1 Lent

March 13, 2011

Gen. 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

+ Ah, Lent! Lent is one of those times—I can’t say it’s one of those RARE times—when you are going to see a more eccentric side of me. Actually what I should say is an additional eccentric side to me. It’s weird thing—a thing you will not hear from many clergy people—but I actually truly kind of like Lent. I like the kind of strange, counter-cultural things we do during Lent—like fasting. Fasting is wonderful! It really does put one in touch with one’s physical self.

And this whole business of just stopping and pondering such things as one’s own brokenness—as depressing as it might seem—is actually quite liberating as well. And humbling.

I have been re-reading Michael Ford’s biography of the great Christian writer, Henri Nouwen. Ford talked about how Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest, had become the chaplain of Daybreak, a community of developmentally disabled people in Ontario. While there, Nouwen started a daily celebration of the Eucharist

However, Ford writes, Nouwen “was at first distracted and annoyed by the lack of silence in the Eucharistic celebration, but he was open enough to learn gradually that this brought a new dimension to the Eucharist. The broken ones of God…brought a new understanding and love to the Eucharist, the broken body of Christ.”

That final sentence really resonated with me this past week as we entered this Lenten season. That concept of the broken ones of God having a connection with the broken body of Christ that we experience in a very physical way during our celebration of the Eucharist has spoken to me and it is this theme that I am going to return to again and again during this season. Being broken—and we all are broken in various ways—is just a reality for us. But it is not a time to despair. Our brokenness, especially when we place it alongside the broken Body of Christ that is lifted up and shown at the Eucharist, has more meaning than we can fully fathom at times. In that moment, we realize we can no longer feel separated from Christ by our brokenness. It is a moment in which we are, in fact, uniquely and wonderfully joined TO Christ in our shared brokenness. And what we glimpse today in our scripture readings is, on one hand brokenness, and on the other hand, wholeness.

In our readings from the Hebrew Bible and from the Gospel, we get two stories with one common character. In our reading from Genesis, we find Satan in the form of a serpent, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden. In our Gospel, we have Satan yet again doing what he does best—tempting. But this time he is tempting Jesus. What we have here is essentially the same story, retold. We have the tempter. We have the tempted. We have the temptations. But we have two very different results. We have exactly opposite results.

The connection between Adam and Jesus is a long and interesting one. And it is one that has layers of meaning. I have always loved reading the traditions through the history of the Church in which connections are made between Adam and Jesus. For example, there is a tradition that believes that the tree from which Eve picked the fruit was later cut down and used as the wood for the cross on which Jesus died. There is also another tradition that I just read recently. There is a tradition that when Adam and Eve died, they were actually buried on Golgotha, the place where Jesus would eventually be crucified.

In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there is a large rock beneath the Calvary Chapel. This rock is split and a red streak runs right through it. It is believed that, when Jesus died on the cross, this rock split. And his blood trickled down into the crack in the rock to the place where Adam and Eve were buried. As the blood touched their bones, this tradition states, Adam and Eve were finally restored to their former state though Christ. They were saved. Their brokenness, in a sense, was restored through the broken body (and blood) of Christ. In fact, in some representations of the crucifixion, you can often see a skull at the base of the cross. The tradition is that this skull is actually the skull of Adam.

I love these traditional stories, not because I necessarily believe that they’re true. I love them because they help us to see that there are no loose ends in the story of God. Anytime we find something broken, somehow God fixes it in the end. When it comes to God, what seems like a failure—the fall of Adam and Eve—eventually becomes the greatest success of all—the refusal of Jesus to be tempted. And whatever is broken, is somehow always fixed and restored.

Still, we must deal with this issue of temptation. Iy is the hinge event in both of the stories we hear this morning from scripture. Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, once said that there are two roots to all sin—pride and the flesh. If we look at what Satan offers both Adam and Jesus in today’s readings, we see that all the temptations can find their root mostly in the sin of pride. Adam and Eve, as they partake of the fruit, have forgotten about God and have placed themselves first. The eating of that fruit is all about them. They have placed themselves before God in their own existence. And that’s what pride really is. It is the putting of ourselves before God. It is the misguided belief that everything is all about us. The world revolves around us. The universe exists to serve us. And the only humility we have is a false one. When one allows one’s self to think along those lines, the fall that comes after it is a painful one.

When Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit, they are ashamed because they realize they are naked. They realize they have nothing. They realize that, by themselves and of themselves, they are nothing. This realization is that it is not all about them, after all. They have failed themselves and they have failed God in their pride. But the amazing thing, if you notice, is that Adam and Eve still have not really learned their lesson. They leave the Garden in shame, but there is still a certain level of pride there. As they go, we don’t hear them wailing before God. We don’t see them turning to God in sorrow for what they have done. We don’t see them presenting themselves before God, broken and humbled, by what they have done. They never ask God for forgiveness. Instead, they leave in shame, but they leave to continue on in their pride.

From this story, we see that Satan knows perfectly how to appeal to humans. The doorway for Satan to enter into one’s life is through pride. Of course, in scripture, we find that Satan’s downfall came through pride as well. Lucifer wanted to be like God. And when he knew he couldn’t, he rebelled and fell. We see him trying to use pride again in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he tries to appeal to Jesus’ pride. He knows that Jesus knows he is exactly who is. Satan knows that Jesus truly does have the power to reign and rule, that he has all the power in the world. And Satan further knows that if he could harness that power for himself—for evil—then he will have that power as well. Because Jesus was fully human, Satan knew that he could appeal to the pride all humans carry with them. But Jesus, because he, in addition to being fully human, was also fully God as well, refused to succumb to the sin of pride. In fact, because Jesus, fully God, came to us and became human like us, the ultimate sign of humility came among us.

So, these two stories speak in many ways to us, who are struggling in our own lives. As we hear these stories, we no doubt find ourselves relating fully to Adam and Eve. After all, like Adam and Eve, we find ourselves constantly tempted and constantly failing as they did. And also like them, we find that when we fail, when we fall, we oftentimes don’t turn again to God, asking God’s forgiveness in our lives. We almost never are able to be, like Jesus, able to resist the temptations of pride and sin, especially when we are in a vulnerable state.

Jesus, after forty days of fasting, was certainly in a vulnerable place to be tempted. As we all enter the forty days of fasting in this season of Lent, we too need to be on guard. We too need to keep our eyes on Jesus—who, in addition to being our God, is also our companion in this earthly adventure we are having. We need to look to Jesus, the new Adam, the one who shows us that Adam’s fall—Adam’s brokenness—and Adam’s fall and brokenness is essentially our fall and brokenness as well—is not the end of the story.

Whatever failings Adam had were made right with Jesus. And, in the same way, whatever failings we make are ultimately made right in Jesus as well. Jesus has come among us to show up the right pathway. Jesus has come to us to lead us through our failings and our brokenness to a place in which we will succeed, in which we will be whole.

So, let us follow Jesus in the path of our lives, allowing him to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were forced to abandoned. Because it is only when we have abandoned pride in our lives—when we have shed concern for ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and disciplined ourselves to the point in which we realize it is not all about us at all—only then will we discover that the temptations that come to us will have no effect on us. Humility, which we should be cultivating and practicing during this season of Lent, should be what we are cultivating and practicing all the time in our lives. Humility is the best safeguard against temptation. Humility is the remedy to help us back on the road to piecing ourselves back together from our shattered brokenness.

So, as we move through the wasteland of Lent and throughout the rest of our lives, let us be firm and faithful in keeping Jesus as the goal of our life. Let us not let those temptations of pride rule out in our life. In these days of Lent, let us practice personal humility and spiritual fasting. Let Jesus set the standard in our lives. And let him, as he did to Adam and Eve when he died on the cross, raise us up from the places we have fallen in your journey. And let us let him piece our brokenness back into a glorious wholeness.

Ash Wednesday

March 9, 2011

I came home tonight from a really very beautiful Ash Wednesday liturgy. As I glanced at myself in the mirror, I saw the black ashen cross on my forehead and suddenly remembered my father and all those Ash Wednesdays when he would come home from his little Lutheran Church with that same black cross on his forehead.

And here, six months after his death (six months on the 14th), his body truly is ashes. He is dust and it was to dust that he returned. And that sober reality hit me with the weight of truck.

