Gospel

Lent 4, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

The blind man did not ask for any of this.  If you’ll recall, he was quietly sitting by the side of the road, minding his own business, when suddenly the disciples notice him.  The disciples, who clearly have still not fully understood Jesus, ask Jesus whether the blind man or his parents sinned to make him blind.  I’m sure the blind man was used to this kind of conversation.  People probably felt free to talk about him as if he wasn’t there all the time.  Maybe the blind man was insulted.  Maybe the blind man wondered about the cause of his blindness himself. In any case, you can almost hear Jesus’ irritation as he tries to explain that the blindness was not caused by sin.  Without the blind man’s request or permission Jesus spits in dirt, rubs it in the man’s eyes and then tells him to go and take a bath.

Can you imagine?  The poor blind man just wants to be left alone, or maybe get a little change from a sympathetic passerby, and instead some stranger rubs mud into his eyes!  And not only mud, but mud that has been moistened with human spit. What a disgusting thing to do to another person!  The blind man gets out of there, goes to the pool that Jesus suggested, washes the mud from his eyes and sure enough, suddenly his sight is restored.  He can see!  Suddenly Jesus’ interruption into his life is not an annoyance, but a huge blessing.

The man returns to his neighborhood and once again the neighbors start talking about him as if he’s not there.  “Isn’t that the guy who used to beg?”  He can hear them gossiping.  Finally they ask him directly and he tells them exactly what happened.  A man named Jesus.  The mud.  The pool.  The sight.  No, he doesn’t know where Jesus is now.

This starts to happen over and over to the man.  The Pharisees drag him in for questioning.  He gives the same answers.  Jesus.  Mud.  Now he can see.  The man can see things around him for the first time, and he can also see what the Pharisees are up to.  The Pharisees start to whisper gleefully—“Oh, Jesus healed on the Sabbath.  He can’t be from God.  We’ve got him now! “ But the formerly blind man knows their logic is as short sighted as the logic about how sins cause medical conditions.  He is brave enough to tell the Pharisees that he thinks Jesus is a prophet.

Then the authorities haul his parents in for questioning.  Now, his parents’ sin might not have caused his blindness, but they don’t win parent of the year awards here, either.  Instead of rising to the blind man’s defense they say, “Yes, he’s our son, but that’s all we know.  We swear!  Ask him!  He’s old enough!”

Once again, the man is hauled before the Pharisees.  They tell him to “give glory to God” by admitting Jesus is a sinner.  The irony here is delicious.  Once again, the man sticks to his story.  All he knows is that he was blind and now he sees.  When they ask him the same questions over and over again he finally snaps back and asks them, “Why are you so interested?  Do you want to become his disciples?”  Our man has some spine!  The Pharisees are horrified, of course.   They tell the man that they don’t even know where Jesus is from.  They are starting to sound like old Southern biddies.  “We don’t know who his people are.”

What’s interesting here is that the more the Pharisees push, the more the man sees, and the more the man believes.  With every encounter, his boldness at describing Jesus deepens. He might have started out as a man on the sidelines, but the Pharisees are pulling faith out of him thread by thread, even though they intend the opposite.  After the Pharisees curl their noses at Jesus’ lineage, the formerly blind man uses their own logic against them.

“Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”  The Pharisees are infuriated and drive the blind man out of town.

The man has nowhere near the education the Pharisees have.  As a blind person, he could not have studied the Torah.  In their world view the Pharisees have all the knowledge about God and the formerly blind man has none.

We know the opposite is true.  After the man is cast out of town, Jesus searches him out and reveals his identity to him.  Jesus is not just a man.  Jesus is not just a prophet.  Jesus is not just a Godly person.  Jesus is the Son of God.  While the Pharisees are debating about the fine points of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, the man Jesus healed is having an encounter with the living God.  His lack of education, his lack of resources, his former disability—none of that stands in the way of the encounter.  His faith helps him see God in a way that the Pharisees are unable to see.  We learn that they are actually the blind people in this story.  They have every opportunity to see the work of God, but they are too caught up in their own rules and power to see it.

Jesus may no longer be walking around on earth occasionally muddying someone’s eyes, but Jesus still shows up in our lives whether we ask for him or not. Experiences with God are not limited to those brilliant professors at Princeton Seminary or the clergy in this town.  In fact, sometimes the “experts” get so caught up in the details, like the Pharisees we can miss encounters with God right before our noses!

The Holy Spirit can break in to anyone’s life at any time and give a person an encounter with the risen Christ.  History is filled with these moments.  St. Augustine, who had a notoriously naughty youth, was visited by a man named Potitian, who told him about the conversion of some other men.  St. Augustine was so moved by the stories, he ran into a garden, crying out to God and suddenly he heard the voice of children singing, “Take up and read.  Take up and read.”  He picked up his bible and opened it to Romans 13:13-14, “let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.  Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  In that moment, Augustine felt as if he had encountered the risen Christ, who was speaking directly to him.

My favorite modern story of this kind of encounter, is the story Anne Lamott records of her own encounter with Jesus in her book Traveling Mercies.

After awhile, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone.  The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there-of course, there wasn’t.  But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus.  I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled.  I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen.  I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

I just felt him sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that ‘s not what I was seeing him with.  Finally, I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.”

Now, if Augustine or Anne Lamott tried to tell their experiences to the Pharisees, they would be stuck in the same position as the blind man.  They would sound ridiculous!  Their experiences are not logical.  Their experiences don’t fit into our understanding of how the world works.  But like the blind man, all they can do is tell what happened to them.  Augustine lived a selfish life, had his encounter with Christ, and became one of the great Saints of the Church.  Lamott was a woman with a serious addiction, had her experience with Christ, and went on to give up drugs and alcohol and became famous writing about faith.  They were blind and then they saw.  And when the saw the truth, they communicated that truth to those around them.

So, be on watch this Lent.  You never know when Christ will sneak up in your life and radically transform it.  Whether you are new to faith or have been worshiping for sixty years, Jesus may not ask first.  He may just come up to you and heal you in ways you never expected or knew you needed.  And if people don’t believe it happened to you all you have to say is “All I know is, I was blind and now I see.”

Amen.

Lent 2, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

My family did not grow up going to church.  I would go once or twice a year to the military chapel with a friend or to my grandmother’s Baptist church, but church was not part of the fabric of our weekly lives until my teenage years.  When I was in sixth or seventh grade a local youth pastor used to come pick up kids at school, bring them back to the chapel and have bible study at lunch time.  Somehow I ended up on one of these adventures—and they were adventures since she was a terrible, terrible driver, who absolutely should not have been trusted with the well being of middle schoolers.

The week I attended her bible study, she told the story of St. Paul, riding his horse and then suddenly being knocked off his horse by the power of God.  She used that story as an opportunity to talk to us about how Jesus offers us eternal life.  Now, I was a really uptight, nervous kid who worried about things like death with some regularity, so eternal life sounded pretty good to me.  The youth pastor told us that if we died, and were at the Pearly Gates, all we had to do was say that Jesus was in our hearts and we would be welcomed right in.

I felt like I had been given a secret code!  All I had to do was ask Jesus into my heart and I would be golden!  For at least the next three years, I prayed every night that Jesus would come into my heart.  By my account that means I have been born again approximately 1,095 times.

