call mythology literature.  Now, we hear the word myth, and we think it means the same thing as a lie, but that is not what mythology means here.  Mythology is a form of writing that a people uses to describe a mysterious event that they did not witness.  The creation of the world is a common subject of these stories.  The Sumerian cultures that surrounded the Jewish people had their own version of the same story.  By writing this story, the authors are trying to understand who they are, what the earth is and who their God might be.

And just like a poem or a C.S. Lewis novel, the creation story contains an abundance of truth and beauty that can teach us about God and humanity.

First of all, let me just brag about the literary beauty of this passage.  Genesis may have been written three thousand years ago, but the author uses a very sophisticated parallelism here.  Notice that the first and fourth days are both about light.  The second and fifth days are both about water.  And the third and sixth days are both about the earth.  See, the motivation of the order of Creation in this passage is not scientific-the order is literary.  The stars and the sun and the moon were not created after plants and trees, but it is more pleasing in a literary sense to have the balance of the parallelism.

And this passage does not have parallelism for parallelism’s sake.  This literary choice tells us something about God.  The entire arc of the Creation story is the idea that God turns this chaotic, formless, watery nothingness into an orderly, fruitful, life-filled something, and the parallelism echoes that.  In the Creation narrative, God pushes the chaos out beyond the confines of the dome, and forms boundaries that enable light to shine, plants to grow, and animals to walk the earth.  God does not eliminate the chaos; he establishes boundaries to protect us against it.  Through both the form and the content of this passage we learn that God is always moving from chaos to order.

But the chaos still breaks through occasionally, doesn’t it?  In the last two weeks the chaos has broken through in the form of tornadoes across the United States, a cyclone in Myanmar, and that horrific earthquake in China.  This occasional, deadly and terrifying breaking through reminds us that we live in tension, and that the world can still be wild and wooly.

But chaos is not what God desires for us, God seeks to protect us and guard us and encourages us to seek order, as he calls for us to have dominion over and be stewards of this wild and wooly creation.   We are to subdue the chaos and bring order.  And we have.  We have cultivated fields and domesticated animals and pruned trees.  Unfortunately, we’re learning that too much dominion, too much subduing can lead us right back into chaos.  Finding the balance, finding the tension between chaos and order is difficult business.  Our adult forum class on the environment today, should help us with this balance.

As we go deeper in the passage, we learn even more about God, and about ourselves.  We are told that “God made humankind in his image:  male and female he created them.”  We are made in the image of God!

What does it mean to be made in God’s image?  None of us knows exactly.  Perhaps it means that we are creative like God is creative.  We have the capacity to imagine and act on what we imagine.  We can paint and sing and sculpt and build. Or, maybe being made in God’s image means that we are relational, like God is relational.  In the very first chapter of the Bible, God refers to himself as “us”.  We don’t know if the “us” refers to cherubim and seraphim or whether God was already hinting at his Trinitarian nature.  In any case, God chooses to act and reflect in community rather than as a solitary being.  There is a reason that a fundamental part of experiencing both Judaism and Christianity is community.  We gather together, because God calls us as community, not as individuals.  We worship together, because God knows it is not good for us to be alone.

And when God is done making us, he looks us over and says, “Indeed, it was very good.” This is about the most exciting thing I’ve ever read!  This image of creation is so different from the story in the second chapter of Genesis, when humanity immediately starts disappointing God.  So much of religion is focused on our sinfulness and our need for salvation, but in this glorious-and brief-moment, before we start lying and fighting and murdering each other, God looks us over and approves of what he has made.  In fact, he not only approves of us, he also gives us his blessing.

And God never sways from his commitment to us.  From that first blessing he remains committed to being in relationship with us.  He sends us leaders, kings, prophets, poets and finally Jesus and the Holy Spirit so that we can remain in a loving relationship with Him.  There is no way to measure or prove this love of God’s.  This love cannot be titrated or weighed or computed.  But this love is truer than any historical fact, any scientific treatise or mathematical equation.  This love is as true as the light in the skies, the water in the seas, and seed bearing plants on the earth.

Amen.

Pentecost, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

As a child, I lived in Germany.  I was never fluent in German and so I had the luxury of tuning out conversations almost everywhere I went.  Whether I was at the beauty parlor, or a restaurant or walking along the street, I almost never knew if people were discussing politics, religion, or what they were having for dinner.  I never thought much about this language barrier until we would come back to the States for summer vacation.  Suddenly, I understood everything people were saying!  Sometimes it was loud and obnoxious, sometimes it was dull, and sometimes it was fascinating.  I remember one family dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles, when my grandfather had to reprimand both my mother and me because we were both leaning back in our chairs, completely absorbed in the conversation happening at the table next to us.

Humans have been divided by language for as far as memory can reach.  Whether we were divided after the Tower of Babel or whether we just each developed our own set of words independently, the difference in understanding has had far reaching consequences.  Our lack of understanding each other’s language causes mistrust, suspicion, and even violence.