This is what Ash Wednesday is all about after all. It is about realizing that we are mortal. But it is also about realizing that everyone we love is a mortal as well. Every one we love and care for will one day return to dust.

The only mainstay, the one steady reality we have is Christ. He is not dust. He is not ashes. His is a resurrected body that we have been promised we will one day inherit as well. These bodies that will one day turn to ashes and be buried, will one day rise from those ashes into a glory we, at this moment, can only just barely even imagine.

Staring at that cross on my forehead, thinking of my father who is now ashes, I find a certain comfort in the fact that dust and ashes are not eternity. I find joy in the fact that he and I and all of us will one day rise above the dust into which each of us will one day go. And that even dirt and ashes can be a conduit through which we catch a glimpse of that forthcoming glory.

Last Epiphany

Sunday of the Transfiguration

March 6, 2011

Exodus 24.12-18; Matthew 17. 1-9

+ Already this morning, with our new altar rail, we have had people make comments such as, “It looks so different in here.” And it DOES. But to be honest, the change is slight. It’s still an altar rail. It still kind of looks the old one—it’s the same color, the same basic design.

But…it’s better. It’s more solid. It’s birch wood.

When I brought my mother by St Stephen’s on Friday afternoon to see the altar rail for the first time, she, in her typical way, took the whole sanctuary in, and said “It all just comes together.” And it really does.

When we look at the somewhat slight changes that have been made here in the sanctuary we realize that somehow it all does come together. A lot of this is of course due to the Aesthetics Committee here at St. Stephen’s, who give wonderful suggestions on how to improve the physical beauty of the church building itself. With the beautiful frontals on the altar that Gin Templeton made, we see that our attention is drawn to the place it should be drawn—to the altar. And on the shelf behind the altar, we see that we now usually have some kind of display—whether it be these twigs that are there now or the flowers that are occasionally given, or the living plants we have at the other times. These displays don’t draw attention to themselves. They actually draw attention away from themselves to highlight the cross, which, like the altar, also is the center of our attention at worship. Subtle but well-thought-out-changes highlight and enhance our visual appreciation of things—they bring it all together.

I have heard again and again from people here at St. Stephen’s that these changes add beauty to what we see and also help us in our worship. And something visually appealing can truly enhance our worship experience, just the same way as good music enhances our sense of singing in worship. In a sense, these seemingly minor or inconsequential things transform worship for us. They help us open our hearts and minds and souls to God, yet without completely transforming what we see into something unrecognizable.

No doubt Peter, James and John thought somewhat like this when they gazed upon Jesus transfigured on the mount. He still looked like the Jesus they always knew. He still had the basic features. He was recognizable. But…he was different. He was transformed. He was transfigured by the Light which shone from within him.

On this last Sunday of Epiphany, we hear in our Gospel reading an echo of something we heard on our first Sunday of Epiphany. If you can remember back all the way to January 9, we also heard God speaking words very similar to what we hear this morning in our Gospel reading. On January 9, the First Sunday in Epiphany, we found Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. That morning I preached on the importance of baptism and how we really need to consider how important it is in our lives and how the Baptismal Covenant really does help define us as Christians. As Jesus rises out of those waters of the Jordan, we hear God say,

"This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

Today, on this last Sunday in Epiphany, as Jesus is transfigured on the mountaintop, flanked by Moses representing the Law and Elijah representing the Prophets, both of which Jesus fulfills, and with Peter, James and John gazing on, we also hear again God speak, almost as an echo to what was said at Jesus’ baptism:

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

We find in all of this, that although Jesus is changed somewhat, that the situation has changed somewhat, God has not changed. In fact, in our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning, we find God speaking to Moses in a very similar way as well. There we find, much as we find in our Gospel reading, a mountaintop, a cloud, and God’s glory—and God speaking to Moses much as God speaks to all of us in today’s Gospel. For us, these readings reveal to us that we too are to be available for such transfigurations.

Last Sunday I preached about being conduits through which God’s light shines, referencing specifically George Herbert’s poem, “Windows.” Being the conduit through which God’s Light shines means allowing ourselves to be transformed by that Light. It means being reborn by that Light. It means that, yes, we are still who we are. We still look the same. Yes, we are still cracked and warped windows. But that somehow, that Light coming through transforms the cracks and the warping and makes the whole window shine and glow.

