Gospel

Proper 20, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you ever seen the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian?  The movie is a very funny satire about a man named Brian who lived during the time of Jesus and gets mistaken as the Messiah.  Though Jesus is not directly involved in the plot, there is a hilarious scene that takes place during the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus is preaching, but the crowd is so large that those on the edges cannot quite make out what Jesus is saying. 

When someone asks what Jesus just said, a man says,

MAN #1:

    I think it was ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.

and a woman replies:

MRS. GREGORY:

    Ahh, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?

Her husband clarifies:

GREGORY:

Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Later another man, instead of hearing Blessed are the meek says,

MAN #2:

    You hear that? Blessed are the Greek.

GREGORY:

    The Greek?

MAN #2:

    Mmm. Well, apparently, he’s going to inherit the earth.

GREGORY:

    Did anyone catch his name?

You get the idea.  The joke is funny because we do wonder if those who wrote the Gospels got everything Jesus said right.  Today’s gospel reading, frankly, is a prime example of a time when we preachers look at a text and wonder, perhaps, if Jesus was a little off his game when he said these things.  Or maybe his followers just flat out misheard him.  Even the great theologian St. Augustine said about this passage, “I can’t believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord.”  We’ll never know exactly what Jesus said, but just because a passage of Scripture is confusing is no reason to abandon it, so let’s dig in.

This is another one of these congregation participation sermons, so let’s all open our Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16.

You’ll see the passage has three parts-a long story about a dishonest manager, then verse nine which obscurely reflects on the story, and then verses ten and on, which try to neatly wrap up some aphorisms about money that really have very little to do with the above passage.

These last verses are so neat and tidy; they seem incongruous with the rest of the passage.  Remember that the Gospels were oral stories handed down, and then edited into a coherent text.  So, it is entirely possible, that Luke or one of Luke’s editors had two separate Jesus stories they combined for our passage today.  For now, we will treat them just as that-and focus our attention on the first part of the passage, which presents enough problems as it is!

In this ambiguous passage, a dishonest manager gets fired for cooking the books, and then as his final exit, works some shady deals, possibly cheating his boss-and then is rewarded for this deception!

So, to understand this more deeply, let’s relocate the parable-imagine there was someone, probably Corin Capshaw, who owned all of Old Trail.  He owned the land, the houses, and the shops in the Village at Old Trail.  Every one who lived and worked in Old Trail rented their property from Mr. Capshaw, but because he is a busy man, he can not manage all the property himself, so he hires a manager. 

Keep in mind, this is all imaginary and the Beights family runs Old Trail with the greatest of competence and decency.

In this system, the manager has the authority to rent out not only the property, but also objects to the tenants at a very high commission.  So, say you wanted to clean your new coffee shop and you needed a power washer.  You could borrow a power washer from the manager, and when you were done with it, you would return the power washer and also give the manager a fee-say a hundred jugs of olive oil.  The owner gets some of this fee, but the manager also takes a commission. 

So, in this imaginary story, the manager is not only pocketing these fees, but he’s doing something actually bad, too-some sort of “squandering the property”.  Perhaps he’s lending things he’s not supposed to lend or skimming money from the rent.  We’ll never know.

Mr. Capshaw has it within his rights to have the guy arrested, but instead, he shows mercy and merely fires the manager.  The manager is desperate because he doesn’t really have any other skills and does not want to do manual labor or become a beggar so he comes up with a scheme. 

He needs other people to really like him, and he needs it to happen stat.  If people like him, perhaps they can find him a job or let him live with them.  In any case, he gathers all the people that owe him debts from borrowing powerwashers and the like and he goes through the list systematically and slashes their debt.  He makes some friends, his boss gets his portion of the money and his property back, and they get a great deal.  Everybody wins.

The manager notes this and is very impressed.

And then the passage gets really weird.  Jesus says, “And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  Huh?

Is Jesus saying if we’re going to make gains from dishonest wealth we should at least make friends out of the deal? So when we’re caught we have some place to go? Whaaa?

Who knows?  This passage is messy, the manager is messy, the editing is messy.  It’s all very messy.

Now, I want you to keep your bibles open and find the parable that occurs directly before this parable.  What is it?

(Parable of the Lost Son)

If you’ll notice, our parable today has a very similar arc to the parable of the prodigal son.  A young man acts in a disgraceful way in each, and also experiences some degree of redemption.  BUT, where the parable of the prodigal son is all extremes-the complete depravity of the son, the complete forgiveness of the father, our parable today is much more murky.

We’re left not knowing exactly what is going to happen to the manager-or even exactly what he did wrong.  We’re not even entirely clear how the owner feels about the manager-is he really angry, does he feel forgiveness or even pride by the end of the story? 

While the Prodigal Son is a beautiful and perfect parable, its story of sin and redemption is so extreme, I think not all of us can relate to it very well.  Most of us, when we sin, when we hurt ourselves or other people, we do it in small ways.  Most of us don’t have the chance to get our inheritance early, turn our backs on our families, and go wild in the big city. 

However, even those of us who are “good”, who are more like the older brother in the prodigal son story, screw up.  When we screw up, it’s usually saying something before we think, or making a really bad, but not malicious, judgment call.  We may be a little greedy, a little unethical.  In short, I think most of us are much more like the manager, than the prodigal son.  We do our best to support ourselves, and if our livelihoods get threatened, we’re not above engaging in a little creativity to save our necks.

And redemption in our lives is not always as dramatic as the father’s loving embrace in the prodigal son story, either.  When we’re being forgiven, we do not often have a huge emotional experience of deep reconciliation with our loved ones or with God.  We may just feel the small satisfaction that comes with knowing that a relationship has been repaired and that we are safe in the affections of another.

Yes, the story of the manager and the landowner is messy, but our lives are messy, too.  Life is not a fairy tale or a movie-problems don’t get resolved in dramatic sweeps with violins singing in the background.  More often than not, we don’t see the easy solution, we don’t understand what God is doing or what God wants from us.

And maybe this frustrating, confusing, messy passage is a gift to us-a reminder that not everything needs to be tied up neatly for life to have meaning.  A reminder that grace comes even in the midst of confusion and misunderstanding.  A reminder that even our stupid, petty, daily sins are greeted with grace.

And yes, perhaps even the cheesemakers and the Greeks are blessed, for God’s grace encompasses all of us, even when, especially when we don’t understand how.

Proper 15, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is too hot for today’s lectionary readings.  In the weather we’ve had the last few weeks, we should be reading about green pastures or cool streams.  Jesus should be telling us something soothing and refreshing, the spiritual equivalent of lemonade. Today’s readings are more like steaming hot coffee: if you’re not careful, they’ll burn you.

In our reading from Isaiah, God is describing his people as a vineyard that he planted and tended, but who turned out to have wild grapes, rather than cultivated, edible ones.  If you look closely, though, you’ll see this passage is not just about gardening.  The first verse of the passage uses both the words “beloved” and “love song”.  This gives us a clue that the following passage is passionate.  After all, a love song’s lyrics never go, “Oh, I sort of liked you, but now it is over, and that’s okay, I guess.”  Love songs are filled with passion and longing and heart break. 

Occasionally, a love song will have a happy ending, but more often than not love songs are songs of mourning-mourning the end of a relationship, mourning betrayal, mourning unrequited love.  Our love song from Isaiah this morning does exactly that.  It is a song from God to Israel.  God is heartbroken that Israel has betrayed him and become a society marked by bloodshed and injustice.  Israel has broken God’s heart over and over again, and God has always come back for more. He is sad and angry and so he shares today’s song with the prophet Isaiah.

