Book signing at Melberg's

I'll be signing copies of my new book, The Downstairs Tenant, at Melberg's Books and Gifts in Moorhead on Saturday from 1-4 p.m.

4 Lent

Laetare

March 15, 2015

Numbers 21.4-9; John 3.14-21

+ I don’t know about you, but doesn’t seem like not all that long ago that we had the rose colored paraments and vestments? It was three months ago, actually. We celebrated Guadete Sunday on December 14^th. Enjoy it now while you can. Because we’re going to have to wait nine months to put up the rose vestments again.

But today is Laetare Sunday, also known as “Rose Sunday.” Laetare is Latin for “joyful” and it is called this because on this Sunday, the traditional introit in the old Latin Mass was “Laetare Jerusalem”—“rejoice Jerusalem.”  It’s also known by other names. “Mothering Sunday” or “Refreshment Sunday.”  It is, of course, traditional on this Sunday to wear the rose or pink vestments.

It’s a special Sunday.  It is sort of break in our Lenten purple, so to speak.  The purple will return tomorrow of course.  But this Rose Sunday is a reminder to us.

We are now passing into the latter days of Lent.  Palm Sunday and Holy Week are only two weeks away and Easter is three weeks away.  And with Easter in sight, we can, on this Sunday,  lift up a slightly subdued prayer of rejoicing.

No, we’re not saying the A-word yet. We’re not allowed to be quite that joyful today. But, we’re close.

Still, I can’t help but face the reality of the fact that we are now over half-done with the season of Lent and I personally have not preached about the one thing we preachers should be preaching about in Lent. I have not yet preached about the so-called “elephant in the room.”  The elephant, in this case, is, of course that ugly word and that ugly concept—Sin.

I know, we don’t want to hear about sin.  I don’t want to hear about sin.  I don’t want to preach about sin.  Most of us have had to sit through countless hours listening to preachers go on and on about sin in our lives.  Many of us have had it driven into us and pounded into us and we just don’t want to hear it anymore.

Yes, we know we’re sinners sometimes.  But the fact is, we can’t get through this season of Lent without at least acknowledging it.  Certainly, I as a priest, would be neglecting my duty if I didn’t at least mention it once during this season. Besides, whenever there’s an elephant in the room, I—and I’m sure most of you—like to face our elephants head-on.  And in facing the elephant, we sometimes realize the power we thought that elephant had has been overcome.

As much as we try to avoid sin and speak around it or ignore it, for those of us who are Christians, we just can’t.  We live in a world in which there is war and crime and recession and sexism and homophobia and morally bankrupt people and, in looking at all of those things, we must face the fact that sin—people falling short of their ideal—is all around us.  

And during this season of Lent, we find ourselves facing sin all the time.  It’s there in our scripture readings. It’s right here in our liturgy.  It’s just…there.

And here. Everywhere.

I certainly have struggled with this issue in my life.  I don’t like preaching about sin. I would rather not do it.  But…I have to.  We all have to occasionally face the music, so to speak.

The fact is, people tend to define us by the sins we commit—they define us by illness—the spiritual leprosy within us—rather than by the people we really are underneath the sin.  And that person we are underneath is truly a person created in the image of God.  Sin, if we look it as a kind of illness, like leprosy or any other kind of sickness, truly does do these things to us. It desensitizes us, it distorts us, it makes us less than who were are.  It blots out the image of God in which we were created. And like a sickness, we need to understand the source of the illness to truly get to heart of the matter.

Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, (and I believe he’s echoing the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth here) wrote, “Essentially all sins come from two sources: flesh and pride.”  And if we are honest with ourselves, if we are blunt with ourselves, if we look hard at ourselves, we realize that, in those moments in which we have failed ourselves, when we have failed others, when we have failed God, the underlying issues can be found in either our pride or in our flesh.