Of course, I did not quite understand the meaning behind the youth pastor’s words.  Nicodemus has a bit of a hard time following the concept of being born again as well.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee, which meant he was an authority figure in Jewish religious life.  If you’ll recall, Pharisees were not high on the list of Jesus’ biggest fans.  But something about Jesus intrigues Nicodemus, so he sneaks over to Jesus under the cover of night to ask him some questions.  Nicodemus can see there is something special about Jesus, because he has witnessed the miracles Jesus performs. Nicodemus is trying to wrap his head around who Jesus is.  He is trying to understand Jesus within his own framework.  He calls Jesus “rabbi” and refers to Jesus as a teacher. These are roles that Nicodemus can understand and accept.  Jesus, however, responds to poor Nicodemus with this completely strange sentence, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Poor Nicodemus.  He was probably expecting Jesus to say something like, “Thanks, I’m so glad you’ve noticed all those miracles I’ve been doing!”  Instead, Jesus throws this new theological idea at him like a hot potato.  To his credit, Nicodemus does not drop the hot potato.  Nicodemus is probably used to the process of midrash, where scholars go back and forth over scriptural language to try to understand it more deeply.  Nicodemus fires back—like any sensible person would—How can any grown person be born again?  We can’t crawl up into our mother’s uterus again!  (For which, all of the women in the room, are quite grateful, thank you.)  And now Jesus takes the opportunity to blow Nicodemus’s impression of him out of the water.  Jesus is about to clam that he is not just a rabbi, not just a teacher, but Jesus is the Son of God.  Jesus says,

Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit”  He goes on to say, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Nicodemus got way more than he expected.  He was expecting a theological conversation, sure, but was not expecting to be confronted by someone claiming to be God and the vehicle for humanity to gain eternal life.  The text never explicitly states that Nicodemus leaves, so I just imagine him backing away slowly, not quite able to fully engage with this concept.  Nicodemus does not disappear forever, though.  He comes up twice more in the Gospel of John.  Once to defend Jesus’ right to a trial and when Jesus dies, Nicodemus brings a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to anoint Jesus’ body.  Nicodemus might not have been able to make the leap from Pharisee to disciple, but he clearly loved Jesus, even if he did not fully understand him.

This idea that Jesus presented Nicodemus—of being born again—is a powerful one.  The fundamentalist  traditions in this country are all over being born again.  In fact, my mother would use the phrase “born-again” as a way of describing someone who was fundamentalist.  And she did not mean it in a complimentary way.  In the fundamentalist context being born again means saying the sinner’s prayer, in which the person acknowledges his own sin, asks for forgiveness, acknowledges that Jesus is God, and then invites Jesus into his heart.  As someone who spent her college years with an evangelical para-church group, I can say that the poor students who had been life long Christians always felt like second class citizens.  Their life long faith was looked on with suspicion.  The real Christians were the ones who had the opportunity to sin a little and then repent in a public way, say this prayer, be born again, and be welcomed into community.

Right now you might be feeling a little superior.  You might be thinking to yourself, “Man, I’m glad I’m Episcopalian and I don’t have to worry about this born again nonsense.”  If you are thinking those thoughts, I direct your attention to page 306 of the Book of Common Prayer.  In the prayer over the water said at every Baptismal service, the priest says, “We thank you Father, for the water of Baptism.  In it we are buried with Christ in his death.  By it we share in his resurrection.  Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.”  And if that isn’t enough for you, I invite you to turn to page 858.  In the catechism we ask, “What is the inward and spiritual grace of Baptism” and we learn that it is, among other things, “birth into God’s family the church”.

Guess what folks, we are born agains!

We, too, believe in the power of new life through the resurrected Christ.  We may use different language, but we believe that when a person is baptized—whether that happens as an infant or as a fifty year old—that we die with Christ in his death and are born again and receive the Holy Spirit.

Now, many of you were baptized well before you started forming lasting memories.  You may have had this powerful spiritual experience, but you don’t remember it and you may not even feel any connection to God at all.  Feelings of alienation from God do not mean God has abandoned you.  When you are baptized and anointed, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, God has laid claim to you and won’t let go.

If you are feeling alienated from God and not feeling so filled with the Holy Spirit, there is hope!

Do you remember Fr. Paul’s sermon last week?  He preached about the idea of being totally honest with ourselves and with God.  He talked about telling ourselves the truth.  That kind of honesty is the first step in becoming renewed with God and reclaiming our status as baptized Christians.  Coming before God and telling God the whole truth about yourself may feel awkward, especially if you haven’t prayed in a long time.  But remember, God knows everything about you already and still loves you.  You clearing the air with God is more about you realizing you are forgiven than God actually forgiving you.

And once you’ve cleared the air with God, just stay in conversation.  Keep praying.  Try different forms of prayer.  Be patient.  Not every faithful Christian has amazing, emotional, transcendent experiences of prayer.  God may not show up in ways you expect, but God is and will be present with you as you pray and throughout your life.

Nicodemus was not ready to drop his life and start following Jesus.  Nicodemus wasn’t ready to trust this Jesus who claimed to be from heaven.  Nicodemus stood on the sidelines and loved Jesus in his own way—but he could have had so much more.  Nicodemus could have had a place at Jesus’ table every day.  Nicodemus could have walked alongside Jesus every day, marveling at the miracles and the new realities Jesus was bringing.

Too many of us live like Nicodemus, cautiously observing Jesus from the sidelines, rather than acknowledging that, whether we like it or not, we are born again, we belong to God, and Jesus invites us along for the adventure.

Epiphany 7, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I have a confession.

I have a big problem with our Gospel lesson today.  Rather, I have a problem with the way this text has been used in the Church.  This gospel lesson has been used as a justification for people staying in abusive relationships and I have to address that before I can move on and preach the text.

Domestic violence is a huge problem in the world and in our community.  Domestic abuse—whether verbal or physical—is not limited to other classes or races.  Some of the worst domestic violence cases I’ve encountered were situations in which both partners had multiple degrees and extremely high incomes.

There is almost certainly at least one couple in an abusive relationship here today.

Historically, the Christian church has not done a great job of helping victims of abuse leave their partners.  Passages like the one today have been quoted to victims—often women—and these women for generations have been told to turn the other cheek and to stay faithful to their vows.

I want to be very clear that I, with great confidence, do not believe Jesus was addressing people in abusive domestic situations here.  Remember, last week we read verses 21-22 of this same chapter,

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.

What is domestic abuse if not a violent combination of anger and condescension as described here? Jesus unequivocally condemns abusive behavior.

If you are currently in an abusive relationship, or you are not sure but you think you may be in one, please contact Father Paul or me. Our conversation will be confidential and we will try to get you the help that you need.  You can also contact the organization Woman Space, who are experts in these matters.  Their web address is womanspace.org.  Their chaplain, Susan Victor, is wonderful and will be leading our adult forum next Sunday.

Okay, moving on to the text.

We are still hearing The Sermon on the Mount and Jesus is still referring to Hebrew Law and then upping the ante.

The old law, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was developed to stop people from trying to right wrongs with disproportionate violence.  This way, if a sheep was stolen, the sheep needed to be replaced, rather than the other farmer’s farm being burned to the ground.  The law was designed to rein in our impulse for revenge that escalates our conflicts.   It’s a pretty good law!  It’s sensible!