If you replace the word vineyard with the word sweetheart, parts of the song sound like modern love songs.

Judge between me
and my sweetheart.
What more was there to do for my sweetheart
that I have not done in it?

This is a common theme in love songs, right?  “What more could I do baby?  I’d do anything to get you back, darlin’.  I’ve worked so hard, but still you don’t respect me.  What more can I do?  I buy you flowers, I make you dinner, but you just won’t stay around.”  We all know that feeling of working and working at a relationship with little pay off.

At the end of the song, God gets good and angry and sings,

And now I will tell you
what I will do to my sweetheart.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns.

This is the break up song!  Have you all every seen the movie Better off Dead?  It’s a John Hughes movie from the 80s about a boy who gets his heart broken when his girlfriend leaves him for a burly blonde prep school guy.  In one scene, our hero is driving down the street, totally morose, listening the radio.  He realizes he’s listening to a sad break up song, so he changes the channel, but every channel he turns to is just another tragic song about heart break.  He finally rips his radio out and throws it into the street. 

We don’t think about God being heart broken, or singing break up songs, but here we have one!  We think about God as lofty and somehow above emotion, but the image of God as humanity’s lover abounds throughout the Old and New Testaments.  Whenever Israel begins worshiping golden calves and that sort of nonsense, God gets flaming mad–the same kind of angry a husband would get at a straying wife.  God was passionate about Israel and is passionate about us.

That passion does not cease when Jesus comes to earth.

We think of Jesus as sweet, maybe even a little passive, not unlike this Jesus action figure-he’s attractive, but essentially mild.  But Jesus wasn’t mild.  Jesus was passion personified. 

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is always aware that he is headed to Jerusalem, and that by heading to Jerusalem, he is heading to his death.  He knows he has a limited time to communicate his messages to his followers, and he seems particularly stressed by that in our passage today.  Jesus knows he is going to die soon and he passionately wants his listeners to hear the words he is saying to them.

The part of his discourse we overhear in today’s reading is full of the violent images of fire and division, but Jesus is not using destructive language for the sake of being destructive.  Jesus is using this intent, violent language in order to convey his passion and the sober and serious reality of being a Christian.

Jesus says he has come to bring fire to the earth.  What a terrifying image!  We think of house fires, forest fires, the images of burning oil wells in Iraq.  We think of fire as utterly destructive.  Does Jesus want to destroy us?  Fire can be destructive, but fire can also warm on a cold night, and bring light where there was only darkness.  Even destructive fires, like a forest fire, can clear out dead brush and create a path for new life to flourish. 

But in this passage, fire is the least of our problems!  

Despite the Christian Coalition’s claims that Jesus was really concerned about white American middle class values, in this passage, Jesus rips the idea of the nuclear family apart.  Why would he do this?  Does he hate children and grandparents, family dinners and game nights? 

Probably not, but Jesus does want to make it very clear that following him has consequences.  Following Jesus is not like having a job; following Jesus is like being in a passionate relationship.  And if you’re in a passionate relationship, for better or worse, you’re going to mow down your relatives if they are standing between you and your lover.  Jesus wants all of our time and energy-not just the occasional prayer or Sunday morning church attendance.  Jesus wants our entire heart and soul; our mind and body.   Jesus realizes that not all of the families of his listeners are going to be thrilled if they become his followers.  Their mothers and wives; fathers and husbands may freak out if all of a sudden they left their jobs, left their homes, in order to follow Jesus.  Jesus wants his listeners to know there is a cost to following him, and that cost may be in the form of relationships.

We make a huge mistake if we think we can be part-time Christians, or be a Christian without radically changing the way we live.  Being a Christian is a life altering, full bodied, relational experience.  Being a Christian is like being married or being a son or daughter-it changes and defines who we are as we are in relationship.  God pursues us with intensity, passion and jealousy.  If we begin worshiping money, status, a job, or even our families, God will chase after us and try to win us back. 

We are God’s beloved.  God has created us and invested in us and he loves us deeply.  We have the capacity to betray God.  We have the capacity to break God’s heart.  Thankfully for us, one thing God will not do is give up on us.  We are his and he loves us.  

Amen.

Proper 13, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

Matt was in Baltimore last weekend, for a weekend of watching Orioles’ baseball with his dad, in celebration of his father’s 60th birthday.  On Matt’s way home Sunday, stuck in traffic on the beltway, he saw a bumper sticker he had never seen before.  The first time he saw it, the bumper sticker was on a small, sleek, Porche sportscar.  The second time the bumper sticker was on an imposing Mercedes sedan.  The bumper sticker read:

“Don’t be fooled by the car, my treasure’s in heaven.”

Few bumper stickers I’ve seen say as much in as few words.  The owners of the bumper stickers are making SURE you notice that their cars are really, really expensive and fantastic, while simultaneously implying that they have a deep spiritual life, and know better than placing too much value on their fancy cars.

The bumper stickers tell us a lot more about them than even they realize, I think!  The false piety in the bumper sticker’s message is enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up!  While I’m a firm believer in talking openly about many taboos in our society, I think perhaps these kind of people are the reason our mothers told us it was tacky to talk about money.

The man in our Gospel passage today has a similar kind of insensitivity.  He has come to hear Jesus deliver a discourse, and man, what a discourse he overhears!  In one lecture, Jesus teaches his listeners the Lord’s Prayer, then goes on to talk about the nature of demons and evil and divinity.  This lecture is very heady and profound.  The Pharisees invite Jesus for lunch in the middle of this discourse and true to form, Jesus manages to insult and alienate them.  After lunch, Jesus comes back to teach more and he find that the crowd outside has multiplied.  Now thousands of people are waiting to listen to him.  There are so many people there, they are stepping on each other!

Jesus does not disappoint, either- He comes out with two guns blazing.  His first sentence after lunch warns people to beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  This is an inflammatory, shocking statement. 

At this point, the man in our story interrupts Jesus.  Like so many followers we’ve been hearing about on Sundays lately, the man seems not to connect with Jesus’ words at all.  Instead of asking a follow up question about the Lord’s Prayer, or asking Jesus if he was implying that he was GOD, or asking what Jesus’ beef with the Pharisees was all about, the man instead asks Jesus to arbitrate a dispute between his brother and him.  His brother has inherited the entirety of his family’s estate and the man does not think it is fair.  He wants Jesus to make his brother give him half the money.

Can you imagine?  You’re at the downtown Pavilion, PACKED with people, listening to the Son of God speak and you have the gall to interrupt and ask Jesus to settle a matter of an inheritance?

Money makes people really, really stupid.  Or, rather, greed makes people really, really stupid. 

This man’s passion about his own problems and his own desires, put blinders on him.  They blinded him to the spiritual reality that was right in front of him and all around him.  Jesus was giving him a view into eternity, a view into the spiritual realm-a view that could have changed his whole life.  If the man had really listened closely to the Lord’s prayer, he would know that God provides his daily bread, that God provides everything he could possibly need. 

But because this man had blinders of greed on, he misses the wonder of the reality of God in his midst.

Jesus tells him, to remember to “be on guard against all kind of greed, for life does not consist of an abundance of possessions.”

