Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18
November 15, 2009
Saint Ann’s Church, Old Lyme CT
Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8
SERMON:
We’re closing in on the end of the church year. One Sunday remains after today—next Sunday is the last Sunday after Pentecost, and then, on Sunday, November 29th, we will move into Advent, the great season of preparation for our wonderful celebrations of Christmas—The Incarnation—and the beginning of a new church year.
The passages assigned for this week and next begin to move away from the focus we’ve been working with since way back last spring—our focus has been on the mission and ministry of the church-us--as the body of Christ at work in the world doing all those things which Jesus would be doing were he here in the flesh as well as the Spirit. We are the body of Christ.
For the last six months, our readings from scripture have attempted to encourage and cajole us to be the children of God in an immeasurably difficult world. Now, with the coming of Advent and our celebrations for the incarnation, our vision will be lifted slightly, our horizons will be widened and expanded. We have been focusing on the world and this age. Now we begin to focus on the kingdom of God and eternity. That’s a major shift.
The Church does not ask us to make a radical shift. The organizers of the lectionary are too wise to expect or insist that we do that. Our eyes and expectations are raised this week with Mark’s account of Jesus preparations of his dearest disciples for the difficult times to come as the world adjusts to the presence of God’s community, the church, in its midst.
In times of change, Jesus tells his disciples you can expect trials and tribulations, upheaval and difficulty. Events will take on a different significance than would have been the case in ordinary times. Solid ground will feel slippery under foot, that which was perceived with clarity will seem to be obscured and clouded.
“Do not despair,” says Jesus, this is what you must expect in times of change. When you hear rumors and speculations, do not be alarmed. All this must take place before the new replaces the old.
This advice, given to his beloved disciples in a time of great change, is good advice for us in this time of transition and renewal which we are moving though as we seek a new rector to pilot the ship of the church over the shoals.
It is with calm expectation that the church is encouraged to await the changes to come. Hope is our hallmark. We live in tranquility and with peace. This is our character and temperament. It is the manner in which we order our lives together as we prepare, as we wait in expectation with hope.
Jesus felt it necessary to warn his disciples that false prophets would rise up in the community, false prophets who would take advantage of the upset of the moment to lead the community down wrong paths. We too must be careful not to allow ourselves to be led astray by those who might try to take advantage of the anxiety and disquiet we experience in a time of transition. Just because we are encouraged to live lives of hope and anticipation (Advent themes) doesn’t mean we have to be stupid and inactive.
Olivia Judson writes a column for the New York Times’ website. She lives in London. She’s a scientist—genes, I think, but I don’t know for sure. I’m unscientific. When I hear the word, “jeans,” I think about Levi’s or Wranglers, not RNA or DNA. In a recent column, she wrote about the recent research that been done to understand better the changes that ripple through communities. The research has begun to show that it’s not just the flu and chicken pox that can be spread from person to person.
“Studies have found,” writes Olivia Johnson, “that one person’s change in behavior ripples through his or her friends, family, and acquaintances. If one of your friends becomes happy for example, you’re more likely to become happy too.”
Behavior and attitude is catching. Mark knew that two thousand years ago when he wrote the Gospel. “Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray.” There’s our warning, and our response is confidence and hope and clarity of thinking and abiding faith that God is working on our behalf. We can be confident in God’s hopes for us, and not allow ourselves to be lead astray
Dwight L. Moody was one of the first of the great popular American evangelists. He lived just up the road, up in Northampton, Massachusetts. The Northfield School for Girls and the Mount Hermon Academy for boys were two of his many, many projects. Dwight Moody was a remarkable preacher. He was the Billy Graham of his age, and, in fact, Billy Graham patterned his ministry on Moody’s. He inspired hundreds of thousands, perhaps million of people over the time he was active and that was in the middle of nineteenth century, long before mass media and monstrous stadiums.
Moody’s great gift was his ability to turn an ordinary event into a teaching about faith—a parable. One day, Moody read a story in the newspaper about a shipwreck off the port of Cleveland, Ohio. He took the bare facts of that story and turned it into one of that earlier century’s great sermon illustrations.
“On a dark and stormy night, when the waves rolled like mountains and not a star was to be seen, a boat, rocking and plunging, neared the Cleveland harbor. ‘Are you sure this is Cleveland?’ asked the captain, seeing only one light from the lighthouse. ‘Quite sure, sir,’ replied the pilot.
“’Where are the lower lights?’
(Those would have been the lights of the houses and stores along the shore.)
“’Gone out sir.’
“’Can you make the harbor?’
“We must or perish, sir.
“With a strong hand and a brave heart the old pilot turned the wheel. But, alas, in the darkness he missed the channel and with a crash upon the rocks the boat was shivered and many a life lost in a watery grave.”
Now Moody makes his point!
“Brothers and sisters, the Master will take care of the great lighthouse; let us keep the lower lights burning!”
Philip Paul Bliss, author of many, many gospel and evangelical hymns (but none in the Episcopal collection—perhaps, not our style) was moved to write a hymn when he heard Moody’s sermon. A couple of verses go like this:
Brightly beams our Father’s mercy
From his lighthouse evermore;
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower light be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave;
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
A wonderful echo from a different age: it’s what people mean when they say, “We ought to sing the old hymns more often.”
During a time of transition—we must keep the lower lights burning. God will take care of the lighthouse. We must not allow ourselves to be led astray, and we must anticipate with joy our future with God’s in faith and with hope.
Keep the lower lights burning!
The Rev. John T. Talbott
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
More than Enough
Janie Donohue
November 8, 2009
Ahab was a king of Israel who married a woman named Jezebel. Jezebel did not worship the God of Israel. Jezebel worshipped Baal and Ahab was happy to join her, insisting that all of his subjects follow suit. Baal was thought to bring storms to the land in the rainy season, after which the ground got progressively dryer, and eventually all vegetation died. Ahab worshipped and offered sacrifices to Baal in order to insure the timely arrival of the annual rains. Several times what he sacrificed were his own children. In exchange Baal provided enough rain to get Ahab and his people through the annual drought. Anyone with foresight and common sense would be able to store away enough provisions during the wet to get them and their families through the dry--provided they stuck to their budgets.
In today’s Old Testament reading, the prophet Elijah has informed king Ahab that Baal has no power over rain or drought, over life or death. Rather, it is the God of Israel who controls these things. To illustrate this Elijah declares in the name of the God of Israel, a three year drought.
During that drought, God sends Elijah to a town called Zarephath where he tells him that a widow will feed him.
When he arrives in town he sees the widow gathering sticks and calls to her. “Bring me a little water so I may drink.” As she is on her way with the now quite precious water, he calls to her again asking for her to give him bread. She announces to him that she has no bread and only a bit of meal in a jar and a very small jug of oil. The people had planned for one season of drought as always. But this time, the drought continued and there just was no more meal. She would have loved to feed him. Under different circumstances. The new plan she tells him is to take the sticks she has gathered, go home, prepare the meal into a cake, give some to her son and then die with him of starvation. So no I can’t give you bread. I am sorry. There just isn’t any more grain.
Elijah, speaks not to her circumstance but to her heart. He is not condescending or rude. “Do not be afraid,” he says, “go ahead and continue with your plan. But first, make a little cake and bring it to me. Then make something for yourself and your son.” He tells her that God has promised that her jar will never be empty and her oil will not run out.
At that moment she had a choice. To suffer her family’s last supper in silence or to move through her fear in faith.