But Jesus turns the tables and tells his audience that if they are slapped on one cheek to offer their other cheek!  And if someone steals their coat, they are to give them their cloak as well!

At first it appears that Jesus is encouraging victimhood, that the Christian’s role in the world is to be pathetic and taken advantage of.  But Jesus knows that the power of God is not going to be shown through spectacular acts of revenge—anyone can enact revenge.  The power of God is shown through strength of character and through love.  And really, what shows more strength then calmly and steadily turning one’s face to receive a second blow?  And imagine if a Roman on a horse came by and stole your coat, how better to illuminate the bad behavior of the Roman than by offering him your cloak, which was the only garment you had left to keep you warm.

What shows more strength than loving your enemies?  It does not take much character or will power to hate your enemies.  If your upstairs neighbor plays his music too loudly, and won’t turn it down when you ask politely, it’s much easier to call the police than to bake the guy some brownies and ask him nicely one more time.

Walter Wink, a professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn University, supports the view that Jesus is not asking his followers to be victims. He believes the word for resist—antistenai—is mistranslated here, since the same word is used to describe warfare in other parts of the Bible.   He believes Jesus intends to communicate that his believers should not resist evil violently. Wink argues that Jesus resisted evil all the time, whenever he encountered it, so it would not make sense for him to tell his believers not to resist evil.  Wink believes Jesus is trying to stop the cycle of violence. [1]

Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the power of this point of view.  Rather than interpreting “turning the other cheek” as blind acceptance of the abuse of power, he used the text alongside Ghandi’s teaching to help create the peaceful protests of the Civil Rights era.  In 1964, Gunnar Jahn, who was presenting King with the peace prize, quoted King as saying,

If you will protest courageously and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written [in future generations], the historians will [have to pause and] say: “There lived a great people – a black people who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.” This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.[2]

King demonstrated to us that turning the other cheek, refusing to respond to violence with violence, can change an entire country.  We saw similar protests earlier this month in Egypt, which also affected great change.

And maybe the great large scale non-violent protests do have something to say to us about our personal struggles.

Maybe there is something to be said for maintaining one’s dignity and continuing to act in a kind a loving manner when someone is trying to dominate or take advantage of you.  Of course that does not mean we have to yield to the demands of the person with power.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue, because I’m hearing from more and more of our kids about bullying in school.  Even our little second and third graders are trying to figure out what it means to stand up for yourself, but still be a kind and loving person.  How do we teach kids about the injustice of the world?  That people behave in rotten ways, even people who are not inherently rotten?  How do we so root them in God’s love that they can move confidently through life, knowing their valued place in the world?  How can we help prepare them to be non-violent resisters, who don’t accept bullying as the status quo and help to change the culture in their schools?  Seriously, if you figure this out, please let me know!

In the meantime, those of us who are adults can start to act out resisting evil in a way that show the evildoers that we are different.  Yes, we will stand up for ourselves.  But we will conduct ourselves with the highest ethical behavior.  We will not bully back, or slander, or slash tires, or gossip.  We will not throw a punch or destroy someone’s credit rating.  We will protect ourselves and our families, by distancing ourselves from the evildoers, or by going through appropriate legal channels, but we will also treat the person who torments us with dignity and we will pray for them.

This may seem difficult when our blood is boiling, but Jesus is looking out for us when he ups the ante on these laws.  He knows that perpetuating the cycle of violence only brings harm to everyone involved.  He knows that living a life of dignity and restraint will help us not only be more faithful Christians, but be happier, to boot!

When we learn how to lovingly and firmly resist evil; when we find a way to see the humanity in our enemy; we are given a kind of freedom.  Jesus shows us a way to live our lives in which our identity is so rooted in being children of God that our enemies’ behavior does not define us.  We may not feel stronger than our enemies, but God is always stronger than evil and we belong to God.

Thanks be to God.

[1] http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/wink_3707.htm

[2] King, Martin Luther as quoted by Jahn, Gunnar in his 1964 speech presenting King with the Nobel Prize.  http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/press.html

Epiphany 6, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Preached at the evening service of the Episcopal Church of Princeton University.

I am a rule bound person and have been ever since I was a kid.  My parents had very clear rules for my sister and me and I had very little problem following them.  We did our homework before we played.  We went to bed at 8:00 PM.  We had to eat at least one bite of everything on our plate.  No motorcycles, no tattoos, and strangely, no pierced ears.  Life was ordered and made sense.  I even liked imposing rules on others.  When I was eight and in the school play, before the play started, the only person you could hear from the audience was me hushing my fellow actors saying, “Shhhh.  Shhhh.  The play’s about to start.”

I became a Christian my last year of high school, through an evangelical group called Club Beyond.  I continued my life as a Christian in college through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  There, too, the rules were very clear.  Being a Christian meant going to large group meetings and bible studies, being kind to others, not drinking, smoking or having sex, and telling your friends about Jesus.  As a new Christian my brain really liked the clarity.  I was told what to do and what not to do and my rule-following mind was calm.

So, I have some sympathy for Ben Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus, who tells us in our Old Testament lesson today that “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.”   At first, this seems plausible.  The commandments are laid out throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, so there is no mystery.  We don’t have to guess at what the commandments might be.  Hypothetically, it’s entirely possible to follow the commandments to the letter.

And Jesus seems to be reinforcing this message on the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus has been doing all kinds of radical things and people are starting to wonder if he is going to tell them that the Hebrew Law is invalid.  Instead he tells his follower that they need to follow the Law even more diligently than the scribes and Pharisees!  And the scribes and Pharisees were serious, serious rule followers.  Not only that, but in our passage today, Jesus raises the stakes.  Jesus raises the stakes considerably.

Jesus clarifies that according to the law, you weren’t supposed to murder someone.  But now, you’re not even supposed to insult anyone.  Even idiots.

Jesus clarifies that according to the law, you were not supposed to cheat on your wife.  But now, you’re not even supposed to check out a hot girl’s boobs, even if she’s wearing a low cut top!

You’re not supposed to divorce, you’re not supposed to promise to do something you don’t intend to do.  The rules are getting stricter and stricter.

And our reading today is not even the end of the list.  You’ll be hearing more about the high stakes that Jesus wants from his followers next week.

Suddenly, Ben Sira’s words don’t seem that easy.  I can go through a day without murdering someone without much a problem. But, going through an entire day without insulting someone behind their back is much more challenging.  There are so many bad drivers and generally inconsiderate people in the universe that deserve my scorn!

And if a really handsome guy walks into the room, I might check him out before I even realize I’m doing it!

Jesus is getting at something really uncomfortable.  Jesus is telling us that living a holy life is not just about following rules.  Living a holy life is about the content of our hearts and minds.  We can follow rules to the letter and be hateful, mean spirited people. We can follow rules and completely miss the spirit of what the rules mean.

I ended up leaving the evangelical church for a variety of reasons, but partly it was because the rules started to not line up with the Jesus I was getting to know.  Now, I am not talking about the explicitly stated rules of the community, I am talking about the implied rules.  We were not supposed to be gay or have gay friends. We were not supposed to have normal dating lives: we were supposed to pretend like everyone we dated was going to be the person we would marry, and court them.  We were not supposed to be Democrats.  We were supposed to be really concerned about middle class values.  We were not supposed to have non-Christian friends unless we were actively trying to convert them.  We were not supposed to believe in Evolution.  If we were women, we could have leadership roles in the campus groups, but not in the churches we attended.  And we were supposed to be happy all the time, especially when worshiping.