As wealthy Americans, we should put a copy of this verse on our flat screen TVs, iPods, Jimmy Choo shoes, Ethan Allen furniture, and IRA bank statements.  As a culture our relationship with money is just as screwed up as the man who wanted Jesus to settle the matter of our inheritance.  We tend to either get in denial about money and spend wildly until we’re deeply in debt, or become so obsessed with our savings, we become misers who cannot appreciate the deep richness of the life around us. 

For many, money makes us afraid.  We do not understand how much we should pay in rent, what we should save for retirement or our children’s education, whether we should buy or rent a house, how much we should tithe and what in the world we should do with our money when we die.  We buy “stuff” because we feel anxious, or competitive, or because we feel a deep yearning for the object.  We don’t always feel in control of what we buy.  More than once, when I open my American Express bill, I have gasped and said, “How did that HAPPEN?” 

And when we hear Jesus’ words about greed and possessions we feel condemned.  We feel we have failed in our Christian duty and that makes us feel sad, so we go out and buy something that makes us feel better.  Or, if we’re feeling really guilty, maybe we donate some money to a good cause. 

The good news is that Jesus’ words are not meant to condemn, but to redirect. 

Jesus wants to redirect him, and us, from believing that our value and our future are rooted in what we have.  He tells this really unusual parable-unusual in that it is really simple and straightforward.  A rich man’s fields are incredibly abundant and he stores up their riches until his barns are bursting!  God finds him and yells at him-God tells the rich man that he is going to die and all these stored goods will be useless.

(Maybe Warren Buffet was meditating on this parable when he decided to give 85% of his billions to charity!  I bet his children would have loved to get ahold of Jesus and complain about that particular inheritance!)

Those of us who do not deal with the problem of what to do with a multi-billion dollar fortune still need to be redirected.  We need the Holy Spirit to nudge us, to guide our attention away from our stuff and the process of acquiring more stuff and direct that attention towards the one who created us and created all the stuff in the first place. 

Money and things will never satisfy our deepest longings.  We long to be loved.  We long to be safe.  We long to be understood.  We long for an end to our anxiety.  We long for health.  We long for reconnection with those from whom we are estranged.  We long for justice.  We long for forgiveness.

And of course money and objects give us some measure of comfort and can greatly ease our lives, but they can never fill our deepest longings.  Money and resources cannot give us the deep assurance that we have been made for a purpose and out of deep love.  Money and resources cannot know us.

No one knows this better than babies.  You could give little Carter all the toys in the world, and not one of them will give him even an iota of the comfort of being held in his parents’ arms. 

God loves us deeply, better than the best parent out there.  God knows us intimately.  God accepts us wherever we are and longs to be in relationship with us. 

And when we consent to the reality of God’s presence around us, when we consent to the relationship God wants to have with us, we become filled with the peace that comes with that kind of deep relationship. 

And when we become filled with peace, we become free to deal with questions of money and possessions out of a deeply rooted place.  We come to understand that life is abundant with love and relationship and even resources.  We begin to treat money less as the enemy and more as a tool God gives us to use as we seek holy lives.  We see money as a resource rather than as an end.  We see possessions as gift, rather than as entitlements. 

We come to understand that our  life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, but in an abundance of relationship with God.

Thanks be to God!

Proper 11, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I have a secret.

I have a very long term, very intense, shameful love/hate relationship with housework.  I love the idea of housework.  Years ago I bought the Cheryl Mendelson’s book Home Comforts.  Mendelson is a lawyer, who grew up in a farm in Pennsylvania and her passion is housekeeping.  She loves to sort and clean and cook. Her book is so beautifully written that it seduces you into the idea that housekeeping is an art.  She writes,

What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping.  Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home.  Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else.

(Sigh)  Isn’t that lovely?  I’ll read that paragraph and swear to myself that I will become a capital H housekeeper.  My house will be airy and light, dust free, with clutter put into its rightful place.  The sink will sparkle. No crumb will mar my hygienic kitchen counters.  My home will be a place of peace and beauty. 

Yeah, right. 

I come from a long line of people unable to deal with clutter.  Both my grandmothers had decade’s worth of bills and papers piled on their useless dining room tables.  My father’s favorite home video is a really boring one he took when I was about eleven.  The video is an inventory of the house he did for insurance purposes-the camera slowly sweeps across our home recording our few valuables.  My dad loves this video because as the camera recorded our life together, it also recorded the fact that every flat surface was covered with clutter.  If a ledge dared to just out more than an inch and a half, we would put something on it.  This clutter drove my father crazy, but he participated in its creation as much as we did.

So, I live in the tension of deeply desiring a clean home, but a seeming inability to maintain one.  Housekeeping has alternated between feeling virtuous and oppressive throughout my life, but now that I’m married it takes on a whole other component.  Poor, poor Matt.  Three Fridays ago, I decided while he was at work, I would clean the house.  My intensions started out as true.  Out of my love for him, I would create a welcoming, clean home.  After about four hours and six loads of laundry, though, resentment began creeping in like the insidious beast that it is.  And when I called him about six and learned he was having a beer with co-workers, I lost it.  When he came home, he found a sniveling, weepy, housewife.  When he asked what he could do, I whimpered, “I need to leave the house.  Take me out to dinner.”  And he did, and all ended well. 

So, all this to say: I get Martha.  Martha and I would have been pals.  When she told me her story, I would have shaken my head at Mary’s abandonment of her and felt her deep pain at Jesus’ rebuke.  I would have taken Martha out for a drink, and shaken my head and said, “Men. They just don’t get it.”

Imagine the scene.  Luke tells us that Martha was the one who welcomed Jesus into her home. She probably loved to entertain and was so excited about hosting this special person.  She had probably scrubbed the floor, dusted the furniture, cut some flowers and put them in a vase. . .but anyone who has entertained knows that is not the end of the story.  When your guest is in your house, you’re cooking and refilling his glass, and doing everything you can to make sure he’s comfortable.  When Martha extended the offer to Jesus, she was being hospitable.  She also probably thought she could count on her sister’s help.  But instead, Martha works her tail off, while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him teach.  When Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to get up off her butt, he is NOT receptive.

Jesus may have rebuked Martha here, but he has certainly been the recipient of housekeeping throughout his ministry.  The New Testament is filled with stories of him going to other people’s houses to eat.  At one point in the 12th chapter of Luke he tells his followers, And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things.  And that’s all well and good, but SOMEONE was going to be preparing all these mysteriously provided meals. 

At least Jesus knows a bit of what he speaks-he did, after all, provide food for 5000 with only a few loaves and fishes.  You think having to throw that kind of dinner party, he’d have a little sympathy for Martha’s dilemma.

We know from the Gospel of John that Mary, Martha, their brother Lazarus, and Jesus were all really good friends.  Not only disciples-but friends.  That helps me when I read this passage.  Jesus’ rebuke is somehow easier to hear if it comes from a frustrated friend rather than Jesus as an authority figure.  I wish we knew what happened next.  I really hope that Martha said, “Well, fine.  I’ll just sit and listen, too.  You can make your own darn sandwiches.  For that matter, you can clean the dishes, too.” 

Now, this is the point in most sermons about Mary and Martha, where the preacher would do a reversal and talk about how sometimes our ministry is to sit still and “be” and bask in Jesus’ presence, etc. etc.  And all of that is true, but for this sermon, I’m going to continue to support Martha.  And here’s why. 