As the Lenten season starts, we find everything dimming a bit. I often refer to these Lenten days as the long, gray days of Lent. To me they are. They are the time we when, whether we like it or not, we hear more talk in our scriptures and in our liturgy, of sin, of repentance, of being aware of our shortcomings and of trying turn away from those moments in which we fail. It is a time, to continue our Windows analogy, in which we examine the cracks and warps in our glass panes and we try to repair them in some way. But as we progress through Lent toward the glorious, blinding light of Easter morning, we realize that although the Light may seem dimmed, it at no point goes out. Even on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, when it will seem darkest of all, the Light will not be completely extinguished. We end the Season of Epiphany with this glorious vision of the Transfiguration. It essentially sustains us and upholds us until the Light of Easter shines upon us.

At the end of our liturgy this morning, the children will come forward to help me take down the alleluia banner and place it in a box, which will then be taken out and “buried” As we do this, the rest of us will sing “Alleluia! song of gladness.” After Wednesday—Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent—we will not be saying the word “Alleluia” in our liturgies until Easter.

Sometimes it’s very good to do things like this. It’s good to retire a word for a period of time. Because we often take words for granted. We use the word without thinking about it. Alleluia is one of those words. It’s a joyful word. It’s meant, essentially to be an exclamation. It’s what Peter, James and John no doubt exclaimed on the mount when they saw Jesus transfigured and the voice of God speaking to them. And when that word goes away, we miss it.

We find ourselves almost—just almost—saying it on occasion during Lent. And then we catch ourselves. When we do that, we appreciate it even more. We realize how important that word has become to us. We are conditioned to say it. And when it’s gone, we realize—yes, it is important.

It somewhat like when a loved one dies. When they’re gone, all of a sudden we remember little things about them that we wish we could have back—things that when they were here with us, we didn’t fully appreciate. Now that they’re gone, they become even more precious to us.

That’s what the word Alleluia is like. It’s a precious gem in our language that we need to remember is truly precious. And like the Light we experience today, we will carry it with us through Lent, even when we don’t actually say it. We will hold it close. We will still truly be, as St. Augustine once said of all Christians, “an Alleluia from head to toe.” We will still carry the Alleluia and the Light of Christ within us even through the grayness of Lent and the darkness of Holy Week. So that, on Easter morning, seven weeks from today, we will truly rejoice. That morning, we will say that word with all the meaning and joy it carries for us. And that morning, we will find that Light we have carried within us burst forth in glory and truly transfigure us. We will, on that glorious morning, say once again with a true and glorious joy,

“Alleluia!”

“Alleluia! Alleluia!”

St. David's Day

At the party, one of them—so young
it hurts my face—uncorks
his fizzling coldness and pours
a smoky shot into a glass. Another—
even younger, even more gentle
in her movements—sidles in
beside him, her long white legs
speckled with blue veins. Someone
behind them shouts. Another laughs.
A crackle of applause goes on
like fire in this room.

A beat

then a liquor smell fills the air.

Let’s sit back
all the way! We’ve thrown
the sticks! The fortune’s read!

Someone here is so sick—
so close to something you—
in this heady innocence
which fogs your eyes like lust—
can only just barely make out
over this music and the steady thump
of your lives. It sounds—
doesn’t it?—
like sobbing.

March 1

From Just Once: poems by Jamie Parsley. Published in 2007 by Loonfeather Press, Bemidji, Minnesota. Copyright (c) 2007 by Jamie Parsley.

8 Pentecost

February 27, 2011

Matthew 6.24-34

+ When I was about eight years old, I had a major problem. I was a chronic worrier. I worried about absolutely everything. I worried about my parents and my grand-parents and even my dog dying. I worried that my friends were going to be in accidents. I worried about nuclear war. I worried about homework and school and I even worried, for some bizzare and irrational reason, about going swimming at the local swimming pool. For the most part I kept my worrying to myself. It was a secret. No one else knew that I worried like I did. And I didn’t want anyone to know about it because, let’s face it, it was embarrassing.