This season of Lent is a time when we take into account where we have failed in ourselves, in our relationship with God and in our relationship with each other.  But—and I stress this—Lent is never a time for us to despair.  It is never a time to beat ourselves up over the sins we have committed.  It is rather a time for us to buck up. It is a time in which we seek to improve ourselves.  It is a time in which, acknowledging those negative aspects of ourselves, we strive to rise above our failings.  It is a time for us to seek healing for the leprosy of our souls.

The Church is, after all, according to the early Christians, a hospital.  And, in seeking, we do find that healing.

Some of you might know this about me, but one of my favorite musicians right

now—someone I go on and on about—is Sufjan Stevens. He’s an incredible Indie Rock singer and musician. He’s just incredible. I’ve been listening to him for years.

What a lot of people might not know about Sufjan Stevens is that he’s actually a very committed Christian. I read in an article once that he attends an Anglo-Catholic church (actually a Presbyterian Church--Resurrection Presbyterian Church) in Brooklyn, where he now lives.  He has a new album coming out later this month, and one of the latest singles from this album is a wonderful song entitled,  “There Is No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross.”

I’m not going to share the lyrics (they’re not exactly family friendly) but I love the song, but I love the title too.  In fact, as most of you know, it’s actually one of my favorite themes to preach about. The shadow of the cross.  There might not be any shade in the shadow of the Cross, but it is there that we find our healing.

The Cross is a very potent symbol for us in our healing.  Gazing upon the cross, as those Israelites gazed upon the bronze serpent that Moses held up to them, we find ourselves healed. And as we are healed, as we find our sins dissolved by the God Christ knew as he hung the cross, we come to an amazing realization. We realize that we are not our sins.  And our sins are not us.  Our sins are no more us, than our illnesses are.  Our sins are no more us than our depressions are us, or disappointments in life are us.

For those of us who have had serious illnesses—and as many of you know, I celebrated thirteen years of being cancer-free last month—when we are living with our illness, we can easily start believing that our sickness and our very selves are one and the same.  When I was had cancer thirteen years ago, there were moments of despair and frustration.  There were moments, as I lived with that illness within me, when I couldn’t see where the illness ended and where I began.  We had become bound to each other in a way that I despised and hated. But now, as I look back at that time, I realize I wasn’t my cancer.

For those of us who have had serious illness, it is a good thing for us to ponder and look back at our illness.  It is important for our healing process to ask ourselves: how did it happen?  Why did it happen?  How can I prevent from it happening again?  Part of the reason why I’m a vegan right now.

The same is true of sin. In this seasons of Lent, it is important for us to ponder the sickness of our sins, to examine what we have done and what we have failed to do and to consider how we can prevent it from happening again.

But, like our illnesses, once we have been healed, once our sins have been forgiven and they no longer have a hold over us, we do realize that, as scarred as we have been, as deeply destroyed as we thought we were by what we have done and not done, we have found that, in our renewal, we have been restored.  In the shadow of the cross, we are able to see ourselves as people freed and liberated. We are able to rejoice in the fact that we are not our failures.  We are not what we have failed to do.

But in the shadow of the cross we see that we are loved and we are healed and we are cherished.  And once we recognize that, then we too can turn our selves toward each other, glowing with that image of God imprinted upon us, and we too can love and heal and cherish.

See, there is no shade in the shadow of the Cross. See, sin does not have to make us despair. When we despair over sin, sin wins out.  Rather, we can work on ourselves, we can improve ourselves, we can rise above our failings and we can then reflect God to others and even to ourselves.

So, on this Laetare Sunday—this Sunday in which we rejoice that we are now within the sight of that glorious Easter light—let us gaze at the cross, held up to us as a sign of our healing God.  And there, in the shadow of that Cross, in that place where there is no shade, let us be truly healed.  And, in doing so, let us reflect that healing to others so they too can be healed.

See, it is truly a time for us to rejoice.

3 Lent

March 8, 2015

Exodus 20.1-17; John 2.13-22

+ I don’t know about you, but I am suffering. I’m suffering from major spring fever. This wonderful weather is making me very happy. And ambitious. I’ve been having a crazy, busy schedule, but these last few nights I have been doing the annual spring cleaning at the rectory.