In our translation, we read that Martha was distracted by her many tasks.  Tasks is also sometimes translated as preparations.  But the Greek word that is translated as tasks is actually diakonia-a word that everywhere else in the New Testament is described as service or ministry.  So if a man in the New Testament is  participating in diakonia, he is participating in ministry.  When Martha is participating in diakonia, it is “distracting tasks”.  That doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Martha was not just a fussbudget, she was a woman who ministered through her housekeeping. Her conflict with Mary and Jesus was about different ways of ministering to Jesus, not about housework versus ministry. 

So, despite my own love-hate relationship with housework, today I preach for housework as ministry.  Today we commiserate and celebrate with Martha and all women (and maybe in 2007 a healthy number of men, too!) who lug a vacuum, wash endless piles of laundry, haul recycling, wash off the mud, empty the dishwasher, make the bed, feed the dog, and cook dinner. 

Our culture tells us we are not whole human beings unless we are working hard outside the home.  I cannot tell you how many women I have heard tell me that they don’t do anything important-they just work at home and raise children.  That belief could not be farther from the truth!

This work, this drudgery is not just a never ending cycle of chores the gods have invented to torture us, this work is ministry-the ministry of hospitality.  And I would argue that hospitality is one of the most important ministries of the church-Hospitality is what draws people to church and to Jesus.  When we open our church or our homes to others we tell them they are valuable and precious to us.  When we clean and cook for our families or guests we are helping them to be in, as Cheryl Mendleson says, “the place where [they]can be more [themselves] than they can be anywhere else”.  In this kind of home they can experience their full humanity and also experience the love of Christ for them.

And yes, there are times we need to lay down the broom to attend to something Christ may have to teach us.  Frankly, I would happily lay down my broom.  Sometimes in the middle of mopping I put my hand to my ear and say, “Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d have me do, Jesus?”  But in the meantime, until we get that other call, when we are getting out grass stains and polishing the silver, we can know we are doing holy work-the work of ministry.

Proper 10, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

What is the answer to the meaning of life? 

Throughout the centuries, philosophers have debated this question.  Perhaps Douglas Adams says it best, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when he tells us the answer is. . . 42.  In this comedic, satirical piece of science fiction, a group of travelers go on a long adventure after the earth is destroyed. Along the way, after a fearsome journey, the travelers ask a sage what the answer to life, the universe and everything is.  The sage tells them, “42” and when they complain he says what they really should have asked is what the question is.  The never do find a satisfying answer.

Adams reminds us that the meaning of life is not something that can be condensed into a sentence or even a paragraph, though many have tried.

One of the many who has tried to pin down an answer to the meaning of life is a young lawyer in Jesus’ time.  This particular lawyer wanted to see how Jesus would respond to another phrasing of the meaning of life question.  That is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  For that’s really it, isn’t it?  When we ask about the meaning of life, we’re asking about our own mortality.  We’re asking what is the point of giving of ourselves, if we’re all just going to die anyway?  We’re wondering if there is anything after this?

Jesus must have interacted with lawyers before this one, because he simply deflects the question back to the man and asks him, “What is written in the law?”  The lawyer replies with the Schema from the Hebrew Scriptures which is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus then affirms that this is the way to live.

But what doesn’t Jesus say?  Jesus does not say, “This is what you do to get into heaven.”  Jesus does not say, “This is what you do so that God won’t get mad at you.”  Jesus tells the man that loving God and loving neighbor is the way to live. 

What a profound statement.  Jesus answers the man, but in doing so, demonstrates that the man’s motivations are all wrong.  God does not want us worrying about what might happen, but what is happening right now.  Loving God and loving our neighbor will lead us to glimpses of understanding the meaning of life.  When we are in relationship with God and reach out to our neighbors, we get a glimpse of eternal life.  Wow. Deep. 

And Jesus wasn’t kidding.  According to this week’s Christian Century, Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist right here at UVA has done loads of research with those who have had near death experiences.  In his research he has found nearly every person who has survived these experiences comes back, and changes their life to suit the “Golden Rule”, because through their experience they have come to understand that the Golden Rule is like gravity-it’s just how the universe works.

The Shema is not just a set of instructions, like, “Be nice to your brother!” The Shema is a description about the state of humanity, and our relationship with God and each other.  We become our deepest, best selves when we are in relationship with the divine.  We become our most compassionate and wise when we connect with the people around us.  When we follow the schema we truly live. 

So, does the lawyer run home and journal about this profound insight? 

Nah, instead he asks, “So, um, who exactly is my neighbor?”

The lawyer just doesn’t quite get it, does he?  Perhaps not all of his neighbors were the borrowing-a-cup-of-sugar, having-cookouts-on-the-fourth-of-July kind of neighbors.  Maybe some of his neighbors drove their sports cars too quickly through the neighborhood while their music blared.  Maybe these same neighbors let their kids set off firecrackers every night the week of July 4th.  Maybe these neighbors let their dog run around and poop anywhere it pleased.  (These are just hypothetical neighbors, of course.  They don’t live in my neighborhood.)

In any case, the lawyer wants Jesus to define the word neighbor.  And Jesus, being Jesus does not say, “Well, lawyer, a neighbor is anyone living in a half mile radius of you.  However, if one stretches the definition of a neighbor to include people with whom you engage on a daily basis, neighbors also include parents of your children’s friends, members of the country club, co-workers, and those of the same political party.”

I think this definition would have greatly pleased the lawyer.  However, Jesus much prefers telling a story than telling you an answer straight. So, he tells the lawyer the story of the Good Samaritan. 

We all know the story.  A guy was traveling from Richmond to Charlottesville and got beat up by those guys in white t-shirts we’ve been reading about in the newspaper.  They beat him up really badly and leave him for dead.  Three people pass the poor guy. The first person is me, a priest, but I’m on my way to a really important pastoral call and just don’t have time to deal with it, so keep walking.  Secondly, one of Jerry Falwell’s assistants sees the guy, but he’s busy going to make a speech about how great Falwell was, so he keeps going, too.  Finally, Paris Hilton is in town for some reason.  Instead of ignoring the poor guy, she actually stops, takes him to the Omni, calls Martha Jefferson Hospital to get a doctor to come over, and makes sure the Omni will let him stay as long as he needs to recover. 

Seriously?  Paris Hilton?  She of the DUI, suspended license, jail time, all night partying, “special” videotapes, and boyfriend stealing?  Yep, it was Paris who ultimately had more compassion and more guts to help the poor guy than any of the religious figures that walked by and ignored him.  In this story, Paris is the true neighbor, defying all expectations and social norms. 

When he hears this story, the lawyer realizes that this whole question of “Who is my neighbor?” is far broader than he realized-the idea of neighbor is not just the people in your circle-but everyone from the most down and out beat up guy on the sidewalk, to the person who runs around in circles for whom you have nothing but derision and disrespect.

This is inconvenient for the lawyer. This truth is inconvenient for us!  To truly live the Schema, to truly have the depth of human and divine experience, to live as we are meant to live, we are intended to be in relationship with all kinds of people, all kinds of neighbors-even if we would never choose to live next door to them.

For in the end, we are all beings created in the image of God, no matter our station in life.  In the end, the invitation to love God with our totality, with our whole being, is open to all of us. 

For to live, to really live, is not living for the future or regretting the past, but living in the fullness of God’s love here and now.

Easter 7, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Do you ever have moments during which you realize you’ve been burying your head in the sand? I tend to be a pretty focused person, so when I am consumed by something-such as implementing children’s worship, writing a sermon, or planning a wedding-that is where I keep my focus.  This January, at Diocesan Council, I felt like someone was opening my eyes.  I literally had the thought, “Oh, right!  There are other churches besides Emmanuel!  There are Anglican churches around the world!”  I found it refreshing to see what ministries were going on in other places and be reminded that no matter how fabulous we are, we are not actually the center of the Universe.  In that Spirit, this sermon will be an attempt to do a brief overview of the current conflict in the Anglican Communion.