I probably would have gone on worrying about everything in such an irrational way had I not started getting sick. I started having intense stomach problems around this time. At first the doctors suspected I might have appendicitis. But then, they finally started talking about an ulcer. Now imagine—an eight or nine year old kid having an ulcer. One very wise doctor saw through it all and point blank asked me if I was worried about anything. I wasn’t completely honest about the level of worrying I did, but I did admit to the fact that, yes, I worried. From that time on, with some help, I eventually overcame this chronic worrying I was doing. I still worried. I worried abnormally at least through the earlier part of junior high. And then, I just learned, at some point, to let go. I learned at some point that I really was worrying over things I didn’t need to worry about.

And our Gospel reading for today from Matthew was helpful at that time in my life as well.

“…can any of you by worrying add a single day to your span of life?” Jesus asks.

Which is a true level of wisdom that I don’t think we have fully fathomed in our lives. But the real message from our Gospel reading this morning is not just that wise maxim of Jesus. Rather, it is the command he makes, not once, but twice. Jesus commands us twice today, “Do not worry.”

“Do not worry!” Jesus says firmly to us.

What we find Jesus saying to us today is not some sweet, gentle suggestion to not worry. It is a point-blank command not worry. And it is a command that is placed within the context of his explanation that we cannot serve two masters. There is a connection here between the two masters and his command not to worry. In telling us that we cannot serve two masters, Jesus is making clear to us that service to any other master hinders our relationship to God. It muddies the waters, so to speak. It complicates our relationship with God. We cannot serve God and money. We cannot serve God and still have as a master something other than God.

In this case, God is being quite demanding God expects full service from us. God expects our full attention. Because, let’s face it, we can be easily distracted. Worrying works the same way in our lives. When we worry, the waters again become muddied. Worrying distracts us. It distracts us from God and from each other. Worrying becomes a barrier in our service to God.

But worrying is a hindrance in another way. Why do we worry? We worry because cannot control a situation. We worry because a situation is out of our control. And control is the key here. As someone who works in the church every day, I know a few things about this issue of control. I experience this issue of control constantly. I deal all the time with people—both clergy and lay—who constantly try to control situations, whether it be a parish, a diocese or the myriad situations that arise in this human organization called the Church. Controlling something can be all-consuming. It can be frustrating for a controlling person when things are not going your way. And when things are completely uncontrollably, a person who wants to control is at their wit’s end.

Yesterday I attended the funeral for my father’s former boss and good friend. My father bought the business he worked in for many years from this man and they remained good friends for many years after that. This man’s wife died after a long struggle with cancer in September, just a week before my father died. This friend of my dad’s was so distraught over her diagnosis, illness and death that he just couldn’t go on anymore and last week he committed suicide. At the funeral yesterday, the pastor spoke of this man’s hands.

The pastor said, “He had such big hands—hands that fixed everything—engines and all kinds of mechanical things. But when his wife was diagnosed with cancer, he would just look at his hands helplessly. In this situation, those hands could not fix her cancer and could not fix the outcome of that cancer.”

For those of us who like to control situations, things like cancer and illness and death—especially sudden death—strike us very, very hard. And when those things happen, we find ourselves worrying as though worrying somehow can control the situation. More often than not worrying is simply something to DO in the face of uncontrollable situations. But worrying doesn’t DO anything. Except make us sick and create added stress in our lives. And it muddies the clear, pure waters of our relationship with God. Worrying gets in the way of our relationship with God.

Last week you heard me say that holding grudges against others is not an option for Christians. This week I can say in all honesty that worrying also is not an option for Christians. Worrying is simply something we do to show that we have little or no faith in God. If God is in control and we have complete faith in God, then we really have no right to worry. By worrying we are showing that our allegiance is not with God. By worrying, we are following another master—ourselves. By worrying, we are trying to control situations that are not in our power to control. And all of it only leads to despair and depression and frustration, not to mention physical illness.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned as a priest is just let it all go sometimes and not worry. I remember hearing once when I was studying to be a priest, that anyone who works in a parish should be prepared that 25% of your congregation is just not going to like you or anything you do. I was shocked by that comment and almost ready to despair ever actually finishing the process to be ordained. But I have learned since then that that’s sometimes just the way it is. Now, I hope that’s not true of me here at St. Stephen’s. I hope there are not 25% of you who dislike me. But there are moments when I do hear grumblings and complaints about things I do or say here.