Our language is what we use to form images, then sentences, then ideas, then treatises, then Constitutions and Bibles and Korans. . .Language expresses the core of our identity as individuals and as people.  Misunderstandings between two languages can be humorous or serious.  We’ve all heard stories of American travelers abroad introducing their family member as “My noodle” rather than “my aunt” while speaking an unfamiliar language.  However, we as Americans have also seen the consequences of not speaking the language or understanding the culture as we get mired deeper and deeper in Iraq and Afghanistan, with very few Americans being trained in Farsi or Arabic.  Not being able to communicate can have deadly consequences.  Just take a look at the current regime in Myanmar.  Their unwillingness to be open, to invite those of other languages and backgrounds to enter their country has extended even to refusing many aid agencies from coming and distributing needed resources to the tens of thousands of Burmese suffering from the recent cyclone.

How wonderful then, that the first act of the Holy Spirit after it descended upon the disciples was to give them the gift of languages.  We think of the gift of speaking in tongues as incomprehensible babbling, but in this instance, when the flames of the Holy Spirit descend upon them, the disciples are given the gift of being able to communicate using all the languages of the many people living in Jerusalem.  The Holy Spirit’s first act is to bypass differences of nationalities and language and to ensure that everyone within earshot hears about what God has done.

Rather than descending on the Disciples and telling them how special they are and how this new religion is just for the few, for the chosen, for God’s favorites, the Holy Spirit invites everyone to the party.

And how do the people who receive the invitation to the party respond?

They assume the disciples are drunk!  Yes, once again, characters in the Bible respond exactly the way normal people would respond.  They don’t have epiphanies, at least not yet.  Nope, they look up from whatever they are doing and say, “What’s going on with THOSE guys?  They’ve got to be wasted, right?”  They have no idea that they are observing the beginning of an entire new religion.  They have no idea that these excited, goofy, babbling people will go on to be great leaders in a church that will reach nearly every country in the world.  They have no idea that people of all languages, of all backgrounds, of all cultures will encounter the risen Christ, that people of all backgrounds will experience the Holy Spirit.

With Christ’s resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, our allegiances have changed.  Suddenly our identity rests not in language or nation, but in Christ.  Our loyalty is to the One who created all of us, and small differences in the way we speak become meaningless.

I spent the summer between my junior year and senior year of college in India.  Once, in the middle of a long conversation with a Christian single woman from Bho Pal, she stated, “I don’t think I’ll get married.  Indian Men are such MCPs.”  “MCPs?” I asked, excited to learn some native term, to go deeper into her experience of India.  “Yes, she replied, MCPs, Male Chauvinist Pigs.”  It is in small moments like these, when we interact with those of another culture that we realize we have far more in common than we might think.  All people long for security and love and meaning, whatever their background.

Our bishop co-adjustor, Shannon Johnston, has just returned from a very sobering visit to the Sudan.  He traveled to the Sudan in order to attend the consecration of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan’s new Arch-Bishop Daniel Deng Bul.  The clergy in this region met with Bishop Johnston just a few days after his return to Virginia, and he told us stories that made every hair on our bodies stand at attention.  As you no doubt have heard, the Sudan has undergone years of extreme violence.  There is conflict between the Muslim north and the Christian south and there is a separate set of tribal wars going on in the Darfur region.  The population and infrastructure of the Sudan has been decimated.  Children are starving, people live under whatever surface they can find, and militias prowl the streets, torturing and murdering at will.

Bishop Johnston explained to us that in the middle of this utter chaos and violence, The Episcopal Church of the Sudan, the second largest NGO in the country, has been a place of sanity as the church lives out principles of the Kingdom of God.  In the church, Sudanese can find love and friendship, and sometimes even safety.

Bishop Johnston told the story of meeting one Sudanese Bishop with scars all over his face and body.  He was told that this bishop had heard that seven people were being held prisoner in a home and tortured for absolutely no reason.  He went to the house and offered to buy the seven prisoners in exchange for himself.  He substituted his own body and was terribly tortured, all for the love of seven people he did not even know.

The Episcopal Church of the Sudan is the Sudan’s one real hope.  In the midst of awful conditions, the church has kept its humanity, kept its connection to God.  Unfortunately, the church is very low on resources, as is everyone in the Sudan.  They have no way to communicate with each other or to travel.  Bishop Johnston came back from his trip absolutely convicted that his first role as our Bishop was to create a relationship between our Diocese and the Archdiocese of the Sudan.  He sent them a check for computers and cell phones immediately upon his return and is now brainstorming other ways we can partner with the Sudan to help this ravaged country heal from its wounds.

We cannot fully understand what the Sudanese are going through.  They cannot understand the way we live our lives. If we were put in a room together, we might not be able to pick out a single common word.  But, none of that matters.  We are bound together by the same Jesus that sent the Holy Spirit to the waiting disciples.  We are bound by the same Holy Spirit that gave the Disciples the gift of languages-the gift of communication and connection.  We are bound to the Sudanese Church as tightly as we are bound to each other.

We are not the only Diocese helping the Sudan.  In fact, some of the Dioceses helping the Sudan are led by Bishops that want to break ties with the United States altogether, like the Bishops of Kenya and Uganda.  Bishop Johnston hopes that as we all respond to the Holy Spirit, and help the Church of the Sudan, that the Holy Spirit might also heal the wounds of the Anglican Communion and knit us all back together.