These rules started to chafe at me a bit.  They did not line up with the Jesus I was getting to know.  The Jesus that seemed to really enjoy the company of outsiders.  The Jesus that seemed to flout convention.  The Jesus that seemed much more concerned with the content of people’s hearts than their outward behaviors.  The Jesus that loved and respected women.

A friend of mine invited me to the Episcopal church around this time and I fell in love.  Sermons were not just about conversion—they were about how to live in a complicated world while still following God.  The music expressed a whole range of emotions—light and dark.  One of our priests was a woman–a brilliant woman.  Another volunteer priest was a world-renowned geneticist, who saw the wonder of God in his work as a scientist.   The intellectual life of the community was rich and vibrant.

I knew I was in a whole new world one Wednesday night when I first went to a church supper before a catechesis class.  At the dinner, they served wine.  I about fell over.  There was wine. . .at church. And not just at communion.  What kind of rule breaking church was this?

At first I was giddy with the freedom the Episcopal Church offered me.  But soon, my interior rule follower started to get really nervous.  I realized, I did not know how to follow Jesus if I did not have a rule book to follow.  I did not know how to be faithful if the priests were not going to tell me what to do about dating or sex or drinking.  I was a little freaked out!

Finally, I realized that I needed to pray.  About everything.  If no one was going to tell me what to do, I needed to study Scripture and bring my life before God and use my own reason and instinct to make decisions about my own life.  Rather than follow a cookie cutter pattern of what it meant to be holy, I needed to be actively engaged in my own life and take responsibility for my choices.

I also needed to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to be perfect.  There were parts of my personality—like my anxiety and my tendency to be swift to judge—that I was going to have to wrestle with my entire life.

As Episcopalians, we live in tension.  We know the dangers that come with strict rule following, but we also want to follow God.  We know that the Bible is not an instruction manual, but we still seek wisdom about our own lives in its pages.  We know that Jesus’s primary rule for us is to love God and love our neighbor, but we also recognize in ourselves a congenital inability to love consistently.

And thankfully, this is where grace enters the picture.

God did not choose to be incarnate so that he could come to earth and give us a list of rules in person.  There are more efficient ways to get that done, even before the days of email and facebook.  God chose to be incarnate so he could deepen his relationship with us and rip the veil that separates us into pieces.  He tried for generations to give us solutions to deal with our own sin. He gave us rules and leaders and prophets, but nothing seemed to make us any better.  We’re still not any better.  We still shoot up fraternities in Ohio and send  men with camels and whips into crowds of peaceful protesters.  We still betray our lovers and snap at our best friends.  We still use alcohol and drugs to dull our boredom and pain.  We’re still pretty rotten in a lot of ways.  Rules or no rules.  We even got so irritated with God-incarnate that we killed him.

But Jesus came back.  Even at our murderous worst, God decided he still loved us and wanted to be in relationship with us.  He resurrects his murdered Son.  He continues to pursue us and love us, even at our most rotten.  He defies the rules of logic and physics and biology for no other reason than to show us that he will pursue us and be in relationship with us no matter what it takes.

Being a Christian is not about being good.  Being a Christian is about being loved.  Being a Christian is about acknowledging that there is a God who created the Universe who, inexplicably, wants to be in relationship with us.  He wants us to pray, to ask questions, to challenge, to argue.  He wants to show us the parts of us he created and the parts of us that are broken.  He wants to heal us and use us for good in the world.  And when we’re done in this world, he wants to be with us forever in eternity.  Rules or no rules.

Grace can free us from our anxiety about following God’s rules perfectly, yet somehow free us to follow the ultimate commandment—Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  As we realize that God’s grace extends to all of our icky and broken parts, we begin to be gentler and less judgmental about other people’s icky and broken parts.  As we realize God wants to reconcile with us after we stray from him, we begin to seek reconciliation with others.  Grace offers us freedom to accept ourselves in all our glorious messiness, so we can begin to accept others.

Grace allows us to be in a free, loving relationship with God and with our neighbor, which is what the rules were supposed to do all along.

Thanks be to God.

Epiphany 5, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

When I was little my family spent a lot of time with good friends of ours—the von Hendys.  The von Hendys also had two children, Vanessa and Stephan.  Vanessa was just a year or two younger than me and Stephan was just a year or two younger than my sister, Marianne.  At the time, I was a huge, huge fan of Solid Gold.  For those of you who were too tasteful—or young–to watch such things, Solid Gold was a TV series that aired on Saturday nights from 1980 until 1988. I don’t think I was actually allowed to watch it that often, but when I did I was totally entranced.  The premise was pretty simple:  extremely sexy dancers danced to whatever Top 40 songs were popular at the time.  They wore extremely high heels and often wore gold lamé.  They were awesome.

My favorite game to play with the von Hendys was a much more tasteful version of that show.  Basically Vanessa and I, as the older siblings, would make Marianne and Stephan hold a flashlight on us while we danced around to Starship songs.  You should have seen our artistic interpretations of We Build This City.  Our dance involved a lot of leaping back and forth across the room, but in a very elegant way, of course.  Eventually Marianne and Stephan would get bored of shining lights on their elders and wander off to do something more interesting and the game would end.  I was always a little sad when they wised up that their turn in the spotlight was never going to come, because I loved being in the spotlight.

And its no wonder I loved being in the spotlight—our culture is built around spotlights! Movie sets!  The flashbulbs of paparazzi!  You tube videos! Culture teaches us that the ultimate success is to be famous and to be caught in the glare of those lights.  I’ll confess that a remnant of my love of the spotlight is that I still love celebrity culture.  I love reading gossip columns and seeing movies and I watch the Golden Globes and Oscars every year.  This celebrity culture is so prevalent on television, on line and on newsstands we can begin to think that light was developed just to shine on these people!  And we’re left with the hope that maybe, one day, the spotlight will shine upon us.

Our Gospel reading today challenges our whole understanding of our relationship to light.  After all, this passage was written thousands of years ago, before neon signs, before flashbulbs, before marquees.  After the sun set, light was a rare and remarkable commodity.  People might have light from a fire, or some kind of lamp or candle, but that light was treasured and used sparingly. Light broke through the darkness with subtle illumination, inviting rather than commanding attention.

Our reading today is part of what is called the Sermon on the Mount.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls his disciples, travels around, gets famous and soon hundreds of people are following him, hoping to get healed.  He sneaks away to a mountain with his disciples and starts to talk.  And talk.  And talk.  The Sermon on the Mount starts with the Beatitudes, which Fr. Paul read to us last week, but the rest of the sermon goes on for three more chapters of the Gospel of Matthew.  In fact, we will be reading bits from the Sermon on the Mount Sunday mornings until Lent begins!  The sermon is a framework that the author of the Gospel uses to collect all the famous sayings of Jesus in one place.  By the time Jesus is done in Matthew’s version of the story, the crowds have found him again, so he goes from speaking to just his disciples to hundreds of followers.