For some reason, she decided to trust him. The story does not tell us why, what she saw or what changed. We only know that she went home and did as Elijah said. She made him a cake and then her son and her self, and saw that there was more meal. And there was oil. She fed her entire household. Still...enough. More than enough. And so she made more the next morning. And then again. There was meal and oil and there did not seem to be an end to enough. The grain did not fill a barn. A silo was not miraculously filled. It was a simple bowl, in the cupboard of a simple family, that was simply never empty.
Each time she fed her visitor, it made no meaningful dent in her resources. Nothing about how she lived really changed. Knowing that she and her family would not go hungry as she had feared. Well that knowledge changed everything.
I believe that the members of Saint Ann’s stand at a crossroad similar to the one that the widow stood in that day. It is stewardship season. You got the mailing, and the card. We have been invited to give. Sacrificially. We are told that God will provide and that we will always have enough. More than enough. But in some ways all we can see is our budget. We rationed our resources for the annual dry season, never anticipating an economic crisis. Never considering that we might lose our rector. Underestimating the real challenges of inviting and incorporating new families into our faith community. Three big things. Three years of drought. For which we did not plan.
And now, we say, there is no money. We would love to reach out, but present circumstances have made us individually and corporately unable to make such sacrifices. We feel that we do not have enough resources to invest boldly in our future and yet, if we do not grow many of us fear, that Saint Ann’s will gradually, eventually, tragically die. Some of us have resigned ourselves to this eventuality, hoping to make the best of things and enjoy the fellowship as it is, until it isn’t. Others grieve the potential, gradual diminution of this vibrant community, simultaneously decrying our powerlessness to halt her deterioration. And there are widows in the house. Many here have begun the process of shaping the cakes for the future, unsure if they themselves will eat at the end of the day. But stepping out in faith and hoping against hope that the promises are true.
Doubtless there were other widows, laborers and leaders who played out the widow’s initial plan. This widow, lowly, bereft, we only know about her because she stood at that point of disillusionment and resignation and turned. She decided to let go of her fear and trust. She turned around. The word repent means to turn around.
Whether or not you need to turn around is really based on which direction you are facing. And only you and God know the answer to that. What are you saying with your words and your wallet about what kind of community this is and what kind of God you worship.
(MOVE TO LECTERN)
Last week Jack Spaeth spoke at our Griswold forum about the power of increasingly sacrificial giving in his life. He was clearly living in the liberation of a perpetually full jar and jug. We asked him how we might help people get it about giving. His answer was simple: Get people who give to tell their stories.
I have moved over here because there is a particular authority and responsibility that a preacher carries into the pulpit. An obligation to rightly handle the word, carefully preaching the Gospel. I am standing over here now (with Nancy’s permission) to tell a bit of my story in my own voice.
When I was 16 I fell in love with Jesus. I understood from the Bible that God asked not merely a tithe from me, but for a 100% investment. I would get a babysitting job and place the $20 in the plate, only to get a call that afternoon from a parent with a $40 need. I was diggin this new God math.
When I was 19 I took a year off from college to try to discern God’s will for me. I was led in prayer to the conclusion that I was called to attend a church in the city of Pittsburgh, about an hour from my home. I had no money and I didn’t have a car. But I was convinced this was from God.
The next day a family friend and Amway salesman asked if he could come to the house to meet with me. He said he had a proposition for me. After exchanging pleasantries I launched into my myriad objections to pyramid marketing schemes. Taken aback he said that the reason he had come over was to tell me that his daughter was spending the year abroad and he was concerned about her car sitting in the garage. He wondered if I would be willing to drive it for a year. Not only did God provide a car but it just so happened to be the car I had always wanted, a yellow Volkswagen bug.
In grad school in the early 90s, I felt led in prayer to imagine my heart’s desire for a place to live. it was hard to let myself imagine things I could not afford. I imagined a farm with rolling hills, out in the country with some woods. Two days later I overheard a professor saying to someone, “We have taken this position in Atlanta and need to go fairly quickly. But we won’t be able to sell the farm that fast and need someone to stay there and feed the horses until next summer. Do you know anyone who might be able to do that? That’s my house! I said.
When I was in graduate school, Yale was hosting a special gathering of women African theologians. Their primary agenda was to discuss the AIDS crisis in Africa. Since talk of sex was taboo in most of their worlds, there was no opportunity to educate. The upshot of the conference was that these women would create a kind of underground sex education railroad. I had two hundred dollars in my checking account... which I gave them. The very next day I was informed that I was one of two students who had been admitted for transfer into the Institute for Sacred Music and the Arts, an admission that included a full scholarship. Two hundred for twenty thousand. Still diggin the new math.
There are many more stories where that came from and I love to talk about God’s love and faithfulness. Even today. Last week we got a bill from the Hospital. Paltry compared with the bizillion dollars of care my family received over the past two months, but $600 none the less. 600 that were not in the budget. Two months ago I was in a minor fender bender when a truck hit me from behind. Last week the other party’s insurance company called to settle the claim for my pain and inconvenience. He asked if $670 would be sufficient. A check is already in the mail. Enough and more than enough.
Over and over. Out of the blue. Furniture. Instruments. Housing. Food. Unsolicited. Unmerited gifts out of God’s abundant economy. Many times on the heels of scary giving. Often simply God’s generous hand. Each time provision arrives I feel like God is saying, “Yes. This is the path. Stay the course. Open your hands. What’s yours is mine. And what’s mine is yours.”
(No mystery whose the winner in that deal.)
There is a passage that is often translated “God loves the cheerful giver.” Most Biblical scholars contend that a truer translation would be God loves the hilarious giver. I wonder if that is how the widow felt. Wait, watch this. Look. I made a loaf, and look, more meal and oil. Wait. Watch, I’ll do it again. Isn’t that crazy. As you can probably guess I have come to give in this way and find it thrilling. And God has not only provided for my needs, but has heard and treasured the desires of my heart.
That’s it. A peek into my cupboard. It does’t look like much, but I assure you, it is certainly more than enough for me.
Janie Donohue
November 8, 2009
Ahab was a king of Israel who married a woman named Jezebel. Jezebel did not worship the God of Israel. Jezebel worshipped Baal and Ahab was happy to join her, insisting that all of his subjects follow suit. Baal was thought to bring storms to the land in the rainy season, after which the ground got progressively dryer, and eventually all vegetation died. Ahab worshipped and offered sacrifices to Baal in order to insure the timely arrival of the annual rains. Several times what he sacrificed were his own children. In exchange Baal provided enough rain to get Ahab and his people through the annual drought. Anyone with foresight and common sense would be able to store away enough provisions during the wet to get them and their families through the dry--provided they stuck to their budgets.
In today’s Old Testament reading, the prophet Elijah has informed king Ahab that Baal has no power over rain or drought, over life or death. Rather, it is the God of Israel who controls these things. To illustrate this Elijah declares in the name of the God of Israel, a three year drought.
During that drought, God sends Elijah to a town called Zarephath where he tells him that a widow will feed him.
When he arrives in town he sees the widow gathering sticks and calls to her. “Bring me a little water so I may drink.” As she is on her way with the now quite precious water, he calls to her again asking for her to give him bread. She announces to him that she has no bread and only a bit of meal in a jar and a very small jug of oil. The people had planned for one season of drought as always. But this time, the drought continued and there just was no more meal. She would have loved to feed him. Under different circumstances. The new plan she tells him is to take the sticks she has gathered, go home, prepare the meal into a cake, give some to her son and then die with him of starvation. So no I can’t give you bread. I am sorry. There just isn’t any more grain.