Just this last week, for example, it came to my attention from one of our vestry members that one of or two people here at St. Stephen’s don’t like that I use the word “Mass” to the describe the Eucharist (which IS a perfectly Episcopalian term to use, by the way). Rather than letting things like that bring me down, rather than worrying about things like that or being frustrated by it—and I know many clergy who do, which is why we call nitpicky comments “clergy killers,”—I have learned to just let it go and not worry about it. I can’t control whether people are going to like me or not. All I can do is be myself and do what I have been called to do here at St. Stephen’s and hope that even in my imperfection as a priest and pastor, somehow God will use me in just the right to accomplish the work I have to do. That’s all any of us can do in our service to God and one another.

So, let us center our attention on the one master we have committed ourselves to follow. Let us heeds that master’s command of “do not worry.” Let us shake off all those attempts to control situations in which we do not need to control or are simple unable to control. Let us release those situations to God and allow ourselves, instead, to simply put our trust in that God. And in doing so, let us heed the other command Jesus makes to us in this morning’s Gospel. Freed of the murkiness and distraction worry causes in allegiance to God, let us truly “strive first for the kingdom of God” in our midst. Let us be the conduits of God’s righteousness to those in need around us. Being a conduit is a great remedy for this control issue. As a conduit all we have to do is simply be ourselves and let God work through us as we are.

Today, February 27, is usually celebrated as the feast of Blessed George Herbert, the great Anglican priest and poet. As most of you know, Herbert has been a very important influence in my professional and personal life. In the last twenty years or so, I don’t think I’ve ever traveled anywhere without a copy of Herbert’s poems accompanying me. Last Wednesday I commemorated George Herbert at our Wednesday night Mass. I shared that great image of Herbert’s from his poem, “Windows” in which he describes human beings as that “crazy, brittle glass.” The image in the poem is that essentially we are glass. We are glass window panes to God’s light. To reflect that light we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to be pristine. God’s light shines even through crazy, brittle glass. It will shine through a dirty window, or a cracked window or a warped window. The window doesn’t have to do anything. It doesn’t even have to be perfect. It simply has to be. It simply has to reflect that light in any way it can. Certainly it doesn’t have to, nor can it, control that light. It certainly doesn’t have to worry about that light or about whether it is good enough to reflect that light. The window pane simply is.

We are the window panes through which God’s light shines. And all we have to do is be that conduit of God’s light. So let us shine with that light. Let us strive first and foremost for the Kingdom of God in our midst. And when we do, we will realize that any imperfection on our part—anything that may cause us to worry or fret—is simply lost in the flood of God’s light that shines through us.

7 Epiphany

February 20, 2011

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18; Matthew 5:38-48

+ This past week I was giving a preview of this morning’s sermon to a friend of mine. I was talking specifically about Jesus’ command to love our enemies and how in Leviticus we are commanded to “not take vengeance or bear a grudge.”

As I was sharing this, my friend looked at me with absolute disbelief but, very politely, said nothing. I was curious about this whole look of disbelief, so I asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know,” my friend said. “I just can’t imagine you preaching about love and how one should not seek vengeance.”

“Why?” I asked. “I preach about love all the time. And I’m not a vengeful person.”

“Well, I know the kind of movies you love,” my friend said. “You love movies about revenge. Movies like Kill Bill. In fact, when that came out, you talked about that movie like it was God-inspired scripture.”

Now, I will admit, yes I love movies about revenge. Let’s face it, they’re entertaining. But they also speak to us at a very base level. We have all been wronged in some way or the other in our lives. There is some kind of pleasure we receive when someone who has wronged us is brought to justice and we have been vindicated—if in no one else’s eyes but our own. Secretly—or maybe not so secretly—we have all fantasized about getting revenge on people.