My mother came over last night to do her inspection of the house. She gave her seal of approval to my work. Though it does shock her that is not one bite of food in the entire house.

But the person I feel most sorry for is my garbage man. Tomorrow morning, he is going to have deal with quite a bit of clutter.

But this is appropriate time to be getting rid of clutter.  Lent is a time for us to sort of quiet ourselves to get rid of whatever clutter we might have knocking around inside us or in our lives.  Clutter is that stuff in our lives—and “stuff” is the prefect word for it—that just piles up.  If you’re anything like me, we sometimes start ignoring our clutter. We sort of do that too with our own spiritual clutter.  We don’t give it a second thought, even when we’re tripping over it and stumbling on it.  In fact, often we don’t fully realize how much clutter we have until after we’ve disposed of it. When we see that clean, orderly room, we realize only then how clutter sort of made us lose our appreciation for the beauty of the room itself.

In Lent, what we dispose of us is the clutter of our spiritual lives.  And we all have spiritual clutter.  We have those things that “get in the way.”  We have our bad habits.  We have those things that we do without even thinking we’re doing them.  And oftentimes, they’re not good for it—or at least they don’t enhance our spiritual lives.

Often the clutter in our spiritual lives gets in the way of our prayer life, our spiritual discipline, our all-important relationship with God.  The clutter in our spiritual life truly becomes something we find ourselves “tripping” over.  The clutter in our spiritual life causes us to stumble occasionally.  And when it does, we find our spiritual life less than what it should be. Sometimes it’s just “off.”

During Lent, it is an important time to take a look around us.  It is important to actually see the spiritual clutter in our lives and to clear it away in whatever ways we can.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus going into the temple and clearing out the clutter there.  He sweeps the Temple clean, because he knows that the clutter of the merchants who have settled there are not enhancing the beauty of the Temple.  They are not helping people in their relationship with God.  Rather, these merchants are there for no spiritual reasons at all, ultimately.  They are there for their own gain and for nothing else.

In a sense, we need to, like Jesus, clean out the merchants in our lives as well.  We need to have the Temple of our bodies cleaned occasionally.  We need to sweep it clean and, in doing so, we will find our spirituality a little more finely tuned.  We will find our prayer life a more fulfilling.  We will find our time at Eucharist more meaningful.  We will find our engaging of Scripture to be more edifying.  We will find our service to others to be a bit more selfless and purposeful than it was before.  We will see things with a clearer spiritual eye—which we need.

It is a matter of simplifying our spiritual lives.  It is matter of recognizing that in our relationship with God and one another, we don’t need the clutter—we don’t need those things that get in the way.

We don’t need anything to complicate our spiritual lives.  There are enough obstacles out there.  There will always be enough “stuff” falling into our pathways, enough ”things” for us to stumble over.

Without the clutter in our lives, it IS easier to keep our spiritual lives clean.  Without the clutter in our life, we find things are just…simpler.

So…how do we do this? Well, the answer is really no further than our scripture from the Hebrew Scriptures for today.  God lays it on the line for Moses on Mount Sinai.  And each commandment that God gives Moses is really a matter of housekeeping.  It is a matter of cleaning up the messes in the Israelites’ lives.

Rather than the clutter of the gods you have been worshipped—those gods that are really not at all helpful, but only get in the way of the one true God—simply worship only the One God. Simple.

You shall respect this God by respecting God’s Name. You shall, in a sense, honor, love and worship this One God. Likewise, God cleans up the messes of their relationships with one another. Love God. Love your neighbor. Don’t hate your neighbor. Don’t bear grudges against your neighbor, or lust after your neighbor, or be jealous of your neighbor or steal from your neighbor, because these things only clutter up your life needlessly.  Rather, love them and in loving them, you will see all that clutter disappear to some extent. And if you do these things, you will be living the life that was intended for you by God.