Our passage today about salt and light comes pretty early in the Sermon, right after the Beatitudes.  Jesus uses the imagery of light to describe how his followers should interact with the world.   They are, we are, to be the light of the world.  We are to be beacons on a hill. We are to let our light shine in the darkness so that others will know about our good works and give glory to God.

Note here that Jesus does not say, “You are in the spotlight of the world.  When the light shines on you, you seem really, really fabulous.”  There is a huge difference between being in the spotlight, and being a source of light.

When we’re in the spotlight, we are drawing attention to ourselves.  We are showing how beautiful or graceful or talented we are.  We are seeking to be admired.  Now, some celebrities who are stuck in the spotlight whether they like it or not have gotten clever and have been able to use the spotlight that is constantly on them to point out injustices of the world.  Think of George Clooney’s work in the Sudan, or  the Pitt-Jolie’s work in New Orleans.  But even that kind of good work is not the same thing as being the light of the world.

Jesus is not talking about us being in the spotlight.  Jesus is talking about us generating the light.  We become the source of illumination, not the object of it.

And we do not become a source of illumination because of our beauty, or our amazing Starship dance moves.  We become a source of illumination because we follow God and do good works.  A life of following God leads to the kind of illumination Jesus wants us to have.  And that illumination always points toward God.

God calls all of us to bear his light into the world.  To learn how, we can seek role models.  To find role models, we don’t follow the spot light. People who light up and point us toward God are not the same people who seek the spotlight.  In fact, those who bear God’s light are often the quietest in the room.  They would rather listen than speak.  They would rather serve than lead.  They have deep lives of prayer.  They listen with patience and empathy.  They are slow to anger and quick to forgive.  When you are with them, you sense the presence of something holy. It’s also entirely possible that you walk by these lights every day and do not notice them.  All the other bright lights of our culture make it hard to see the slow, long burning light of God.

I and the other 3000 students at University of Richmond walked by one of these lights every day.  The year before I graduated from college, one of the postal workers that served the University of Richmond retired.  Normally, this would not be a big deal.  To a group of self-absorbed students; postal workers were pretty interchangeable.  So long as your mail showed up in your mailbox, there was no reason to pay much attention to who put it there.

However, this particular postal worker had an incredible story that came in out in local papers that made us realize we students were entitled idiots who were so absorbed in our own spotlights we did not even notice the true light among us.

Thomas Cannon was a postal worker who had a 7th grade education.  He never made more than $30,000 a year.  In his later years, he took care of his ailing wife.  So far, this is a fairly common story.  What made Thomas Cannon unique is that over the course of his life, he donated more than $150,000 to charity.  This was not a man with a large savings account.  He lived a bare bones existence and put any extra money towards donations to others that needed the money.  He read the Richmond Times-Dispatch with a prayerful eye.  When he came across a story of someone in need or someone who had been courageous, he would send the author of the article a check and ask him or her to pass it along to the subject of the article.

This is a man who lived out God’s light.  Remember last week, when Fr. Paul talked about the foolishness of Christ?  Thomas Cannon was a giant fool for God.  He lived the upside down life of the Beatitudes—giving away money instead of hoarding it, thinking of others instead of himself, helping instead of hurting.

Even when the word got out about his actions, and the spotlight started to shine on him, he made it very clear that he did not want any buildings named after him or permanent memorials—he just hoped his actions would inspire others to give.

Thomas Cannon was letting his light shine.

As we mature in our faith, God’s light in us will shine brighter and brighter.  Our path will not look exactly like Thomas Cannon’s.  Each of our lights will shine in its own way.  What we have in common is that we will become beacons in the dark—inviting others into a life that is filled with the true light of God.

Thanks be to God.

Christmas I, Year A, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

Merry Christmas!

The last week or so we have been immersed in Matthew and Luke’s Christmas stories. We have heard the Angel Gabriel’s soothing words to Joseph.  We have journeyed with Mary and Joseph as they made the long journey to Bethlehem. We have seen children act out the famous scenes of shepherds and kings visiting the baby Jesus.

All week we’ve been soaking in the details of the birth of Jesus. We’ve experienced the exhaustion of Joseph and Mary as they attempted to find a place to sleep.  We’ve smelled the hay and the animals.  We’ve felt the chill of the night air as the shepherds were confronted with angels.  We’ve celebrated as the little baby was born.

Today, John’s Gospel widens the angle of our gaze.  We move from the details of Jesus’ birth to a cosmic understanding of who Jesus is and what he means for us.

John reminds us Jesus was not just a baby, but was the Word, co-eternal with God.  As long as God has existed—which is forever—the Word has existed.  John begins his Gospel with the words “In the beginning.”  These words evoke the very beginning of the Genesis, where we get the amazing imagery of a Creator God calling creation into being through the words he speaks.  The words were not simply language, but had the power to enact all of creation:  the ground under our feet, the pine trees we hang with garland, the moon, the stars, the solar systems beyond our imagination.

John makes the argument that Jesus is that Word and creation was called into being through him.  Jesus was there from the very beginning. Not as a human being, not as an infant, but as the Word, as God.   When we see Jesus, we see God.

In the incarnation, the worlds of the eternal and the temporal slam together.  The creator becomes the created, bringing all the light of the Holy with him.

Christmas lights pierce the darkness of winter with their tiny dots of light, turning a time of year that can be cold and dark and forbidding into something magical. These little lights remind us of the great light that pierced our darkness millennia ago.

Life can sometimes feel as dark as a late December day.  There is so much suffering, injustice and death in Creation and the way we have abused the Creation and each other.  When we are going through such suffering, we can feel utterly, hopelessly alone.

But, we’re not alone.  The Word entered that darkness.  He entered our dark world and immediately began shedding his light. He spent his life pursuing and loving people—especially those going through dark times.  He brought healing and new life with him wherever he went.

The Word that called Creation into being, also entered that same Creation in order to redeem it and make it holy.  Suddenly, everyday human experiences: birth, death, friendship, dinner become touched by God.  Bread and wine are no longer just food and drink, but at the Communion table hold the very presence of the divine.

Christ coming into our world transformed the world.  Now, our ordinary lives are infused with holiness and meaning.  In our dark days, we experience the light of Christ through our prayers, through the love of fellow Christians.  When we experience that light, we too become light bearers, Christ bearers into the darkness.

And so, this Christmas season, we celebrate.  We lift our voices in song, we dress up our children in costumes and watch them re-enact the ordinary, extraordinary birth of Christ.  We listen to brass and tympani clang out the good news that Christ has come.  The whole of God has entered our world as a tiny baby and transformed our lives for ever.

Thanks be to God.

Advent 3, Year A, 2011

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John the Baptist was a confident man.  You might have picked up on that in last weeks’ readings.  He had no problem wearing crazy clothes and eating bugs and spending his time shouting at people with great assurance in his words.  John was a prophet and he behaved like a prophet.

John the Baptist’s job was to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus.  Jesus was already alive and well, fully adult, but he had not yet begun his ministry.  We don’t know exactly what John the Baptist was expecting in a Messiah, but if you’ll remember he walked around saying things like, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  One gets the sense he was expecting at least a little bit of violence!  A little revolution!

In today’s reading we skip seven chapters ahead.  Jesus’ ministry has begun and it is filled with a lot of . . .talking.  Talking and healing.  Jesus has been saying things like : So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” And “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” and “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Boooooring.