Elijah, speaks not to her circumstance but to her heart. He is not condescending or rude. “Do not be afraid,” he says, “go ahead and continue with your plan. But first, make a little cake and bring it to me. Then make something for yourself and your son.” He tells her that God has promised that her jar will never be empty and her oil will not run out.
At that moment she had a choice. To suffer her family’s last supper in silence or to move through her fear in faith.
For some reason, she decided to trust him. The story does not tell us why, what she saw or what changed. We only know that she went home and did as Elijah said. She made him a cake and then her son and her self, and saw that there was more meal. And there was oil. She fed her entire household. Still...enough. More than enough. And so she made more the next morning. And then again. There was meal and oil and there did not seem to be an end to enough. The grain did not fill a barn. A silo was not miraculously filled. It was a simple bowl, in the cupboard of a simple family, that was simply never empty.
Each time she fed her visitor, it made no meaningful dent in her resources. Nothing about how she lived really changed. Knowing that she and her family would not go hungry as she had feared. Well that knowledge changed everything.
I believe that the members of Saint Ann’s stand at a crossroad similar to the one that the widow stood in that day. It is stewardship season. You got the mailing, and the card. We have been invited to give. Sacrificially. We are told that God will provide and that we will always have enough. More than enough. But in some ways all we can see is our budget. We rationed our resources for the annual dry season, never anticipating an economic crisis. Never considering that we might lose our rector. Underestimating the real challenges of inviting and incorporating new families into our faith community. Three big things. Three years of drought. For which we did not plan.
And now, we say, there is no money. We would love to reach out, but present circumstances have made us individually and corporately unable to make such sacrifices. We feel that we do not have enough resources to invest boldly in our future and yet, if we do not grow many of us fear, that Saint Ann’s will gradually, eventually, tragically die. Some of us have resigned ourselves to this eventuality, hoping to make the best of things and enjoy the fellowship as it is, until it isn’t. Others grieve the potential, gradual diminution of this vibrant community, simultaneously decrying our powerlessness to halt her deterioration. And there are widows in the house. Many here have begun the process of shaping the cakes for the future, unsure if they themselves will eat at the end of the day. But stepping out in faith and hoping against hope that the promises are true.
Doubtless there were other widows, laborers and leaders who played out the widow’s initial plan. This widow, lowly, bereft, we only know about her because she stood at that point of disillusionment and resignation and turned. She decided to let go of her fear and trust. She turned around. The word repent means to turn around.
Whether or not you need to turn around is really based on which direction you are facing. And only you and God know the answer to that. What are you saying with your words and your wallet about what kind of community this is and what kind of God you worship.
(MOVE TO LECTERN)
Last week Jack Spaeth spoke at our Griswold forum about the power of increasingly sacrificial giving in his life. He was clearly living in the liberation of a perpetually full jar and jug. We asked him how we might help people get it about giving. His answer was simple: Get people who give to tell their stories.
I have moved over here because there is a particular authority and responsibility that a preacher carries into the pulpit. An obligation to rightly handle the word, carefully preaching the Gospel. I am standing over here now (with Nancy’s permission) to tell a bit of my story in my own voice.
When I was 16 I fell in love with Jesus. I understood from the Bible that God asked not merely a tithe from me, but for a 100% investment. I would get a babysitting job and place the $20 in the plate, only to get a call that afternoon from a parent with a $40 need. I was diggin this new God math.
When I was 19 I took a year off from college to try to discern God’s will for me. I was led in prayer to the conclusion that I was called to attend a church in the city of Pittsburgh, about an hour from my home. I had no money and I didn’t have a car. But I was convinced this was from God.
The next day a family friend and Amway salesman asked if he could come to the house to meet with me. He said he had a proposition for me. After exchanging pleasantries I launched into my myriad objections to pyramid marketing schemes. Taken aback he said that the reason he had come over was to tell me that his daughter was spending the year abroad and he was concerned about her car sitting in the garage. He wondered if I would be willing to drive it for a year. Not only did God provide a car but it just so happened to be the car I had always wanted, a yellow Volkswagen bug.
In grad school in the early 90s, I felt led in prayer to imagine my heart’s desire for a place to live. it was hard to let myself imagine things I could not afford. I imagined a farm with rolling hills, out in the country with some woods. Two days later I overheard a professor saying to someone, “We have taken this position in Atlanta and need to go fairly quickly. But we won’t be able to sell the farm that fast and need someone to stay there and feed the horses until next summer. Do you know anyone who might be able to do that? That’s my house! I said.
When I was in graduate school, Yale was hosting a special gathering of women African theologians. Their primary agenda was to discuss the AIDS crisis in Africa. Since talk of sex was taboo in most of their worlds, there was no opportunity to educate. The upshot of the conference was that these women would create a kind of underground sex education railroad. I had two hundred dollars in my checking account... which I gave them. The very next day I was informed that I was one of two students who had been admitted for transfer into the Institute for Sacred Music and the Arts, an admission that included a full scholarship. Two hundred for twenty thousand. Still diggin the new math.
There are many more stories where that came from and I love to talk about God’s love and faithfulness. Even today. Last week we got a bill from the Hospital. Paltry compared with the bizillion dollars of care my family received over the past two months, but $600 none the less. 600 that were not in the budget. Two months ago I was in a minor fender bender when a truck hit me from behind. Last week the other party’s insurance company called to settle the claim for my pain and inconvenience. He asked if $670 would be sufficient. A check is already in the mail. Enough and more than enough.
Over and over. Out of the blue. Furniture. Instruments. Housing. Food. Unsolicited. Unmerited gifts out of God’s abundant economy. Many times on the heels of scary giving. Often simply God’s generous hand. Each time provision arrives I feel like God is saying, “Yes. This is the path. Stay the course. Open your hands. What’s yours is mine. And what’s mine is yours.”
(No mystery whose the winner in that deal.)
There is a passage that is often translated “God loves the cheerful giver.” Most Biblical scholars contend that a truer translation would be God loves the hilarious giver. I wonder if that is how the widow felt. Wait, watch this. Look. I made a loaf, and look, more meal and oil. Wait. Watch, I’ll do it again. Isn’t that crazy. As you can probably guess I have come to give in this way and find it thrilling. And God has not only provided for my needs, but has heard and treasured the desires of my heart.
That’s it. A peek into my cupboard. It does’t look like much, but I assure you, it is certainly more than enough for me.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
What does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?
What does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life? Indeed, what can you give in return for your life?
If you take nothing else away with you this morning, remember these questions. Jesus asked them without offering an answer of his own. Mark recorded them without providing any guiding commentary either. For, in truth, they are questions that have no adequate answer. Once posed, they hang in the air. They drift in the imagination. And they are pertinent to everything you do in all the time you are given to live. Nothing happens that they do not address. These questions should be recited each morning and evening and in the face of every anxiety you may suffer. They can change your life. Don’t leave without them. Don’t leave them unattended because you are so busy from sun up to sun down trying, indeed, to gain the world.
Scripture is rarely obvious in conveying its message – a point that seems painfully lost for many people these days. Its texts require patience to understand, and they can be rightly interpreted only by means of repeated reflection. This is how we engage our lives with God, and only this engagement allows us to see the revelation God has set before us. Allow me, then, a short exercise in reflection that may offer some additional illumination to just these verses.