In a sense, we are not living the life intended for us when we allow our lives to mucked up.  What we need to do occasionally is sweep out the junk, the trivial things, the dust and the dirt that have accumulated in our lives and live in that simplicity that God intends for us.

In our Gospel reading for today, we also find that the Temple Jesus is cleaning out and cleansing serves its purpose for now, but even it will be replaced with something more perfect and something, ultimately, more simple.  It will be replaced by something that will not need to cleansed.  It will be replaced with something that will not be cluttered.  It will be replaced with the Temple of  our living God.  And it will be here that we will find our true worship.

It is here that will find a true and living Temple of our true and living God.  And, in a sense, our own bodies become temples of this living God because of what Jesus did.  Our bodies also become the dwelling places of that one, living God.

Which brings us back to Lent.  In this season of Lent, we become mindful of this simple fact.  Our bodies are the temples of that One, living God. God dwells within us much as God dwells in the Temple.  Because God dwells in us, we have this holiness inherent within us.  We are holy. Each of us.

Because of this Presence within us, we find ourselves wanting to cleanse the temple.  We find our selves examining our selves, looking closely at the things over which we trip and stumble.  We find ourselves realizing that the clutter of our lives really does distract us from remembering that God dwells with us and within us.  And when we realize that, we really do want to work on ourselves a bit.  We work at trying to simplify our lives—our actual, day-to-day lives, as well as our spiritual lives.  We want to actually spend time in prayer, in allowing that living God to dwell fully within us and to enlighten us.  We fast—emptying our bodies and purifying our selves.  We recognize the wrongs we have done to ourselves, to others.  We realize that we have allowed this clutter to build up. We realize we have not loved God or our neighbors.  Or even ourselves.  Or we have loved ourselves too much, and not God and our neighbors enough.

Once we have eliminated the spiritual clutter of our lives, we do truly find our God dwelling with us.  We find ourselves worshipping in that Body that cannot be cluttered. We find a certain simplicity and beauty in our lives that comes only through spiritual discipline.

So, as we continue our journey through Lent, let us, like Jesus, take up the cords and go through the temple of our own selves.  Let us, like him, clear away the clutter of our lives.  Let us cleanse the temple of our own self and make it like the Temple of a place worthy of God.   And when that happens, we will find ourselves proclaiming, with Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” For it will.

2 Lent

March 1, 2015

Mark 8.31-38

+ On Friday, the Episcopal Church lost a very great man. Canon Malcolm Boyd died in Los Angeles. If you do not know who Malcolm Boyd was, you should. He was, to say the least,  a well-known Episcopal priest and writer and poet. He was most famous for his best-selling book of prayers, Are You Running With Me, Jesus? which was published fifty years ago this year.

I met Malcom Boyd once. He was the co-editor (along with Bishop Chester Talton) of an anthology of prayers, Race and Prayers, in which was included one of my poem/prayers “A Prayer on the Feast Day of Jonathan Myrick Daniels.”  One time when I was in Los Angeles for a meeting, I got to meet him.  I remember being impressed with the life and light that he had in his eyes.  He was a man not only fully alive, but was also one who spiritually charged, shall we say.

Malcom was a true prophet in the Church. As a gay man and a priest, he spoke out as far back as the 1960s on the issue of full-equality of Gay and Lesbian people in the Episcopal Church.

But, in his most famous book, Are You Running With Me, Jesus—and in fact in all of his writing—he spoke honestly of what it means to follow Christ. And it was clear from those prayers and from his other writing that, for him, following Christ was not some easy thing. It was hard. And it meant following him into places he didn’t want to go.  It meant being brutally honest with himself and about himself.  It meant, for him, not compromising.  It meant standing up strongly and firmly and speaking out loudly and clearly.  Malcolm Boyd was a true disciple of Jesus.

And in today’s Gospel, we find Jesus explaining to us in very blunt words what it means to be a disciple.  For him, being a disciple, means being a follower.  A follower of him.  And Malcolm Boyd was a definitely a follower of Jesus. As we all are, as Christians.