Jesus has not distributed any weapons, or talked at all about overthrowing the Romans or even the Pharisees.  When Jesus sends his disciples out, it is not to recruit an army, but to cast out demons and heal the sick and raise the dead.

By this point John has been imprisoned, so he is hearing about Jesus’ ministry second hand.  And John seems a little surprised about what he is hearing.  John’s confidence starts to seem a little shaky for the first time.  John had certain expectations about the Messiah that are not being met through Jesus’ ministry.  John sends a messenger to Jesus, asking him, “Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?”

I love this question.  It’s a really polite way to ask, “What the heck are you doing?”

John asks the question a lot of us ask Jesus at some point in our lives.  “Jesus, is that you?  Because you’re not really living up to my expectations.”

John the Baptist expected a warrior.  What do we expect Jesus to be?

Many Christians have all kind of misconceptions about who Jesus is.  They expect Jesus to be their matchmaker, their job head hunter, their addictions counselor, their financial advisor.  In their minds, Jesus becomes an errand boy and when Jesus does not provide the lover or employment opportunity or willpower or windfall, people think either that Jesus has let them down, or they have some how let Jesus down and they are being punished.

But Jesus is neither a personal assistant nor the head of a political revolution.  Initially, both we and John the Baptist are a bit disappointed.  Our Messiah is not who we think he is.  We are not being saved from what we thought our problems were.

Do you remember the line that Mr. Tumnus used to describe the Christ-figure Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia?  Alsan is not a tame lion.

Jesus is not a tame Savior.  Jesus is not interested in meeting our expectations.  Jesus is not even interested in meeting John the Baptist’s expectations.

The expectations that we have for Jesus are pretty small.  We expect him to be a little baby around December and to be resurrected in April.  We expect him to comfort us when we are grieving.  We expect to feel his presence in church, but maybe not think about him too much the rest of the week.  And, occasionally, we expect Jesus to act like our personal assistant.

And the expectations John the Baptist had may not have felt small to him, after all—a revolution is a pretty big dream—but compared to what Jesus had in mind, even John the Baptist’s expectations were small.

Jesus had a much bigger revolution planned than John the Baptist could imagine.  Rather than a political revolution, Jesus was conducting a spiritual revolution.

When John sent his messengers to ask Jesus that slightly passive-aggressive question, “Are you the one to come or are we to wait for another?”  Jesus replied with these words “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Jesus gently points John in a new direction.  Instead of saying, “Gee, John, not very loyal, are we?”, Jesus points to the amazing things he has been doing as signs of what kind of Messiah he is.  He reorients John’s understanding of Messiah from warrior to healer and life-giver.

As we pray and mature in our faith, Jesus reorients our understanding, too.  We learn that God does not exist in order to make us happy, but that God exists because God exists.  And God created us to be in relationship with him

Whether we are aware of it or not, our lives are made up of much more than our every day routines.  We are people created by God, who are actively loved by God. For generations human beings tried to love God back, but we always screwed up.  We ended up worshiping false idols, or got caught up in political or financial power.  We could not sustain a relationship with God.

And that’s where Jesus comes in.  God became human so he could show us that no matter what we do—even if we murder this enfleshed God—we cannot stop God from wanting a relationship with us.  God is stronger and more loving than our worst impulses.  Jesus spent his time healing and exorcising demons and teaching about new ways of living so that we could know this loving God more fully.

Being loved by God is not about having a warm and fuzzy relationship in which God just tells us how fantastic we are all the time and goes out and gets us lattes.  Being loved by God means we become a worker for the Kingdom of God—we become people who bring love and justice and mercy to this planet.  The more we pray and listen for God’s voice in our lives, the more we will hear about who we are and what we are called to do.

We may have a specific vision of who we are, but God will always expand that—our visions are almost invariably too narrow for what God can do through us.  You can do more good and affect more people that you can even imagine.

This Advent we’re invited to imagine—Imagine a God that created human beings out of love, and pursued us for thousands of years, even to the point of becoming human, so we could hear and touch and understand him in a new way.  Imagine a God who wants a relationship with us even after we reject his message and hang him on a cross.

Imagine a God who created you, who knows you, even all your flaws and poor choices, and who loves you anyway.  Imagine a God who created you to really make a difference in the world around you.  Imagine a God who created you to be part of Christ’s very body, enacting God’s love in the world.

This is the God that we celebrate and for whom we keep watch this Advent.  That’s the God that was born as a little baby, two thousand years ago.  That’s the God whose Spirit moves in this place and in our lives.

Thanks be to God.

Advent 1, Year A, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

(stage whisper)  Guess what?  Jesus is coming!

Aren’t you excited?  There is going to be a little baby and a manger and a star and some shepherds!  It’s going to be so great!

Today we start Advent, so we can stop complaining about all the Christmas decorations at Starbucks and the mall and finally yield to the inevitable.  Yes, you too, will soon be humming Christmas carols and craving eggnog, even if we at Trinity dutifully stay dressed in our Advent blue and hold off singing Christmas carols until Christmas.

What readings greet this auspicious beginning of such a joyful season?  Will it be the story of the Holy Spirit coming to Mary and offering her a really strange proposition?  Will it be that amazing scene where Mary and Elizabeth, both miraculously pregnant, greet each other in joy?  Whatever our readings are, they are bound to be cheerful and about that adorable holy baby, right?

Oh.  Maybe not.

Instead of sweet tableaus about the Holy Family, we’re speeding past Jesus’ birth this morning, we’re speeding past his childhood, his ministry, his death, even his resurrection!  The creators of the lectionary speed up the film of the story of Christ this first Sunday of Advent, to remind us that we’re not just waiting for a baby.  Rather than, “Guess what, Jesus is coming?”  The tone seems to be more of, “Watch out, Jesus is coming!”

The waiting of Advent is twofold.  We wait for Christmas morning and our chance to remember the birth of Christ.  But during Advent we also wait for the completion of Christ’s kingdom.  We remember that the birth of Christ was just the beginning of an incredible story and that we are still in the midst of that story, eagerly longing to see its conclusion.

Well, we’re supposed to eagerly long for its conclusion.  I’ll be honest with you, this passage from the Gospel of Matthew just makes me really, really nervous.  I’m the daughter of an elementary school principal and perhaps that makes me more prone to feel like I’m always just about to get into really big trouble.    Apocalyptic passages just make me worry that Jesus will come back right when I’m making fun of someone or eating a gluttonous meal, or spending money on myself instead of donating it to the poor.  Apocalyptic passages make me want to hide under a blanket, so I can be sure not be doing anything too rotten should Jesus decide to come back.

Luckily, theologians with more mature and sophisticated understandings of these kinds of writings have spent lots of time thinking about what this return of the Son of Man might mean.

Karl Barth explains what is happening in this passage.

the revelation of [The Kingdom of God’s] hidden reality will come soon and suddenly, like a thief in the night. . . .[the revelation] will come soon because it is the goal of the limited life in time of Jesus of Nazareth and will follow hard on His death and therefore in the foreseeable future.  And it will come suddenly because it is foreordained and foreknown by God alone, and will occur when men are least expecting it, beneficially, if terrifyingly upsetting all their expectations and plans, and thus their anxieties and hopes, as actually happened in the first instance of the resurrection of Jesus. (Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2, p. 499)

Barth understands the return of Jesus as an extension of the revelation that God has already begun.  This revelation begins with the birth of Christ—as we realize that the God of the entire universe has chosen to walk around on Earth—to fully live the human experience.  The revelation continues with Christ’s death—a God who is willing to sacrifice himself for us.  The revelation continues with Christ’s resurrection—a God who is more powerful than death.  However, the revelation does not end with the amazing news of the resurrection.