This past Monday, about mid-morning, the members of the Lyra Choir from Russia arrived, which set in motion a number of preparations. They moved their concert wear into the downstairs vesting room and asked about the availability of an iron. After acquainting themselves with this worship space, their leader, Sergei Tupitsyn, and I reviewed the liturgy for the evening. It was a fairly routine conversation: where would the choir sit, where would the clergy be, how would we walk in and walk out, what prayers would be said, when would the anthems be sung. When we were finished, I escorted the group to one of the houses where they would be staying, picked up groceries for their meals, ordered food for their dinner that night, and helped an extraordinarily dedicated parishioner prepare a reception. This is life. Whether we like it or not, it requires attention to a host of relatively mundane tasks.
Just before the service, the choir gathered on the front steps as the church filled. With the ringing of the bells, we started one more service of worship here. It’s been done many times on many occasions. Each of us has been here for some of them. It was a Monday night, a school night. Students had homework. The road was thick with traffic. People were going here and there, busy about many things.
The liturgy began with two anthems: the first a subdued Gregorian chant, the second, a robust expression of unbridled praise. As I was sitting off to the side, with six strangers commanding the center of the chancel – foreigners who knew very little English and knew much less about any of us – it began to dawn on me that, beyond all the planning, the many communications sent back and forth, and all the simple expectations by which we casually frame such events, when the music started, their voices announced something greater and utterly transcendent. Six singers filled every inch of this church with song, which is distinctly the sound of our humanity. Nothing else discloses us with such clarity. Their voices rang out as if drawn from the depths of the world’s soul. The music felt that immense. And the only way we as listeners could appropriately answer their song was by offering a matching silence, equally profound, the other side of our humanity.
When they finished their anthems, no one moved, as if our stillness could prolong the moment into timelessness. In that quiet, reverence was defined – the experience of knowing that you are immersed in beauty in the exact moment it is accomplished. We had gathered to remember the horror of terror and destruction, a day all too real five years ago when everything and thousands fell to nothing. And, in return, they, who could not share the memories as we do, offered something very like the voice of God calling form from out of chaos. To which the only reply from us, collectively, was a visceral sigh, acknowledging not just talent, but such goodness that it surpasses every threat and imposition of evil. This, they sang, is life – this brilliant and amazing concoction, of persons joined in prayer and song, in remembrance and praise, stopping in time to be together, stepping out of the many mundane pursuits that so occupy us in order to realize the splendor that accompanies us as close as our own breathing… What does it profit us to gain the whole world, but lose this? What, of all we buy and build and stash away, can we give that approximates a return of equal value for the inherent grace of this specific time given and shared?
The service that night was filmed, for which I am grateful. When I watched the tape, however, the effect was not the same. It was enjoyable. The singing was impressive. The camera caught a lot that I did not see. But, in translation, the service ceased to be beautiful in the same way. It had been transformed into a report, a record of an event. It could be viewed a hundred times, examined and critiqued from the safe distance of not being caught up within the experience. What had been an engagement had become a product, and the difference was striking. For the heart of beauty is not what is staged but what is lived, what surprises us, what, although remembered, is never replicable. It is the ability to see the depth of the eternal in the faces and voices of others whose own presence is fleeting, and, because of precisely that moment, to feel immensely blessed – not with goods, but, infinitely greater, with the good.
In our culture, we are inundated with products and reproductions. Paintings are rendered en masse in posters. Concerts mean less when recordings are readily available. It is possible to be immersed in a passing flood of stimuli, increasingly at our fingertips. The remote control is a perfect symbol for our times. We are able to sit and view almost anything in the world from the safe and comfortable remove of a chair or sofa, and as soon as we tire of one perspective, we can click to another, never moving, never taxing ourselves, never revealing anything about ourselves to others. We can consume our time as mere spectators, aloof and untouched by what we see. We may find things interesting or awful, thrilling or appalling. But viewing the world from at this digital distance, the experience of deep beauty eludes us. Gaining many things, we lose our lives. When, in contrast, if we lose ourselves in the real presence of others, we may find that what they offer us is our own lives made richer in return.
When our Scriptures speak of the Sabbath and of God’s command that we honor this time, the day is not meant to be an imposition to be greeted with grumbling or complaint. Nor is it merely a time for relaxation in the form of indulgence, letting the dust of the week settle while sipping coffee or sitting at the beach. Though we tend to make it both. The Sabbath is our opportunity to experience beauty, in the glory of God and the grace of community, shaped by mercy, hope, forgiveness, and love. It’s easy to miss these things, to hear without listening, to attend without being present. The liturgy can become just the rote repetition of familiar words made hollow. We can follow the movements like lemmings that run mindlessly and unaware into the ocean. We have the capacity to make anything dull, which may be as good a definition of sin as you’ll ever find. But all our appointed liturgical actions are intended to elicit the beauty of our lives, the very beauty that is often buried by an avalanche of other preoccupations – not just the beauty of attractiveness or prettiness, but the infinite loveliness of realizing, suddenly, how entwined we are, one with another, and all before God. Honoring the Sabbath is eagerly seeking this magnificent, astonishing engagement.
After the service on Monday, Sergei ran up to me and excitedly stated that the choir had never sung better. The stunning silence of the congregation, he said, our prayerfulness, had led them to sing from the inner recesses of their hearts. More than admiration, our reverence was our gift to them.
In the same way, isn’t this what the Sabbath is all about too, offering in our lives – of our lives – a silence, formed of awe and profound gratitude, before God and with one another, such that all the rest of our work and activities are clarified and we may find that our own singing has been made more beautiful too. This devotion, I think, is something of the return we can give... for the time we are granted.
If you take nothing else away with you this morning, remember these questions. Jesus asked them without offering an answer of his own. Mark recorded them without providing any guiding commentary either. For, in truth, they are questions that have no adequate answer. Once posed, they hang in the air. They drift in the imagination. And they are pertinent to everything you do in all the time you are given to live. Nothing happens that they do not address. These questions should be recited each morning and evening and in the face of every anxiety you may suffer. They can change your life. Don’t leave without them. Don’t leave them unattended because you are so busy from sun up to sun down trying, indeed, to gain the world.
Scripture is rarely obvious in conveying its message – a point that seems painfully lost for many people these days. Its texts require patience to understand, and they can be rightly interpreted only by means of repeated reflection. This is how we engage our lives with God, and only this engagement allows us to see the revelation God has set before us. Allow me, then, a short exercise in reflection that may offer some additional illumination to just these verses.
This past Monday, about mid-morning, the members of the Lyra Choir from Russia arrived, which set in motion a number of preparations. They moved their concert wear into the downstairs vesting room and asked about the availability of an iron. After acquainting themselves with this worship space, their leader, Sergei Tupitsyn, and I reviewed the liturgy for the evening. It was a fairly routine conversation: where would the choir sit, where would the clergy be, how would we walk in and walk out, what prayers would be said, when would the anthems be sung. When we were finished, I escorted the group to one of the houses where they would be staying, picked up groceries for their meals, ordered food for their dinner that night, and helped an extraordinarily dedicated parishioner prepare a reception. This is life. Whether we like it or not, it requires attention to a host of relatively mundane tasks.
Just before the service, the choir gathered on the front steps as the church filled. With the ringing of the bells, we started one more service of worship here. It’s been done many times on many occasions. Each of us has been here for some of them. It was a Monday night, a school night. Students had homework. The road was thick with traffic. People were going here and there, busy about many things.