Last week, we read part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to the disciples.  The reading we have today is part of a longer prayer immediately following his discourse.  If the Gospel of John were a novel, this prayer would be the climax.  The prayer sets out Jesus’ vision for the church, and the vision is one of unity.  John writes, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

When Jesus said this prayer, he had maybe a few hundred serious followers.  The concept of unity was a pretty reasonable expectation.  Now, of course, there are millions of Christians, and thousands of denominations.  The Christian church has split over and over and over again, over issues profound and silly.

And while we may not have been paying much attention over here in our idyllic part of the world, our own Episcopal denomination and Anglican Communion are going through their own conflicts.

I’ll be honest.  One reason I haven’t preached much about this, is that I don’t really understand what is going on.  Every once in awhile I’ll see some news item about a church that has left, or a report that’s been published by some committee, but the language is generally pretty dry and confusing, so I end up reading some celebrity gossip instead. 

However, this week, just in time for this passage about unity, a friend passed on a speech given by the Archbishop of South Africa, which contained a Cliff’s Notes history of the Anglican Communion and the current conflict.  I will now attempt to condense his work even further give you a Sarah’s Notes version of his insights. 

The Anglican Communion was actually started the same year Emmanuel began, in 1860.  The Church of England had started churches in all the areas where England had its empire.  After England began losing its power and withdrawing from all these countries, the churches remained.  Unlike the Catholic church, where there was one central authority, these individual Dioceses were politically independent from one another.  What tied them together was each of their relationships to the See of Canterbury, their use of the Anglican prayer book, and the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops.  They stayed only loosely connected until the late 1840s when two bishops in South Africa began a series of arguments which continued for twenty years and led to accusations of heresy until one bishop excommunicated the other bishop!  Now, the diocese realized they could not handle this problem on their own, and so the first meeting of bishops from Anglican churches throughout the world began in 1867 to help solve this problem. 

While other denominations had official dates of formation or confessional statements everyone needed to sign in order to join, the Anglican Communion developed more organically, and was always a consultative body, rather than a body that formed rules that everyone had to follow. 

Over time several “instruments of unity” were formed, in order to help different provinces of the Anglican Church stay connected to one another.  The instrument that has been around the longest is the Archbishop of Canterbury.  This Archbishop is a leader among equals.  His job is to initiative meetings, and be a central point for the church to gather, and not to “rule” over the church.  Another instrument of unity is the Lambeth Conference-which is the meeting of every bishop in the church, every ten years.  A third point of unity is the Anglican Consultative Council, which is made up of lay people, priests, and bishops.  The fourth is the primates’ meeting.  This is not a meeting of apes, but a meeting of all the Archbishops around the world. These Archbishops meet every couple of years, or as needed.

So, fast forward one hundred years to the late 1960s.  Over time, these different parts of the Anglican communion, including our own Episcopal church, have developed relationships that have largely been about connecting, sharing resources, and learning from one another.  Suddenly, the issue of the ordination of women arises and now these instruments of unity have a slightly different role.  Together they are going to work to find a solution to a complicated question.  In 1968, the Lambeth Conference-the large meeting of all bishops-asks the Anglican Communion to study the question.  So, the Anglican Consultative Council, takes that mandate and spends several years debating the question.  By a narrow margin, they decide that it would be okay for individual dioceses to ordain women if they would like to, but it should not be forced on the entire communion.  In 1978, the Lambeth Conference affirmed that decision. 

Over the following twenty years, the issue of homosexuality and the church came up and began to be a point of discussion.  In his speech the Archbishop reports, In 1978 Lambeth “passed a resolution which affirmed faithfulness and chastity within and outside marriage, and called for a wider theological study of sexuality. Its final clause said, ‘While we affirm heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, we recognise the need for deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality, which would take seriously both the teaching of Scripture and the results of scientific and medical research.’ It also encouraged dialogue with homosexual people, and affirmed their need for pastoral care. ”

What ended up happening was that the primates of many parts of the church latched onto the idea of heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, and neglected to pursue the part of the call to dialogue with homosexual people.

Fast forward to three summers ago.  Despite there being no decision by any one of the four instruments of unity, the diocese of New Hampshire consecrated an openly gay bishop.  And, pardon my French, all hell broke loose.

A few individual churches and dioceses within the Episcopal Church wanted to disassociate from the larger Episcopal Church.  Many African dioceses wanted to break off relationship with the Episcopal Church.  So, over the last three years, some African bishops, in order to support the breakaway Episcopal congregations, have been flying to the United States to ordain priests and consecrate formerly Episcopal priests into African denominations.  Our Diocese, the Diocese of Virginia, has been the center for a lot of this.  You may have seen news reports of The Rev. Martyn Mims, formerly of Truro Chruch, being ordained as a bishop by an African bishop, so he could oversee breakaway churches in the Episcopal Church.

Phew!

So, in response to all of this, something called the Windsor Report was published.  A committee of people with varying perspectives wrote it, and asked the Episcopal church to repent of their actions and asked the African bishops to back off from our church’s business.

The complicating factor is, that while General Convention has complied to some degree with the Windsor Report, individual dioceses continue to ordain homosexual persons and bless same sex unions, which lights a fire under the conservative bishops.

Members of the Anglican Consultative Council, who were again charged with sorting all of this out, spent months carefully working on a draft covenant, but before they could publish it, some of the Primates-those are Archbishops-put out a Communique this spring using very strong language saying that the American Episcopal Church has not done enough to repair broken relationships.   This did not make the group working on the covenant very happy, since it undermined their hard word.

So, here we are.  Some kind of unity, huh?  I have given you only the roughest sketch of what is going on.  If you request this sermon from Janice later on, I will attach links so you can read some of these documents yourself.

But do not despair!  In the midst of all this controversy, I want to tell you about the group of Anglican women that meet annually at the United Nations, during the time when they study the status of women throughout the world.  The meeting this year was in the early spring, right when the latest communiqué from the Primates was published.  These women-from all provinces, all walks of life, all races-released this statement:

We, the women of the Anglican Communion gathered in New York as the Anglican Consultative Council delegation to the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and as members of the International Anglican Women’s Network representing the diversity of women from across the world-wide Anglican Communion, wish to reiterate our previously stated unequivocal commitment to remaining always in “communion” with and for one another.

We remain resolute in our solidarity with one another and in our commitment, above all else, to pursue and fulfill God’s mission in all we say and do.

Given the global tensions so evident in our church today, we do not accept that there is any one issue of difference or contention which can, or indeed would, ever cause us to break the unity as represented by our common baptism. Neither would we ever consider severing the deep and abiding bonds of affection which characterize our relationships as Anglican women.

We have been challenged in our time together by the desperately urgent issues of life and death faced by countless numbers of women and children in our communities. As a diverse delegation, we prayerfully reflected on these needs.

We thus reaffirm the conclusion of the statement presented by our delegation to this year’s Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women:

This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice. Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith.

I love this statement, because these women are so deeply invested in the unity of the church-the real unity, where we work together with Christ to ease suffering and bring hope where there is no hope-that they are basically thumbing their noses at the leaders of the church and saying, “You can’t make us break communion with one another.  No matter what papers you may publish, or decrees you hand down, we will continue to be in relationship with one another.”