In that movie, Kill Bill, one of my favorite scenes is when, at the end of Kill Bill 2, we find Beatrix Kiddo (played by Uma Thurman), after she has killed Bill and the others who tried to kill her years earlier at her wedding, lying on a bed in a motel in Mexico while the daughter she thougth had died watches cartoons in th enext room, crying in great joy.

When I first saw that scene, I wanted to cry in joy with her. It is one of those scenes most of can relate to. When we think for a moment about all of our enemies being eliminated—about every person who has ever wronged us being brought to our own sense of justice—it is a wonderful fantasy.

The problem, for me is actually quite simple. As much as I love movies about revenge, I also am of the belief that revenge has no place in a Christian’s life. We, as Christians, simply do not have the option for revenge. There is no such thing as a Christian Beatrix Kiddo.

The love we find Jesus talking about today is not the kind of love that allows things like revenge or grudges. At the same time, the love he is talking about is not sweet. It is not lovely. It is certainly not romantic. The love Jesus is talking about is messy love. It is knock-down, drag-it-out-in-the-mud kind of love., It is love that is painful. It is not the kind of love we find ourselves craving. It is not the kind of love we find ourselves trying to express in poems and songs. It is not the love we celebrated last Monday on Valentine’s Day. Rather it is the kind of love that gnaws at us. It is the kind of love we fight against and rebel against. It is the kind of love we dig in our heels against. It is the kind of love that makes us do things we don’t want to do.

When anyone asks me “What do I have to do to be a Christian?” (and you have heard me say this a million times, I know), I always say, it is this, “Jesus said to be a Christian one must love God and love each other as ourselves.” That is not the answer most people want to hear, surprisingly enough. As much as people might vent and complain about rules and regulations and dogmas, deep down I think that is exactly what people expect out of the church. Deep down, whether we admit or not, sometimes we want to Church to tell us what to do or say about this issue or that issue. We sometimes do want specifics. We sometimes do want black and white. And Jesus’ command to love definitely does not fall into that category.

Yes, at first it seems to be amazingly simple. Love your neighbor. Love God. Love yourself. Simple. But it isn’t. And at first we think it’s so fluffy and “feel good” But when we really think about it, it isn’t. It’s actually hard and messy and difficult. And it is mind-blowingly radical.

Essentially this message of Jesus is this: even when everything is falling apart, even when your enemies outnumber your friends, even when people have purposely singled you out and are attacking you personally, love them. Love them all. Love them even when you feel the hatred boiling up within you. Love them even when hatred feels good and getting revenge feels like the only right thing to do. Love them until the hatred goes away and the bile dies. Because it is not our place as followers of Jesus to hate. No where have we ever been given permission to hate. The only time hate enters into our Christian vocabulary is as something we are commanded not to do .

Which does make me wonder where people like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists get their license to do and say what they do. Now, I am very happy that they’re not coming to Fargo. But they provide us with us a perfect opportunity to do what we are truly called to do as Christians. First, they teach us beautifully on what not to do as Christians. In a sense, any Christian who hates, who actually uses the word “hate” in their literature and on their signs, have essentially forfeited their right even be called Christians. But more importantly they give us that uncomfortable, frustrating opportunity to practice what we preach—to practice radical love. As much as they might hate us, we must love in return. And I’m not talking about outwardly loving them only. I’m not talking about standing up and saying it in public—which is hard enough. I am saying that we must believe it. We must feel it. We must say it before God in the quiet of our hearts.

It’s all right that we might not want to do it. It’s all right that even saying it causes bile to rise up in our mouths. It’s all right that saying it causes our skin to crawl and our blood to boil. Jesus no where, in today’s Gospel, tells us we must love with a smile on our face. All he says to us in today’s Gospel about this is. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…”

We must love them and we must let this love win out over their hatred. Because it will. Again and again, love will win out over hatred. But the only way it wins out is when we eliminate hatred entirely from our lives. The only way love can prevail is when love has full reign. Love does not have full reign in our lives when we carry around grudges and when we drudge up past hurts that have been done to us.