The liturgy began with two anthems: the first a subdued Gregorian chant, the second, a robust expression of unbridled praise. As I was sitting off to the side, with six strangers commanding the center of the chancel – foreigners who knew very little English and knew much less about any of us – it began to dawn on me that, beyond all the planning, the many communications sent back and forth, and all the simple expectations by which we casually frame such events, when the music started, their voices announced something greater and utterly transcendent. Six singers filled every inch of this church with song, which is distinctly the sound of our humanity. Nothing else discloses us with such clarity. Their voices rang out as if drawn from the depths of the world’s soul. The music felt that immense. And the only way we as listeners could appropriately answer their song was by offering a matching silence, equally profound, the other side of our humanity.
When they finished their anthems, no one moved, as if our stillness could prolong the moment into timelessness. In that quiet, reverence was defined – the experience of knowing that you are immersed in beauty in the exact moment it is accomplished. We had gathered to remember the horror of terror and destruction, a day all too real five years ago when everything and thousands fell to nothing. And, in return, they, who could not share the memories as we do, offered something very like the voice of God calling form from out of chaos. To which the only reply from us, collectively, was a visceral sigh, acknowledging not just talent, but such goodness that it surpasses every threat and imposition of evil. This, they sang, is life – this brilliant and amazing concoction, of persons joined in prayer and song, in remembrance and praise, stopping in time to be together, stepping out of the many mundane pursuits that so occupy us in order to realize the splendor that accompanies us as close as our own breathing… What does it profit us to gain the whole world, but lose this? What, of all we buy and build and stash away, can we give that approximates a return of equal value for the inherent grace of this specific time given and shared?
The service that night was filmed, for which I am grateful. When I watched the tape, however, the effect was not the same. It was enjoyable. The singing was impressive. The camera caught a lot that I did not see. But, in translation, the service ceased to be beautiful in the same way. It had been transformed into a report, a record of an event. It could be viewed a hundred times, examined and critiqued from the safe distance of not being caught up within the experience. What had been an engagement had become a product, and the difference was striking. For the heart of beauty is not what is staged but what is lived, what surprises us, what, although remembered, is never replicable. It is the ability to see the depth of the eternal in the faces and voices of others whose own presence is fleeting, and, because of precisely that moment, to feel immensely blessed – not with goods, but, infinitely greater, with the good.
In our culture, we are inundated with products and reproductions. Paintings are rendered en masse in posters. Concerts mean less when recordings are readily available. It is possible to be immersed in a passing flood of stimuli, increasingly at our fingertips. The remote control is a perfect symbol for our times. We are able to sit and view almost anything in the world from the safe and comfortable remove of a chair or sofa, and as soon as we tire of one perspective, we can click to another, never moving, never taxing ourselves, never revealing anything about ourselves to others. We can consume our time as mere spectators, aloof and untouched by what we see. We may find things interesting or awful, thrilling or appalling. But viewing the world from at this digital distance, the experience of deep beauty eludes us. Gaining many things, we lose our lives. When, in contrast, if we lose ourselves in the real presence of others, we may find that what they offer us is our own lives made richer in return.
When our Scriptures speak of the Sabbath and of God’s command that we honor this time, the day is not meant to be an imposition to be greeted with grumbling or complaint. Nor is it merely a time for relaxation in the form of indulgence, letting the dust of the week settle while sipping coffee or sitting at the beach. Though we tend to make it both. The Sabbath is our opportunity to experience beauty, in the glory of God and the grace of community, shaped by mercy, hope, forgiveness, and love. It’s easy to miss these things, to hear without listening, to attend without being present. The liturgy can become just the rote repetition of familiar words made hollow. We can follow the movements like lemmings that run mindlessly and unaware into the ocean. We have the capacity to make anything dull, which may be as good a definition of sin as you’ll ever find. But all our appointed liturgical actions are intended to elicit the beauty of our lives, the very beauty that is often buried by an avalanche of other preoccupations – not just the beauty of attractiveness or prettiness, but the infinite loveliness of realizing, suddenly, how entwined we are, one with another, and all before God. Honoring the Sabbath is eagerly seeking this magnificent, astonishing engagement.
After the service on Monday, Sergei ran up to me and excitedly stated that the choir had never sung better. The stunning silence of the congregation, he said, our prayerfulness, had led them to sing from the inner recesses of their hearts. More than admiration, our reverence was our gift to them.
In the same way, isn’t this what the Sabbath is all about too, offering in our lives – of our lives – a silence, formed of awe and profound gratitude, before God and with one another, such that all the rest of our work and activities are clarified and we may find that our own singing has been made more beautiful too. This devotion, I think, is something of the return we can give... for the time we are granted.
Monday, September 11, 2006
As exceptions they announce extraordinary moments
My grandmother immigrated to the United States from the Netherlands when she was a young girl. Her parents left the northern region of Friesland and settled in southern Minnesota. For the time, it was a huge move and an enormous transition. In more ways than we can imagine today, with more depth of meaning, they left an Old World behind them, in order to begin life again in a strange but promising New World. My great grandparents took almost nothing with them, no remnants of a former time: no photographs, no treasured books, no heirlooms to pass on. In their minds, everything meaningful was strictly ahead of them. They even left their language at the docks. No Dutch was spoken on the farm. It too had lost its use. English was the language of the future.
For nearly all my years growing up, my grandmother lived within our household. It never occurred to us that we were anything but Americans, pure and simple. There was never any talk about former ways or different customs or far away places. All the stories we heard were strictly Midwestern, and all our connections, whether relatives or friends, were contained within the radius of a few hundred miles. This was the entire world to us – with one exception.
For every once in a while, suddenly and surprisingly, my grandmother would utter a word in her native tongue – just a word, not a sentence, not a phrase, just a word. And she would utter it almost as if muttering, under her breath. She wouldn’t speak or declare or offer a pronouncement in Dutch. These were words that just seemed to slip out. And once out, they were never translated for us. We didn’t need translation. We somehow knew already what they meant. We could feel their sense. Just as we knew that whatever the word meant, any translation would be inadequate. We could intuit that no other word, in any language, was substitutable for what she had expressed.
This was our only and infrequent indication that there was more to our past than was generally acknowledged, and we found these moments intriguing. It was also clear to us that we had touched upon something grave or deep – something sui generis, all of its own, which was impressed on us by my grandmother’s recourse to a language that had been retired decades before. When these words arose, we learned to pay attention, because if our common vocabulary wasn’t up to the task, then the circumstances weren’t common either.
In the Gospel according to Mark there are three stories in which Jesus’ words were recorded not in Greek but in his own language, Aramaic, one instance we have heard this morning. In doing so, Mark left no clue as to why he made these choices. In any number of places, Jesus’ original tongue could have been similarly quoted. So it is logical to surmise that these three occurrences are exceptional cases and that as exceptions they announce extraordinary moments, disclosures somehow outside the ordinary sense of things. The implication may be that we should pay special attention, because something outside the usual is at stake, something grave or deep.