We are thousands of years removed from the day the Holy Spirit first fell on the disciples in Jerusalem, but we are part of the same journey.  We continue the ministry of Peter and James and John as we become entwined with the Church in all of its multi-lingual glory.  For our mission is the same:  to love our God as best we can and to invite others through the wide gates to do the same.

Amen.

Seventh Sunday in Easter, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Matt and I got our dog Henry from the Augusta SPCA in December.  He was a pitiful little thing when we got him, very sick and very shaken by whatever had happened to him.  He’s fairly healthy now, and very sweet and more or less adjusted, despite a tendency to eat dirty Kleenex and dead frogs.  Despite his good health, I just hate leaving him when we go out of town.  I am never sure how he is going to react when we go.  When we left at Christmas, even with a dog sitter present, he tore up the Christmas tree and a piece of baseboard.  When we left on our last trip in April, he ate a healthy portion of a new book Matt had bought.  When we leave the dog, I am concerned about him on many levels.  First, what if he harms himself? Secondly, what if he destroys our house?  and finally, what if who ever is watching him never speaks to us again?

Leaving loved ones is hard.  While it is stressful to leave a dog behind, it can be heartbreaking to leave people behind, especially if you know you will not see them again.  Letting go is hard.

This is exactly where we find Jesus in our Gospel reading today.

Our Gospel reading takes place during the last supper.  Jesus has just made a long speech to his disciples and now he is offering a prayer on their behalf.  He knows he only has days to live and that during his death, and before his resurrection, he will not be able to contact his disciples in any way.  He will not be able to reassure them, to explain what is happening.  He will not be able to inspire them with his words or calm them with his presence.  And so, Jesus does the only thing he can do.  He prays to his Father.

Jesus prays that he would be glorified.  We think of glory in terms of praise and adulation, but that is not what Jesus means.  When Jesus asks to be glorified, he asks to be restored to the state he was before he was human.  After all, in the beginning of the Gospel of John, John reminds us that Jesus was the Word who was with God before the creation of the world.  Jesus’ prayer jolts us into remembering that Jesus was not just a really, really nice person, he was GOD incarnate.

Jesus does not want to be glorified back to his old self for his own benefit.  He wants to be glorified so his followers can experience eternal life.  And again, Jesus describes eternal life as something different from what we might expect.  We think of eternal life as something linear.  We think eternal life means having an infinite number of days before us, stretched out into the future.  However, Jesus does not describe eternal life in that way.  Jesus describes eternal life as knowing God.  What Jesus wants for his followers in his absence is for them to have a deep, knowing, loving relationship with his Father.

In the second part of the prayer, Jesus describes this beautiful and reciprocal relationship he has with the Father.  Among other things, he says, “the word that you gave to me, I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you.”  Jesus sees himself here as an intermediary between his Father and the people that his father loves.  This prayer reveals an intimacy about the way Jesus and the Father communicate, and what is even more astonishing-that they want to invite us, their followers, into their intimacy.

Saying goodbye to those you love is never easy.  Jesus was not worried about his followers chewing on old Kleenexes or wrecking a house because of their anxiety.  He was probably worried about Peter’s faith-and whether he would be up to the task of leading the Church.  Jesus was probably troubled because he knew that Judas’s act of betrayal would destroy Judas as much as it would destroy Jesus.  Jesus probably grieved the thought of his beloved community being splintered into pieces after they had all gotten to know each other so well.  Maybe he was afraid some of his followers would lose their faith in him and be deeply disappointed.

What Jesus wanted for his followers after his death was for them to be enveloped in the love of his Father.  He wanted his death and resurrection to unite his followers and for them to experience God’s love in a new way.  But even Jesus could not control what happened to his friends.  Even Jesus had to let go and turn to God and offer his loved ones to God.

So, who do we think we are to hold onto people, to control people, to protect people when even Jesus knew it was not his role!  We all have someone in our lives who we just wished made better decisions.  We all have a child who is too distant from us, or a friend who keeps dating horrible people, or a boss we can see making stupid decisions for our company, or a spouse who can’t seem to learn to pick up his socks, or a loved one that struggles with addiction.  Of course we are called to care for them, but we must not forget that ultimately we have no power over them.  Ultimately, the welfare of another person is not in our control and the best thing we can do, is to follow Jesus’ example and turn our loved ones over to God.

Remember, God wants to invite each of us into a loving, reciprocal relationship with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  God longs to know and be known to each of us and everyone we love.  It is in that loving relationship where we experience forgiveness, healing and all the things that make us better people.  When we pray for our loved ones who are struggling, we hand them over to the One who made them and loves them even more than we do.  When we pray we are reminded that we are not alone, but we are in relationship with a God who has been in our position, who has loved a group of people and been afraid of what would happen if he were not there to lead them.

This very Jesus, after being incarnate, after being enfleshed, died, became glorified and resumed his pre-embodied state of being all so we could know God better, so that we could freely pray and beseech God and feel God’s presence without the help of any intermediaries.  This is a God we can trust with our loved ones, even my dog Henry.  This is a God who will help us let go.