I can think of no more response in keeping with John’s gospel.  These women challenge us to think about how we can stay in unity with one another-not just within our own happy parish family, where unity is easily achieved-but with our brothers and sisters across the world.  Are we willing to pursue unity with the passion of our Anglican sisters?

Resources

Speech by South African Bishop

Primates’ Communique

Response to Primates’ Communique by Kathy Grieb, member of covenant drafting committee

Statement by Anglican women on unity 

Windsor Report


 

 

 

Easter 6, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Don’t you love receiving a gift?

Someone hands you a package and first you notice its shape and feel how heavy it is. You admire the gift’s packaging and if you’re polite, you read the card, which expresses the giver’s intent and affection.  Finally, after an appropriate period of time has passed, you begin untying bows, and tearing through paper to discover the mysterious object you can now call your own.  When you’re done admiring the gift, you thank the giver, completing the exchange. 

Gifts are a symbol of relationship, affection, love, or obligation.  We give gifts to welcome, to celebrate, to honor and occasionally to assuage guilt.  We also give gifts to mark thresholds in people’s lives.  Matt and I get married in roughly. . .27 days and many people have been honoring this transition through gifts.  This tradition is so formalized now, our society even codifies it through registries where the engaged couple goes to a store and tells the store what they want people to buy for them! 

Thankfully, even though the disciples are entering a new threshold of their lives, they do not get to register for which gift they’d like to receive.  Our Gospel reading today is John’s record of Jesus’ farewell discourse.  Jesus makes a long speech at the last supper, trying to prepare his disciples for his death.  In the section we read today, Jesus is reassuring his followers that they will still be in relationship with him after he leaves.  He says they will receive two gifts:  Jesus will give them his peace, and the Father will send them an Advocate-the Holy Spirit.

We don’t always know what gifts are good for us.  Matt and I recently went through our registries, taking out some of the excessive stuff that we registered for during a greedy binge.  For instance, we realized that just because we thought a Kitchen Aid mixer was cool didn’t mean we would ever use it or even have the space for it in a kitchen.  Sometimes the gifts you think you want, are not the wisest choices.  If the disciples got to choose their gift, they would choose to have Jesus stay with them, in bodily form, forever.  Like most of us, the idea of change makes them a little nervous and the idea of losing a dear friend makes them incredibly sad. 

But Jesus has better things in store.  Jesus knows that his death is not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new relationship between his Father and humanity. Jesus knows that the gifts he and the Father are giving will nourish God’s followers for the next two thousand years.

The first gift Jesus tells his listeners about is the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom he describes as our Advocate.  We’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost at the end of May.  But before the Holy Spirit came rushing down upon those disciples waiting in the upper room, Jesus told his disciples about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God, and a gift from the Father.  The Holy Spirit’s role in our lives is twofold:  to teach us and to help us remember what Jesus has already told us. 

The word Advocate can also mean helper.  The Holy Spirit is sent to help us, specifically in terms of our relationship with the Father.  Jesus told us about the Father, and lived a life in complete union with the Father and through his death and resurrection united us with the Father. 

Remembering these things about Jesus is not easy, especially once Jesus ascends and no longer present to remind us.  God knows we humans need daily reminders.  Moses had only ascended to the mountain a few days before the Israelites started worshiping Golden calves!  We do not have a good track record with keeping God in our mind. 

So, to help us remember Jesus and follow Jesus, the Father sends the Holy Spirit to be our helper.  Not our nagger, not our judger, but our helper.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us understand scripture.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us know how to follow Jesus in our lives.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance when the church tries to sort out what Scripture means in relation to our modern society.  The Holy Spirit is a living, moving part of God that interacts with us directly

Today, [at the 11:00 o’clock service] we, with Greer’s parents and godparents will reaffirm our baptismal vows.  We make vows that are very profound and very difficult.  By saying our baptismal vows together, we remind ourselves that we have promised to turn away from Satan, evil, and our own sin and turn towards Jesus.  These promises are profoundly difficult to keep!  You should see the way Matt and I lick our chops as we check out the status of our registries online.  You can almost see the greed pouring out our ears.  As we turn away from Jesus and towards material things or other temptations, it is the Holy Spirit that can help us get back on the right track. 

Whatever temptations Greer may face, she can know that the Holy Spirit is her Advocate.  The Holy Spirit is for her and with her and will help her to follow Jesus.

The second gift is one Jesus leaves us.  Jesus gives us the gift of  his peace.  Worshiping a God for whom we have very little tangible experience is an anxiety producing experience at times!  Remember the golden calf.  Thankfully, we have access to Jesus’ peace, so we don’t need to create any golden calves.  Remember that Jesus was in complete union with his Father, so his peace is a peace beyond anything we can imagine.  His peace is the peace of God. 

I have a friend of mine who is job hunting at the moment and she tells me she is waiting to feel God’s peace to know she has found the right job.  The peace of God can be an indicator of a right path, but it can also be a spiritual soothing in a time of unrest.  One of the reasons we do healing prayer once a month here is to invite the peace of God to rest on people who are in some way in pain.  The peace of God is mysterious and can be elusive, but Jesus has given this peace to us as gift. 

Just like Matt and I can take back unwanted gifts to the store, we can refuse God’s gifts to us.  We can decide that we have enough of our own resources and we don’t really need the Holy Spirit or Jesus’s peace.  We can decide that we know absolutely what the Bible says and don’t need the Holy Spirit to gude us.  We can decide we need to be anxious and uptight and driven in order to succeed rather than inviting Jesus’ peace to rule our lives.  It is possible to reject the Father and Jesus’ gifts.

But why would we?  Why would we want to reject these wonderful gifts of relationship and connection.  Why would we not want to learn more about God, or feel a touch of the peace God feels when he looks upon us.  In these confusing and anxious times, why would we refuse these gifts?

God’s gifts for us are good gifts.  They may not be gifts we would register for or dream up for ourselves, but ultimately we don’t have really great taste.  The gifts we would register for are misguided.  Like the disciples, we want concrete answers.  We want to pin God down.  We want to pin our own lives down.  We want to know what will happen to us.  We want to know whether we’ll always be healthy or whether our children will do well for themselves.  We would register for the gifts of certainty, of uneventful lives.

But God’s gifts-the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ peace-are exactly the gifts we need to navigate the choppy waters of our lives.  They comfort us in times of trouble and give us deep joy when times are good.  They connect us when we are feeling lonely, and enter our relationships when we are surrounded by loved ones.

Jesus and the Father are handing us to fantastic packages, that contain gifts beyond our wildest imagination.  Are we going to open them?

Easter 4, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A few years ago, my favorite show on television was Alias.  The premise of the show was this:  a young woman graduate student gets recruited by what she thinks is the CIA, only to learn it is actually a nefarious organization.  She then goes to the actual CIA and works as a double agent, to bring the bad organization down.  While I loved the show for its tough, yet sensitive main character-Sydney Bristow-one of the campy, fun things about the show is that no one ever, ever, ever stayed dead.

When the show begins, Sydney believes her mother drowned in a car years ago.  At the end of the first season she discovers that, in fact, her mother used the air from the tires to breathe and survived the drowning!  It also turns out her mother was a KGB spy, but that is an entirely different story.  In fact, this same character, Sydney’s mother, “died” at least two other times during the course of the series.  I think the third time finally stuck, but we’ll never know, since the series ended.