The most memorable of the utterances that Mark set down in Aramaic is the cry that Jesus let out at his crucifixion, when it had become brutally clear that he had been utterly abandoned. , “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” My God, why have you forsaken me? It’s a statement of wrenching gravity, for it thrusts before us the depths of human despair. This is precisely what we presume God would never do. Even if all else fails, God is supposed to be sure. God is supposed to save. God is supposed to smooth out all the rough edges and offer gracious consolation. So it is supposed. But Mark makes sure that in this moment the tremendous cost of being human is fully plumbed. Jesus’ exclamation holds true for all of us. This cry might be ours. It fits our mouths. It sometimes fits the stubborn realities of our world: in the streets of Baghdad, in the refugee camps of Darfur, amid the shanties of the Bateys in the Dominican Republic. It will fit the obstinate eventuality of our death. And here God surprises us with stark honesty, giving voice himself to the far edge of human life.
It is a cry that is matched, however, by a contrasting summons, made in an earlier story, in the first statement left by Mark in Jesus’ own language. Jesus comes to the home of Jairus. When he arrives there, all the household is gathered, crying because Jairus’ young daughter has died. Death seems especially cruel when it strikes children; it seems particularly immune to consolation. Yet it is in this moment of intense grief that Jesus, behind closed doors, gently says, “Talitha cumi.” “Little girl, I say to you arise.” This was Mark’s announcement of our opposite edge, delivered by God in person, in the depth of a native tongue. Jesus declared the promise that our lives are met, not lastly by death, but first and ultimately in this divine beckoning: rise up. At the far edge of our humanity, beyond the scope of our own language, beyond proof, beyond the possibility that this can become mere assumption or common belief, this is God’s word to us: arise. This is the mysterious exaltation, in which we may trust. God surprises us, by giving us ourselves, completely, both first and abidingly.
The third Aramaic quotation of Jesus lies between these other two, and it declares a freedom that lies between as well – it speaks not of the edges of life but about the freedom by which we can live in the midst of it. A man was brought to Jesus who for the entirety of his life had been both deaf and mute. Unable to hear, unable to speak, he was closed off and shut down from the world. Taking hold of him, Jesus sighed. It is a moment of compelling resignation. This too exemplifies us. We are so often like this man, trapped, stopped up. We can’t find the words that work. We often don’t know how to understand what we face. We live muddled and bound up, in a hundred different ways, small and great. But in this very moment the word of Jesus resounds, “Ephphatha:” “be opened,” he said. How dazzling this is if we truly hear it: be open. Look, speak, listen, discover and explore, don’t be afraid. It’s a magnificent imperative. This is the way to live, he said. God gives us this immense possibility. Be unstuck.
We tend to miss the magnitude of this command. We dismiss the message as blithely as we deny the miracle – an empty fable in our educated times, say the enlightened. Yet here is the strange irony – in so doing, we do not hear the actual story nor do we have words by which we can engage it. In rejection, the story renders us deaf and mute – when this need not be. From now and always, Jesus said, pay attention. Be aware. Absorb the world. Make this your habit, be ceaselessly, unabashedly, open. This is the very heart of the Christian message, this courage and this excitement.
What really counts in life? Over the course of years, in many ways both direct and indirect, my grandmother asked this question of her grandchildren. And we listened to her – she was, after all, more than seventy years ahead of us on the path. What really counts? Nothing but the present tense? Securing some vague notion of happiness, borrowed wholesale, from one moment to the next? In the words of the Prayer Book, being so immersed in things temporal and material that there is no room, no time, and no language left for things eternal and spiritual? Mark’s answer might better be framed in this way. What really counts is learning how to live as close as you can to these words: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani – bearing the question that discloses our soul. Talitha cumi – trusting that the life that God gives is the life that God will eternally lift up. And Ephphatha, moving always toward this marvelous imperative invitation.
Be open, says God, in words that erupt from the core of his being, words so fitting that they are untranslatable. Be open all the way down to the real anguish of betrayal, all the way up to the redeeming of God. For our purpose as persons, as Christians, as the communion of the Church, is not to press upon the world a tight and constraining order, clamping down and binding up. It is rather to live in such a way that others look on us and are astounded by glimpsing a deep and uncommon heritage, an inheritance of faith that can be seen in the constancy of our compassion and the resilience of our joy. It is to act with such love that others may say with amazement as they said of Jesus, look, they do everything well; they even make the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. Ephphatha – no translation needed. It’s meaning and profundity is simply evident.
For nearly all my years growing up, my grandmother lived within our household. It never occurred to us that we were anything but Americans, pure and simple. There was never any talk about former ways or different customs or far away places. All the stories we heard were strictly Midwestern, and all our connections, whether relatives or friends, were contained within the radius of a few hundred miles. This was the entire world to us – with one exception.
For every once in a while, suddenly and surprisingly, my grandmother would utter a word in her native tongue – just a word, not a sentence, not a phrase, just a word. And she would utter it almost as if muttering, under her breath. She wouldn’t speak or declare or offer a pronouncement in Dutch. These were words that just seemed to slip out. And once out, they were never translated for us. We didn’t need translation. We somehow knew already what they meant. We could feel their sense. Just as we knew that whatever the word meant, any translation would be inadequate. We could intuit that no other word, in any language, was substitutable for what she had expressed.
This was our only and infrequent indication that there was more to our past than was generally acknowledged, and we found these moments intriguing. It was also clear to us that we had touched upon something grave or deep – something sui generis, all of its own, which was impressed on us by my grandmother’s recourse to a language that had been retired decades before. When these words arose, we learned to pay attention, because if our common vocabulary wasn’t up to the task, then the circumstances weren’t common either.
In the Gospel according to Mark there are three stories in which Jesus’ words were recorded not in Greek but in his own language, Aramaic, one instance we have heard this morning. In doing so, Mark left no clue as to why he made these choices. In any number of places, Jesus’ original tongue could have been similarly quoted. So it is logical to surmise that these three occurrences are exceptional cases and that as exceptions they announce extraordinary moments, disclosures somehow outside the ordinary sense of things. The implication may be that we should pay special attention, because something outside the usual is at stake, something grave or deep.
The most memorable of the utterances that Mark set down in Aramaic is the cry that Jesus let out at his crucifixion, when it had become brutally clear that he had been utterly abandoned. , “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” My God, why have you forsaken me? It’s a statement of wrenching gravity, for it thrusts before us the depths of human despair. This is precisely what we presume God would never do. Even if all else fails, God is supposed to be sure. God is supposed to save. God is supposed to smooth out all the rough edges and offer gracious consolation. So it is supposed. But Mark makes sure that in this moment the tremendous cost of being human is fully plumbed. Jesus’ exclamation holds true for all of us. This cry might be ours. It fits our mouths. It sometimes fits the stubborn realities of our world: in the streets of Baghdad, in the refugee camps of Darfur, amid the shanties of the Bateys in the Dominican Republic. It will fit the obstinate eventuality of our death. And here God surprises us with stark honesty, giving voice himself to the far edge of human life.
It is a cry that is matched, however, by a contrasting summons, made in an earlier story, in the first statement left by Mark in Jesus’ own language. Jesus comes to the home of Jairus. When he arrives there, all the household is gathered, crying because Jairus’ young daughter has died. Death seems especially cruel when it strikes children; it seems particularly immune to consolation. Yet it is in this moment of intense grief that Jesus, behind closed doors, gently says, “Talitha cumi.” “Little girl, I say to you arise.” This was Mark’s announcement of our opposite edge, delivered by God in person, in the depth of a native tongue. Jesus declared the promise that our lives are met, not lastly by death, but first and ultimately in this divine beckoning: rise up. At the far edge of our humanity, beyond the scope of our own language, beyond proof, beyond the possibility that this can become mere assumption or common belief, this is God’s word to us: arise. This is the mysterious exaltation, in which we may trust. God surprises us, by giving us ourselves, completely, both first and abidingly.