The next part of the revelation is about the Kingdom of God.  Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God all the time in parables.  The Kingdom of God is like a pearl, a mustard seed, a woman who has lost her coins, the metaphors go on and on.  The Kingdom of God is when Christ finally reigns over all of humanity and justice and peace and mercy are the markers of the human community.

We do not need to be afraid of this reign of God, because we already know what God is like!  God is not a scary monster in the sky who wants to zap us.  God loves us so much he became incarnate and ate with us and redeemed us through the life, death and resurrection of his Son.  The ultimate reign of Jesus will be a continuation of that process, which will reveal even more about God’s loving character.

And this reign of Jesus does not begin in some far off future when he comes back in some mystical blaze of glory.  In fact, the Kingdom of God began immediately after the resurrection and continues to grow through the work of the Church.  We function as the Body of Christ, doing our best to bring peace and justice and mercy to our planet.  We don’t sit idly by, anxiously waiting for Christ’s return.  We don’t hide under a blanket!  We do our work.  We love our families.  We volunteer and give away our money.   We hope and we expect, even when hope and expectation seem irrational.

The anthem at our 9:00 and 11:00 services today is Paul Manz’s E’en So, Lord Jesus Quickly Come. If I had known earlier in the week this would be our anthem, I would have been tempted not to preach at all and just have the choir sing this to us several times!  Legend has it that Manz wrote this piece in 1953 when his young son was terribly ill and hospitalized.  The anthem perfectly captures the tension between the difficulties of our lives and the hope we still carry for Christ to make himself known in this world.

The text comes from Revelation and ends with the expression, “E’en so Lord Jesus, quickly come, and night shall be no more; they need no light nor lamp nor sun, for Christ will be their All!”  And unfortunately for those of you in the 8:00 crowd, the text only begins to express the tension and grief and hope of this piece.  The music perfectly captures the longing of what it means to be human.  We live these everyday lives, peppered with great losses, but still Christ breaks in to give us light and hope.  And that taste of light and hope makes us yearn for even more.  That is the promise of the completion of Christ’s kingdom.  That is why we can eagerly await Christ’s return rather than hiding under a blanket.

That is why we can say with great excitement.  Guess what!  Jesus is coming!

Amen.

Proper 25, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / 4 Comments

Listen to the sermon here.

Last fall, when we first moved to Princeton, my husband and I attended a couple of parties one weekend.  Now, having lived in Virginia, we were used to a certain kind of party chatter.  My favorite party story to share was about the time I accidentally locked myself in a trash corral while wearing an entirely pink outfit, including pink galoshes.  I was 28 at the time.  Other friends had their own stories of times they had embarrassed themselves or crazy things their co-workers had said.  So, we were prepared with our funny party stories when we moved to Princeton.  We realized there was a problem with our plan, when at the first party we attended in Princeton, we got into a long conversation with a young man who had just returned from his Fulbright year in Spain.  In fact, everyone seemed to have a story about either their fabulous year in a foreign country or their doctorate or their first book or how they were developing some new economic theory.  So our stories about that time our dog rolled around in goose poop suddenly did not seem that scintillating.

We started to realize that Princeton is a different kind of town.  Princeton is made up of high achievers. You can’t throw a stone in Princeton without hitting someone who is an expert in their field.  And if you threw enough stones you would be bound to hit a Nobel prize winner or two.  About twice a week I hear some expert from Princeton pontificating on issues on NPR.  The brain power in this town is amazing!

And so, as I have been following the Tyler Clementi case in the news, I’ve been really saddened to see that the two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, accused of leaking the video that led to his suicide, were West Windsor kids, our kids. Some of our parishioners went to high school with them.  I started to wonder whether our culture of excellence somehow backfired and contributed to their behavior.

Because it turns out there is a danger in living in one of the smartest towns in America.  I would not call Princetonians intellectual Pharisees, but there is a drive toward perfection in this town.  We may not stand in the center of town bragging about how amazing we are, like the Pharisee in our reading today, but there is a constant push towards excellence.  There are at least six private schools on Great Road alone, each promising to help your child to be the smartest, most responsible child he can be.  And our public schools are filled with incredible teachers and bright students all pushing, pushing, pushing to be the best.  And adults are jockeying for tenure, and promotions, and seats on the quiet car on the train, all while trying to pay for the incredibly high cost of living here.

But what happens when you’re not the best?  What happens when you’re not an A student?  What happens if you’re just an average student?  I have had several parents come up to me in the last year who were just devastated by how their beautiful children were left behind in their schools because they weren’t the best.  These kids dealt with feelings of failure well into their adult years.

And our excellent students may not be getting what they need, either.  News reports about Molly Wei and Dharun Ravi indicate they were really bright students.  Ravi had almost perfect SAT scores, ran track, was captain of an ultimate Frisbee team.  Wei was an honors student who took many AP classes.

Being smart is a wonderful thing.  Smart people contribute greatly to the world.  Educated people help us solve many of the world’s problems.  But being smart and being educated is not enough.

Our scripture reading for today is not about intelligence, but it is about attitude.  God does not raise up the person who has done everything right.  This Pharisee tithes, prays, does not sin, but his heart is cold and proud.  The tax collector on the other hand sees himself clearly, knows he is broken, and bows before God, humbly.

God honors the broken man, rather than the perfect man.

And this is true throughout Scripture.  Jesus does not choose the head of rabbinical schools to be his followers, he chooses fishermen.  God does not call the smartest of Jesse’s children to be King, he chooses David  the smallest, the musician, the guy who will later do all kinds of dumb things.  God does not call a sinless man to lead Israel out of Egypt, he chooses Moses, an abandoned baby who grows up to be an anxious, whiny leader, not to mention a murderer.

God chooses real, complex people to do his work.  Being fully human in God’s eyes is not about how many accomplishments we rack up, it’s about having a heart that is open to God.  Being fully human is about being able to see and love the other.  Being fully human is about being humble and seeing ourselves clearly, and admitting our weaknesses when we have them.  Being fully human is about letting go of seeking our own accomplishments and asking God what he would have us do.

If we believe God created each of us, then we believe there is something good at the core of each of us.  Whether we are A students or C students, God can use us for good in this world. When we talk about our children to one another, we have a habit of talking about how they are doing in school or in sports or in extra-curricular activities.

We list their accomplishments, brag about their grades. What if, instead, we talked about their character, not their accomplishments?  What if we praised the way they stuck up for a bullied kid at school?  What if we talked about how quickly they accept responsibilities for mistakes?  What if we talked about how forgave a sibling after a misunderstanding?

Our children are so much more than their accomplishments; they are spiritual and moral beings who need love and guidance about what it means to be a child of God.  Children need to learn that showing others love and respect is even more important than being at the top of their class.  Children need to learn how to respectfully disagree with a friend, how to ask forgiveness when they have made a mistake. Children need to learn how to pick themselves up after a setback. Children need to learn that they are fearfully and wonderfully made, no matter their skin color or sexual orientation.  Children need to see all these things modeled in us.