In our reading from Leviticus we find it stated as clearly as possible, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit: I am one of the worst people in the world for carrying around past hurts and grudges. But I have discovered that grudges and anger over what people have done to me in the past really does hamper love from having full reign in my life. Those grudges and memories of things people have done to me prevent me again and again from that truly radical love Jesus commands us to strive toward. I have learned that Jesus isn’t telling us to ignore the past and to forget the wrongs that have been done to us. That is naïve and foolhardy and when we do so we find ourselves falling into unhealthy patterns of relationship with others. But I have taken a good long hard look at those situations in which I have been wronged and I have worked on them until I can come to a point when I can tell myself that, yes, I do love those people who have wronged me. I can say that I love them with all honesty. And I can even say that I love them even if I don’t particularly like them. And by loving them—honestly and for the sake of being a follower of Jesus—I realize I can’t carry those negative grudges with me anymore.

Those grudges only bring me down and make me into a bitter, angry person. And those grudges only lead to thoughts of revenge oftentimes. Grudges and revenge and all those dark negative things only fly in the face of what Jesus is talking about today. It is not easy to love our enemies. It is so much easier to hate them and bear grudges against them and seek revenge on them. As we find in movies like Kill Bill, it feels good to do those things.

Because when we do those things what we are really doing is regaining some sense of control over an uncontrollable situation. Hatred and revenge and grudges help us to believe that some sense of fairness has been brought about. But love is the only thing that makes it all, somehow, right. Love, even in the face of all that has been done to us, somehow always wins out, even when we ourselves might not ever see the results of that love. This is not sweet Pollyannaism fluffiness we’re talking about this morning. It is actually a very difficult, very challenging kind of love. It is a kind of love that changes everything—that transforms things, that challenges even our most rational way of thinking and processing. It is a dangerous love. It is dangerous because it forces us to step outside our insulated, self-protective cocoon and put us in an even more vulnerable place—a place in which we can be hurt again.

“Love your enemies,” Jesus tells us, “and pray for those who persecute you…”

So let us heed his command to us. Let us love our enemies. Let us love the Fred Phelps and all the others who peach hatred. Let us meet their hate, again and again, with love. Let us pray for those who hate us. Let us pray that our love may actually do some good in their lives and in the lives of all who witness our love. For when we do these things, as Jesus tells us, we are the children of our God. When we do so, we become more whole, more completely, more holy. And in doing, we are living out that that command of God from Leviticus, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Let love prevail in all we do and say and believe. And when it does, we and the world around becomes truly and completely transformed by that love.

Episcopal Journal article about Fargo, 1957

A priest-poet’s elegy
Lives lost in Fargo tragedy are commemorated

By Nan Cobbey

Episcopal Journal, February 2011. Vol 1 No. 1

Jamie Parsley grew up hearing stories of a tragedy that occurred 12 years before his birth. Two of his relatives were victims of a tornado that swept through Fargo, N.D., on June 20, 1957, killing 12 people and devastating the community. Parsley, a poet, teacher and Episcopal priest, has just finished a book about the event and responses to it. Fargo, 1957: An Elegy includes poems and pictures and a personal “processing” of a difficult history.

“I would hear the story when the weather would get bad,” Parsley, now 41, explained. “But there wasn’t a whole lot of detail. We don’t like to talk about our emotions too much in this part of the country. There was a mystery about the whole story.”

That mystery peaked Parsley’s interest. Author of nine previous books of poetry, he is associate poet laureate of North Dakota, named by the current laureate, Larry Woiwode. Parsley still lives in Fargo where he serves as executive assistant to the bishop for the Diocese of North Dakota and as priest-in-charge of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

“Over the years I tried very hard to figure out how I was to process this story in some way. Two or three years ago, I started doing research…researching the lives of all 12 people who died. Out of this came the poems.” Parsley found a “freedom” in writing about the tragedy and the people who lost their lives by using poetry. “I couldn’t have found that with any other type of writing. I was able to sort of give a voice to these people, a voice they were not able to have after fifty-some years.”

Parsley hopes that readers will recognize “a commonality between all of us as human beings in these experiences—these things happen in various forms in all of our lives. You wake up one morning and you think ‘Well, it’s just going to be another day.’”

Fargo, 1957: An Elegy is available for $20 from The Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota State University, www.ndsu.edu/ahss/ndirs/.

Nan Cobbey, former associate editor of Episcopal Life, lives in Belfast, Me.