The third Aramaic quotation of Jesus lies between these other two, and it declares a freedom that lies between as well – it speaks not of the edges of life but about the freedom by which we can live in the midst of it. A man was brought to Jesus who for the entirety of his life had been both deaf and mute. Unable to hear, unable to speak, he was closed off and shut down from the world. Taking hold of him, Jesus sighed. It is a moment of compelling resignation. This too exemplifies us. We are so often like this man, trapped, stopped up. We can’t find the words that work. We often don’t know how to understand what we face. We live muddled and bound up, in a hundred different ways, small and great. But in this very moment the word of Jesus resounds, “Ephphatha:” “be opened,” he said. How dazzling this is if we truly hear it: be open. Look, speak, listen, discover and explore, don’t be afraid. It’s a magnificent imperative. This is the way to live, he said. God gives us this immense possibility. Be unstuck.
We tend to miss the magnitude of this command. We dismiss the message as blithely as we deny the miracle – an empty fable in our educated times, say the enlightened. Yet here is the strange irony – in so doing, we do not hear the actual story nor do we have words by which we can engage it. In rejection, the story renders us deaf and mute – when this need not be. From now and always, Jesus said, pay attention. Be aware. Absorb the world. Make this your habit, be ceaselessly, unabashedly, open. This is the very heart of the Christian message, this courage and this excitement.
What really counts in life? Over the course of years, in many ways both direct and indirect, my grandmother asked this question of her grandchildren. And we listened to her – she was, after all, more than seventy years ahead of us on the path. What really counts? Nothing but the present tense? Securing some vague notion of happiness, borrowed wholesale, from one moment to the next? In the words of the Prayer Book, being so immersed in things temporal and material that there is no room, no time, and no language left for things eternal and spiritual? Mark’s answer might better be framed in this way. What really counts is learning how to live as close as you can to these words: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani – bearing the question that discloses our soul. Talitha cumi – trusting that the life that God gives is the life that God will eternally lift up. And Ephphatha, moving always toward this marvelous imperative invitation.
Be open, says God, in words that erupt from the core of his being, words so fitting that they are untranslatable. Be open all the way down to the real anguish of betrayal, all the way up to the redeeming of God. For our purpose as persons, as Christians, as the communion of the Church, is not to press upon the world a tight and constraining order, clamping down and binding up. It is rather to live in such a way that others look on us and are astounded by glimpsing a deep and uncommon heritage, an inheritance of faith that can be seen in the constancy of our compassion and the resilience of our joy. It is to act with such love that others may say with amazement as they said of Jesus, look, they do everything well; they even make the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. Ephphatha – no translation needed. It’s meaning and profundity is simply evident.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Faith, in Christian terms, isn't fundamentally about us
After beginning with a short salutation, the first Epistle of Peter proceeds with an opening statement, which, in its original Greek, is only one sentence. It’s difficult to render this grammatical form verbally, but it’s very important that all of what was written is understood to be one, single thought, contained as it is between an initial capital letter and, finally, a concluding period. Allow me to read it in full.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! -- By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. -- In which you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which, though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. -- Without having seen him, you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. -- As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls. -- The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. -- It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the Good News to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”
Nine verses, one sentence. One thought. One single, but comprehensive proclamation. This, according to Peter, is the short version of Christianity, the first and smallest of steps in. How much of it do you remember? It’s the briefest of thumbnail sketches.
At the risk of doing some damage to its evident beauty and power, let me put this into more mundane language, something more like our own vernacular. Here is the same sentence again.
It is possible for us to give thanks to God because, by his own grace, shown in Jesus Christ, we have been afforded eternal life, which we may realize, in part, in our lives even now, just as we yearn for its full disclosure at a time that is yet to come. -- This promise does not erase the problems of the world nor does it resolve the difficulties we personally suffer. -- Faith does not protect us from trouble or guarantee us any prosperity; but it reveals how it is that love endures and goodness perseveres, through all things, even death. -- Seeing this in Jesus, in the testimony of the Scriptures, we have every reason to rejoice and to be glad in all of life, and this indomitable joy is what salvation means. -- This is not a dream or a fantasy, a wish that floats about without foundation. -- It has been a revelation slowly wrung out of the experience of generations. -- Its richness is mirrored by the costs incurred by all those who waited upon God, who looked for relief and redemption, who prayed for the advent of a Savior. -- Often, they searched in vain or looked in the wrong direction for precisely the wrong solution. -- Their missteps are our gift. -- They didn’t gain anything for themselves; they provided everything for us. -- From them, we have learned how we can say that Jesus is God’s Messiah, how, in him, all of the brokenness of history is not left strewn and scattered, but comes to fruition. -- Because of their witness, it is possible, too, for us to fold our own lives into this completeness – for God’s intentions are definite and his actions are specific. -- Having come to us as an individual within the world, we may trust that we, as individuals, are no less included within his mercy and his fervent compassion. -- This is a love of such magnificence, so marvelously extended to us, that even the angels yearn, too, for this kind of communion and intimacy.
One sentence. One beginning thought. What is striking about Peter’s sentence is its vast difference from what many take Christianity to be today. As far as I know, his simple statement doesn’t appear any T-shirts, and it certainly wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker. It’s not reducible to a motto. Somehow, the proclamation, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter,” just doesn’t have the same impact or meaning.
For a while, the code letters WWJD were all the fashion: Christianity in an acronym – “what would Jesus do.” But, the more closely you read Peter’s text, the more it becomes clear that WWJD isn’t really an issue at all. It can’t be found anywhere, neither in Peter’s words nor, however vaguely, between the lines.
This week several stories ran about a Christian web site on which people could post anonymous but public confessions. It’s great reading for the prurient. In a coinciding interview, the founding minister explained the site by noting that confession is the first necessary step if you want to be successful in life. Wealth, he said, follows truth. But Peter didn’t say this either, neither directly nor indirectly. Nor did he suggest that along with faith comes a two stall garage and the cars to fill it, or great kids who will be accepted into the best colleges, or the house of one’s dreams, or the luck of the draw in a local poker game. In actuality, if you read his testimony a hundred times, you will still be unable to find any claim that God’s promise will make your life better materially. Faith is not a way to manipulate God into being advantageously on your side, suddenly bestowing extra benefits, no matter how many ingenious slogans are generated and slick marketing campaigns are conducted advocating exactly this. In spite of the popular talk in the American church, there is no quid pro quo in religion. God offers no prizes and grants no rewards, and faithfulness doesn’t lead to divine favors. Such talk is mercenary and grossly petty. I call it evangelical profanity, because it sullies what is holy.
If we listen closely to the text, faith, in Christian terms, isn’t fundamentally about us or about our condition or our particular circumstances. It isn’t even, primarily, about our faith. It is God who is faithful – who is faithful to us – and thus the worship of the church is rather, and far differently, our celebration of our inclusion in a love so broad that all the time of history is required to bring it to light. It is possible for us to perceive our own lives, not within the limited scope of the years we are given, but, more profoundly, as absolutely intrinsic to God’s eternal kingdom and infinite goodness. It is not (as many fervently declare) that God is for us and, therefore, must be against those others against whom we struggle. The truth that we are invited to see, with ever greater perspicuity, works in the opposite direction. It is that our lives are our participation in the glory of God, a glory that stretches from alpha to omega, that connects us, then, deeply, with all that was and all that will be, and that, as we profess each Sunday, in the fullness of time God will gather all the world together in reconciliation and wholeness.