But even more than a moral education, we, like the tax collector in today’s reading, need to show our kids how to actively and humbly draw towards the holy.  The primary influence in a child’s spiritual life is not Sunday School teachers or youth ministers or clergy.  The primary influence in a child’s spiritual life is her parents.  If children see parents praying, reading scripture, making decisions based on spiritual rather than financial or practical reasons, they learn crucial skills.  Paul and I are reading Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christians as part of our local clergy group.  Dean reminds us that the skills of the Christian life:  prayer, scripture reading, being in community, are skills that must be learned and practiced, just like the skills that come into play when a child is learning a sport or an instrument.

There are many different ways to start integrating these practices into your family life.  My favorite recent example is the practice of my friend MaryAnn McKibben Dana and her family.  MaryAnn is a Presbyterian pastor and writer who has three young children.  Over the dinner table, they practice the Ignatian practice of the examen.  The examen is a spiritual practice in which at the end of the day you ask yourself a series of questions about the day, you explore the gifts of the day, the reasons behind the decisions you made, where you saw God move in the day, where you saw your own brokenness interfere with the day and so on.  What is brilliant about what MaryAnn and her husband are doing is that the kids have no idea.  MaryAnn does not sit down and say, “OK kids, it’s examen time!”  Instead, she weaves these questions into ordinary conversation.  She is helping her kids learn to think theologically about their day, to take responsibility for their choices, to see God at work in the ordinary stuff of pre-school, playground fights, and homework assignments.

We owe it to our children to take our own spiritual development, and their spiritual development as seriously as we take their SAT scores.  Their SAT scores will get them into college, but their spiritual development will make them loving human beings who contribute to the world.

And for those of us who do not have children, we are not off the hook.  If you have ever been to a baptism here, you have promised to help uphold the baptized child’s life in the church.  Adults in the church can be crucial conveyers of God’s grace to children and youth.  And the children and youth in this parish are amazing.  They are funny, complicated, loving, honest, shy, outgoing and all made in God’s image.  We, as a congregation, have the opportunity to offer them kindness, express interest in their lives, pray for them and demonstrate God’s grace in the way we treat each other.

The pressure of developing our own, not to mention our children’s, spiritual life can seem really overwhelming!  When it seems like too much responsibility, just remember the words Angel Gabriel said to Mary, “Be not afraid!”  Our God is a powerful, loving God who is always in the business of drawing us near.  If you take one teensy step, he will take a giant cosmic step.  God is waiting for you with open, loving arms and will never turn you or our children away.

Proper 23, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click here.

I had this habit as a kid that drove my sister crazy.  During the ritual opening of Christmas presents I would over emote about each gift.  “An etch-a-sketch!  That’s so great!”, “A cabbage patch doll!  I’ve always WANTED a cabbage patch doll!”, “Blue socks?  They’ll go great with my blue shoes!”, We found an old video recently from when I’m about eight years old, and my reactions are incredibly cloying.  I actually profusely thanked Santa, who because of his busy Christmas morning schedule, was not in the room.   And while I’m sure part of my enthusiasm was about me being a first born suck-up, I would argue that there was a core of genuine, spontaneous thanksgiving in my little performance.

Real gratitude is tricky when you live in a society where you are used to getting exactly what you want.  As adults, my immediate family gives each other lists of Christmas presents we would like and then we receive those presents.  It’s fantastic, and we’re grateful to each other, but the spontaneous joy of gratitude is missing.

That spontaneous thanksgiving is missing from much of my life.  I don’t enthusiastically thank you all twice a month when I receive my paycheck.  I don’t thank God every day for my amazing husband or my sweet dog.  I don’t thank my parents weekly for the hard work that went in raising me or my sister for putting up with my annoying first-born habits.

Our gospel lesson today really challenges us and our attitudes about thanksgiving.  In the story, Jesus heals ten lepers.  He tells them to show themselves to the priest and off they go, getting cleansed from their leprosy in the meantime.  Now, they are all obedient to Jesus.  They all do exactly what he asks them to do.  Well, all but one.  One of the lepers is a Samaritan.  He is an outsider.  He’s unclean.  He’s different.  But that Samaritan is so excited he is cleansed, he runs back to Jesus, praises God and throws himself at Jesus’ feet thanking him.  What a reaction!  The other nine lepers were obedient, but the Samaritan leper had a genuine moment of intense gratitude that he can’t help but express.

We are a guarded, cautious people here at Trinity Church..  We aren’t prone to big emotional outbursts.  We don’t clap when we sing.  We don’t raise our arms and shout when Paul makes a good point in a sermon.  We don’t stand up during announcements to praise God and share what God has done in our lives.  But that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t reach out to us and heal us and work in our lives in such a way that we should be thankful.  We don’t have to be loud to be thankful.

When I was a parishioner at St. James’, Richmond, during stewardship season they had a tradition of parishioners speaking each week about what stewardship meant to them.  One Sunday, a young couple with small children stood up.  They told us that during the previous year, as they got more involved with church and developed a closer relationship with God, they had a transformative moment together. They decided that since God had given them so many gifts, they wanted to give him a big gift in return.  They decided that their pledge check to the church should be the biggest check they wrote every month.  Bigger than their mortgage, bigger than car payments, bigger than tuition payments.

I remember my jaw dropping.  The freedom and joy they felt was so manifest.  Their money did not control them.  Fear did not control them.  They made a decision based purely out of the kind of wild-eyed gratitude that the tenth leper showed Jesus.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not there yet.  Our monthly pledge payments to the two churches we support are about a third of our monthly rent.  And our rent is cheap!  But whenever I think about stewardship, I think about that couple.  I think about what it would mean to have such deep gratitude for God’s work in my life and deep confidence that God will provide for me, that I could just throw caution to the wind and give away a giant chunk of money every month.

Giving money to the church is a financial decision.  You’ll sit down with Quicken or your budget and figure out just how much you’ll give.  You’ll come to a rational choice.   But the decision to give money to the church is also a spiritual one.  Giving money back to God is an act of thanksgiving.  As a person who is paid because of your generosity, of course I want you to give to the church!  But what I really pray for is that God might grant you a tenth leper experience.

I pray that you have experiences of healing and God’s intervention in your life.  I pray that you feel cleansed of anything that haunts you.  I pray that God grants you such deep gratitude, that you feel compelled to throw yourself at the feet of Jesus.  I pray that Jesus makes you well.

The text tells us that when the leper came back to Jesus in thanksgiving, that the leper was made well.  The leper was cleansed from leprosy by Jesus’ healing, but something in his thankful response inspired Jesus to give him an even fuller healing.  Jesus says that the leper’s faith made him well.  The leper’s thanksgiving was more than gratitude, it was a statement of faith.  We, too, can make a statement of faith by expressing our thanksgiving to God.

When we give to God through gifts to the Church, we claim the tenth leper’s thanksgiving as our own.  We claim the tenth leper’s faith as our own.  We claim the tenth leper’s healing as our own.

When we stand up for Stewardship, we claim our place in the line of saints who have been blessed by God and want to return the blessing.

Amen.