Sydney “died”, as well, or at least everyone thought she had.  In fact, she was kidnapped, became an assassin with an assumed name, and then lost her memory.  When she “came back to life” all her friends were shocked, particularly her boyfriend, who had since remarried.  (The new wife was an evil double agent, of course.)  And of course, that boyfriend “died” for awhile, too.

Sydney’s best friend, Francie, died, too.  But, Francie came back to life as an evil clone.  Her boss’s wife, Emily, died of cancer, but was actually holed up on an island, waiting for her husband.  The list goes on and on.  No one on Alias ever stayed dead!

Alias was not the most realistic television series ever, but somewhere in its soap opera twists and turns, it captured humanity’s deep desire for life, especially the power of life over death.

This power of life over death is a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. 

God’s power over death was shown in Jesus’ ability to rise Lazarus from the dead, and then, of course, God the Father’s ability to raise Jesus from the dead.  Our reading from Acts today, when the apostle Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead is the next link in the biblical chain.  The book of Acts tells the story of the very early church.  Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, and begins with the disciples gathering in the upper room, waiting for the Holy Spirit, per the risen Jesus’s instructions.  The Holy Spirit does, indeed come, and the fledgling Christian church is born.  Can you imagine being on the first vestry?  These new Christians had to make tons of decisions every day-do we let in Jews and Gentiles?  Do you have to be circumcised to be a Christian?  Who is going to take care of the poor?  Who is going to take care of widows? 

The new believers had to have faith in their new leaders-men like Peter and James who had been with Jesus as his disciples.

Part of the coming of the Holy Spirit was imbuing these leaders with some of the same powers Jesus had-so that their followers would know they had God’s stamp of approval.  So, when Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead, God is showing the early believers that Peter is a chosen leader of the church, but also, that the theme of life triumphing over death will be a hallmark of the Christian faith.

We celebrate this triumph every Easter, at every Christian burial, and every time we consume the Eucharist.

But maybe, this is not enough.

Life is precious.  Life is the very breath of God.  From a baby’s first yelp to a dying person’s last jagged breath, the air we breathe reminds us we are also full of God’s breath, God’s spirit.  We are made in God’s image.  But are we behaving as if we believe in the deep value of life?

The church tends to focus on the quality of life issues either at the beginning or the very end of life-with abortion and the death penalty the most public issues.  What would it be like, if we expanded our energies to focus on the years in-between birth and death?

I grow increasingly concerned that we as a culture are losing touch with the preciousness of life.  I perceive it happening in two ways.  First, the obvious-the increase in acceptability of violence as entertainment.  Recently the New Yorker published an article about the television show 24.  (Now, before I continue let me make it clear that until recently I watched and enjoyed 24.  And I didn’t stop because of the violence, I stopped because it got boring.) 24 is the first television program to show Americans government agents using torture that is outside the bounds of American law and being rewarded for it.  In the past, television shows or movies showed the enemy using torture as a way to demonstrate the inhumanity of the enemy. 

This normalization of torture began having an affect on the real world American military. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, actually traveled to Los Angeles to meet with the producers of 24 because the show has such a problematic impact on U.S. soldiers.  These young soldiers have spent their teenage years watching 24 and coming to believe the kind of torture its hero, Jack Bauer practices is acceptable, even though it is, in fact, illegal.   These young soldiers are having to be reigned in again and again as they cross the boundaries of acceptable treatment of prisoners. 

The culture of violence pervades many of my favorite shows and movies, and certainly some of the video games Matt plays.  But at what point do we cross the line as a culture?  Where is the line between acknowledging violence as an unfortunate, but interesting, part of life and glorifying it as a glamorous way to conduct one’s life?  Once again, I have no answers for you, but I think these are important questions to think and pray about as we go about making our daily choices.

The second way of disrespecting life that I’ve observed lately is the way we treat one another verbally.  For some reason, this seems to be the year where out of control stars seem to think it is okay to insult Jewish people, black people, gay people, heck, even their own children. 

In March of this year, a blogger, Kathy Sierra, who blogs about the one-would-think uncontroversial topic of computing technology began receiving more and more threatening anonymous comments towards her on her and others’ blogs, culminating in a death threat.  This began a conversation in the blogging community about the problem of increasingly sexist, sexual, and violent language being used against women in the commentary section of even mainstream websites like Salon.com and Slate.com.  Measures are being taken to filter out such comments, but even that they were made in the first place is deeply disturbing.

The hip-hop community has responded to Don Imus’s comments about the Rutger’s women’s basketball team by beginning a conversation within the hip-hop communitiy about what words are and are not appropriate to promote in albums and videos.

While they may not kill, words can contain incredible violence.  Words can undermine someone’s entire sense of identity, even humanity.  The language we use to speak to one another reflects how we see the other person.  Do we see them as a threat?  As less than ourselves?

Part of respecting life is respecting those made in God’s image.  Everyone on this planet has been made in God’s image.  Everyone has a soul.  One of the first jobs human beings were given was the job of naming-Adam was asked to name all the animals and then his wife, Eve.  This power of naming is the power of giving life and identity. 

My neighbor just had a baby and already we’re calling her names.  Sometimes they are meaningless names like Pepper Pot or Anna Banana, but just as often we’re calling her precious, lovely, smart, perfect-we are identifying the precious humanity in her and calling it out. 

There is no reason to stop this kind of naming once babies become children or children become adults.  Part of our job as Christians is to remind each other who we are-We are beloved, precious in the sight of God, favored, part of a human family.

Celebrating and respecting life is not just about deciding when human life begins or debating end of life issues, but valuing our own life and the lives of those around us.  When Peter raised Tabitha from the dead, he was not just doing a magic trick, he was affirming the goodness of life, of Tabitha’s life.  The writer of Acts tell us that she was a woman who did many good works.  Tabitha was a whole person with a story and relationships-her resurrection was not just to impress the new Christians, but to bring life where there was death, wholeness where there had been grief.

Her resurrection was a reminder that no matter how much evil or violence or death may lap at our heels, ultimately we belong to a God who pours such abundant life upon us, we cannot help but give that life to others.

Easter Sunday, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A friend of mine, a New Testament scholar, has a very clear idea of the perfect Easter sermon.  The minister would climb in the pulpit, say, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”, promptly sit down, and let the choir do the real preaching.

It’s a little early in my ministry to attempt such a feat, but I understand what she means.  No spoken words can capture the awe-filled experience of the women at the tomb. 

Mary Magdalena, Mary the mother of James, Joanna and their friends, have faithfully followed Jesus from Galilee.  They have watched him be betrayed, anxiously awaited the results of his trial, and watched, aghast, as he was crucified.  Then, as they make their way toward the tomb, their spices in hand, they realize something is terribly wrong.  Jesus’ body is nowhere to be found.

We now have the scope of history and years of theological reflection to guide our understanding of this empty tomb, but for these women the empty tomb was horrifying.  Mary, Mary and Joanna had been on an emotional rollercoaster the last few weeks. Following a leader they thought would save them somehow, only to watch his story end, not with victory, but with death.  An empty tomb was just adding insult to injury.

Imagine their shock when the men in dazzling white approach them and tell them the reason Jesus is not in the tomb-he is risen!  Dazed, they return to the disciples to tell them the good news.

The Marys and Joanna may not have had the benefit of the long view of history, but we do.

During our Easter Vigil [tonight/last night] we read passages from the Old and New Testaments that give us context to help us understand the enormity of the resurrection.  After all, the resurrection is not an independent event, but the culmination of thousands of years of relationship between God and humankind.  This story-of God’s relationship with humanity was also told during the seder dinner on Thursday.