This is all a long preface to understanding Paul’s concluding words from his letter to the Ephesians, which we have heard this morning. They make the same claim, and it is extraordinarily timely. “We are not contending against other human beings,” he stated. We are not contending against other human beings! Religion is not morality or politics writ large – especially when we are instructed to love even our enemies. The true foe is greater than any instance of evil or injustice. And here even Paul, the brilliant rhetorician, struggles for words. The battle is not with us, reduced to stupid debates about who’s in and who’s out. The battle is God’s alone, against “the powers and principalities and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,” against the deep shadow side of our world that beguiles us. And our calling, then, in the light of God’s own victory in Christ, is not to further divide an already fractious world with misguided attempts to determine who has been saved and who has not. Paul gives us a very different mission. It is, primarily, to stand fast, to live in the integrity of God’s assurance. “Let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace,” he said. In our present time, amid all the inflammatory words thrown about, aren’t these more important than all the rest: “Let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace!” Don’t be tempted into thinking that the fight is yours, Paul warns. The fight is already won, good news to which we are privileged to be witnesses, as people who may already live clothed in the grace that is God’s.
The drive of our world now seems to be an intensely restless desire for division and polarization, accomplished most severely in the name of religion. But this is not our message in any manner. Ours is, rather, to touch the truth of eternity within the time of our own lives, an eternity that gathers and redeems and loses nothing of all that was or is or will be. If we are to speak boldly, this is the only boldness with which we may speak.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! -- By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. -- In which you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which, though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. -- Without having seen him, you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. -- As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls. -- The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. -- It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the Good News to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”
Nine verses, one sentence. One thought. One single, but comprehensive proclamation. This, according to Peter, is the short version of Christianity, the first and smallest of steps in. How much of it do you remember? It’s the briefest of thumbnail sketches.
At the risk of doing some damage to its evident beauty and power, let me put this into more mundane language, something more like our own vernacular. Here is the same sentence again.
It is possible for us to give thanks to God because, by his own grace, shown in Jesus Christ, we have been afforded eternal life, which we may realize, in part, in our lives even now, just as we yearn for its full disclosure at a time that is yet to come. -- This promise does not erase the problems of the world nor does it resolve the difficulties we personally suffer. -- Faith does not protect us from trouble or guarantee us any prosperity; but it reveals how it is that love endures and goodness perseveres, through all things, even death. -- Seeing this in Jesus, in the testimony of the Scriptures, we have every reason to rejoice and to be glad in all of life, and this indomitable joy is what salvation means. -- This is not a dream or a fantasy, a wish that floats about without foundation. -- It has been a revelation slowly wrung out of the experience of generations. -- Its richness is mirrored by the costs incurred by all those who waited upon God, who looked for relief and redemption, who prayed for the advent of a Savior. -- Often, they searched in vain or looked in the wrong direction for precisely the wrong solution. -- Their missteps are our gift. -- They didn’t gain anything for themselves; they provided everything for us. -- From them, we have learned how we can say that Jesus is God’s Messiah, how, in him, all of the brokenness of history is not left strewn and scattered, but comes to fruition. -- Because of their witness, it is possible, too, for us to fold our own lives into this completeness – for God’s intentions are definite and his actions are specific. -- Having come to us as an individual within the world, we may trust that we, as individuals, are no less included within his mercy and his fervent compassion. -- This is a love of such magnificence, so marvelously extended to us, that even the angels yearn, too, for this kind of communion and intimacy.
One sentence. One beginning thought. What is striking about Peter’s sentence is its vast difference from what many take Christianity to be today. As far as I know, his simple statement doesn’t appear any T-shirts, and it certainly wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker. It’s not reducible to a motto. Somehow, the proclamation, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter,” just doesn’t have the same impact or meaning.
For a while, the code letters WWJD were all the fashion: Christianity in an acronym – “what would Jesus do.” But, the more closely you read Peter’s text, the more it becomes clear that WWJD isn’t really an issue at all. It can’t be found anywhere, neither in Peter’s words nor, however vaguely, between the lines.
This week several stories ran about a Christian web site on which people could post anonymous but public confessions. It’s great reading for the prurient. In a coinciding interview, the founding minister explained the site by noting that confession is the first necessary step if you want to be successful in life. Wealth, he said, follows truth. But Peter didn’t say this either, neither directly nor indirectly. Nor did he suggest that along with faith comes a two stall garage and the cars to fill it, or great kids who will be accepted into the best colleges, or the house of one’s dreams, or the luck of the draw in a local poker game. In actuality, if you read his testimony a hundred times, you will still be unable to find any claim that God’s promise will make your life better materially. Faith is not a way to manipulate God into being advantageously on your side, suddenly bestowing extra benefits, no matter how many ingenious slogans are generated and slick marketing campaigns are conducted advocating exactly this. In spite of the popular talk in the American church, there is no quid pro quo in religion. God offers no prizes and grants no rewards, and faithfulness doesn’t lead to divine favors. Such talk is mercenary and grossly petty. I call it evangelical profanity, because it sullies what is holy.
If we listen closely to the text, faith, in Christian terms, isn’t fundamentally about us or about our condition or our particular circumstances. It isn’t even, primarily, about our faith. It is God who is faithful – who is faithful to us – and thus the worship of the church is rather, and far differently, our celebration of our inclusion in a love so broad that all the time of history is required to bring it to light. It is possible for us to perceive our own lives, not within the limited scope of the years we are given, but, more profoundly, as absolutely intrinsic to God’s eternal kingdom and infinite goodness. It is not (as many fervently declare) that God is for us and, therefore, must be against those others against whom we struggle. The truth that we are invited to see, with ever greater perspicuity, works in the opposite direction. It is that our lives are our participation in the glory of God, a glory that stretches from alpha to omega, that connects us, then, deeply, with all that was and all that will be, and that, as we profess each Sunday, in the fullness of time God will gather all the world together in reconciliation and wholeness.
This is all a long preface to understanding Paul’s concluding words from his letter to the Ephesians, which we have heard this morning. They make the same claim, and it is extraordinarily timely. “We are not contending against other human beings,” he stated. We are not contending against other human beings! Religion is not morality or politics writ large – especially when we are instructed to love even our enemies. The true foe is greater than any instance of evil or injustice. And here even Paul, the brilliant rhetorician, struggles for words. The battle is not with us, reduced to stupid debates about who’s in and who’s out. The battle is God’s alone, against “the powers and principalities and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,” against the deep shadow side of our world that beguiles us. And our calling, then, in the light of God’s own victory in Christ, is not to further divide an already fractious world with misguided attempts to determine who has been saved and who has not. Paul gives us a very different mission. It is, primarily, to stand fast, to live in the integrity of God’s assurance. “Let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace,” he said. In our present time, amid all the inflammatory words thrown about, aren’t these more important than all the rest: “Let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace!” Don’t be tempted into thinking that the fight is yours, Paul warns. The fight is already won, good news to which we are privileged to be witnesses, as people who may already live clothed in the grace that is God’s.
The drive of our world now seems to be an intensely restless desire for division and polarization, accomplished most severely in the name of religion. But this is not our message in any manner. Ours is, rather, to touch the truth of eternity within the time of our own lives, an eternity that gathers and redeems and loses nothing of all that was or is or will be. If we are to speak boldly, this is the only boldness with which we may speak.
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