The Old Testament tells the story of a God who carefully created a world filled with beauty and meaning out of chaos.  This God created humans in his own image-creatures with the capacity to think and love and choose.  For better or wrose, these early people are too curious and independent to follow God the way God expects.  God goes on to try again and  chooses a particular group of people-the nation of Israel–to follow him.  He creates this nation through Abraham and Sarah’s bravery and years later, calls Moses to free the Israelites when they are captured as slaves by the Egyptians. 

The Isralites successfully escape, but unfortunately, like all people, the Israelites are unable to follow God perfectly.  They have a hard time trusting a God who is so mysterious and ephemeral.  They want evidence and constant reminders of his faithfulness.   Even in the midst of God giving them a law to govern themselves, they betray him and begin worshiping a Golden Calf. 

As a consequence, these Israelites then spend 40 years wandering in the desert, before they enter the Promised land.  Again, they are unable to follow God even when they have this land.  Their society ends up being an unjust one-that takes advantage of orphans, widows and the poor.  Eventually, God calls the prophets to warn Israel that it must change its ways.  However, the prophets also hint that God is preparing a new kind of relationship between himself and humankind. 

The Prophet Ezekiel records God as saying, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Rather than trying to change his followers’ behavior, God promises to change our hearts.  And to do this, he sends us Jesus.

Mary Magdalena, Mary, and Joanna have seen the enactment of this promise first hand.  They have felt the shift in their own hearts as they came to love this Jesus who was more than just a man.  They have seen his ability to love people from all walks of life.  They have seen his power to heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, and restore the ability to walk to those who were lame.  They have heard Jesus teach with confidence about God and the Kingdom of God.  They have seen his bravery as he stood up to the powers of the day, challenging their empty faith.

Imagine with me, the wonder these women must have felt when they realized their Jesus, their friend, their Lord, whom they thought was dead, was alive again.  Imagine integrating this mind blowing news into your idea of who Jesus was.  Imagine the fear and joy and awe these women must have felt as they fully understood, for the first time, that Jesus truly was more than a human being-Jesus was God.

No longer is their image of God an abstract one.  In Jesus, they have found God enfleshed.  They now know God as someone who cares for them deeply, personally.  Their hearts now respond to God not out of fear or respect, but out of love.

You and I have known Jesus was God for as long as we first heard the Christmas story, but our minds still have a difficult time deeply understanding the joyous implications of the incarnation and the resurrection.  In coming to earth in bodily form, Jesus blessed our lives.  He hallowed what it meant to be a human, so that we, too, can live holy lives.

By rising again from the dead, he transformed our lives.  No longer are we trapped by the limitations of this world or by our bodies’ natural infirmities.  Not only do we now have free access to God, but when our physical lives are over, we will join God fully in the Kingdom of God. 

That transformation is not limited to what happens to our bodies after we die.  The resurrection transforms the way we live here and now. With the resurrection, with Christ’s victory, we can trust that in the cosmic scheme of things, God wins.  Good wins.  This knowledge can give us a deep rooted confidence as we face seemingly insurmountable odds when helping the poor, the sick, and the uneducated.  We do not need to fear governments as we hold them accountable to be governments of justice.  We do not need to tremble in fear as we begin to right the wrongs that have been done to our planet.  The resurrection frees us to pray and to act with a holy abandon.

The new life Christ gives us in his resurrection is for our whole lives-our spiritual lives, yes, but also our intellectual, physical, and emotional lives.  The resurrection calls us to an intimate relationship with God, who has experienced all our joys and sorrows, and then broken the power of death over us.  If we give God a chance, by opening ourselves and our lives to him through prayer and discernment-we, like the Marys, Joanna, and the disciples, can live transformed lives, resurrection lives, lives marked not be fear and timidity, but by wholeness and joy.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

Ash Wednesday, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today we observe one of the most solemn days of the church year:  Ash Wednesday.  On this day we remember our mortality and begin 40 days of Lent, during which we prepare ourselves for Christ’s death and resurrection.

Last week at Children’s worship, Jane Lynch spoke to the kids about how Lent is a time to prepare for Christ’s death and resurrection.  When one little boy got back to his mother, he tugged at her anxiously and said, “They killed Baby Jesus!”  Because this was new information to this almost-three year old, he was able to experience the deep shock and pain of Christ’s death.  Just wait until he hears that Christ comes to life again!  He’s going to be blown away.

As adult believers, it is difficult to keep the sorrow over Christ’s death and the joy over the resurrection fresh.  We have heard the story over and over again, but the meaning of the story begins to recede as time passes.  We go about our days getting more and more caught up in the details:  what to make for dinner, what needs to be crossed off our to-do lists, where the kids need to be when.  We don’t have a lot of time to think about theological issues.

Ash Wednesday pulls the rug out from under us.  As we have ashes imposed on our foreheads, as we hear the words, ‘From dust you came and to dust you shall return,” we remember that no matter how many errands we run, how many meals we cook, how many days we go into the office, all that will stop one day, and we will die. 

Suddenly Christ’s death and resurrection take on a great deal of significance.  For, through this miraculous event, our deaths are no longer meaningless and terrifying.  Because of Christ’s resurrection, we know we have a hope and a future. 

So, now that we have been stopped short from our crazy lives, how can we live the next 40 days in such a way that will ready us to hear the good news of God’s salvation?

Our Gospel passage today, guides us, through telling us what Jesus does not want.  What Jesus does not want is for us to beat our chests in public, shouting “woe is me!” so that everyone knows how fabulously penitent we are this Lent.

Like most of our faith, Lent is about relationship. 

When we sacrifice something we enjoy, we open space in our lives for God to enter.  Each time we reach for that cookie, or the remote, or whatever it is we have decided to sacrifice, we are reminded of God’s presence.  Think of that object of sacrifice as a little post-it-note reminding you to say hello to God, reminding you to meditate on Christ’s suffering and glory.  Sacrificing is difficult, but it turns us toward our maker, the One who gives us strength when we are weak and forgiveness when we are even weaker. 

Lent is not about how much you can punish yourself.  Lent is about finding a way to open yourself to the One who created you and who sacrifices his own identity for you.   Lent is about drawing near to God’s presence.  Sacrifice reveals to us our own weaknesses and the strength of our desires for things that are not essential, maybe even not good for us.  When we are reminded of our own weakness, we turn to God, for help and for mercy.

This last week, Chuck and I have been spending a lot of time with a young couple whose twins were born nearly three months early.  We’ve also spent a lot of time with families planning their matriarchs and patriarch’s funerals.  In both these cases-at the fragile beginning of life and the quiet end-these families were turned to God, seeking comfort, healing, and understanding. 

For these families, sacrifice is not an abstract concept, but a very concrete one.  They know that when their security is taken from them, turning to God can bring meaning and comfort. 

In a similar, but much smaller way, our sacrifices help us to cling to God.  For as our psalmist reminds us today:

As a father cares for his children, *
so does the LORD care for those who fear him.
For he himself knows whereof we are made; *
he remembers that we are but dust.
Our days are like the grass; *
we flourish like a flower of the field;
When the wind goes over it, it is gone, *
and its place shall know it no more.
But the merciful goodness of the LORD endures for ever on those who fear him, *
and his righteousness on children’s children.

God loves us and desires relationship with us.  This Lent we are invited to enter more deeply into that relationship.

Amen