Hopefully, those of us who have gained any sort of maturity as Christians have come to the realization that being a Christian—being a follower of Jesus—means that we are being led into a unique life. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean closing ourselves up intellectually.  It doesn’t mean we get to stop thinking.  Trust me.  I know too many of these kind of Christians.  These are the people who think being a Christian means not having to think anymore.  Just believing that all will be well and there aren’t any problems.

I think we all, at times, found ourselves lulled into a false sense of what it means to be followers. We think that being a follower of Jesus means that everything was going to be happy-go-lucky and wonderful all the time.  We think that  following means not really having to think about things anymore. It’s easy, after all, a lemming.

But that isn’t the kind of following Jesus wants us to do.  The kind of follower Jesus wants us to be is hard.  

For me, personally, I am not a comfortable follower.  It’s hard to have someone else’s standards essentially be my standards, even if it is Jesus’ standards. It can be depressing. Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be joyful in our following of Jesus.

Yes, we should be filled with a deep and sincere joy. But, as the old song goes, no one promised us a rose garden. Nowhere in scripture have we been promised that life is going rosy and sweet all the time. Being a follower is not always so much fun.  Being a Christian means not always strolling around in comfort and joy in a rose garden.

As we are reminded in this season of Lent and especially in that week preceding Easter, being a Christian means following Jesus wherever he goes.  And where he goes is not to the rose garden.  It is to the garden of Gethsemane—to that place where he too would be feeling anguish, where too would sweat blood, where he too would cry out to God. Following Jesus means essentially being like him. And being like him, means having the same relationships he had.

And when we look at the relationships he had, we realize they were not normal relationships. His relationship with God was intense. For Jesus, God was a parent. God was “Father.” But the relationship was even more than that. It was also almost like lovers. Jesus loved God. God loved Jesus. And that, too, is what our relationship with God should be like, as followers of Jesus. We should love God. Because God loves us. Deeply and intensely.

But it doesn’t end there. There is also the relationship Jesus had, because of his intense and deep love of God, with others.  Jesus loved others.  Intensely. Deeply. He cared for them.  And because he did, so should we.

In everything we do as followers of Jesus, we should let love always be our driving force. It is that love that makes us feel the anguish he feels.  It is that love that makes us suffer with him.  It is that love that makes us bleed with him.  It means following Jesus not just through the moments of teaching ministry, not just through the miracles he performed.  It means following him through the dark days of his last week, through the blood and excruciating moments of his dying.  It means that, like him, our love for him causes us take up our crosses and follow him wherever he might go.

Jesus knew, as we find in our Gospel reading for today, that there were certain things he had to do.  He had to “undergo great suffering,” He had to be killed.  He understood that fully. He in turn tells us that we too must realize that we will have to bear our share of suffering in this life.  We too will have to take up our own crosses.

Now, to be fair, this statement about taking up our crosses needs to be examined a bit.  The cross being referenced here might not be what we instantly think it is. Reginald Fuller, the great Anglican theologian, believed that the Greek word used for cross here—stauros—actually might not necessarily have meant the cross on which one was

executed. Rather, he believed that it might actually mean the tau (the T) and chi (the X) that was used as a sign of ownership to brand cattle. This adds a very interesting dimension to this scripture.  The brand of the cross that we must bear becomes God’s seal upon us.  And when we look beyond the events of Good Friday, we realize that the cross on which Jesus died truly does become the brand we must bear upon ourselves as followers of Jesus.

Even the thought of a brand is not a pleasant thought.  Brands are painful, after all.  Brands really hurt. And brands cannot be undone.  They mark us forever.

That is exactly what the cross does to us. The cross is the reminder to us that following Jesus doesn’t just mean following him through the rose gardens of our lives.  It means, following him all the way to that cross.  It means taking up our own crosses and staggering with him along that path.  It means sweating with him in the garden of Gethsemane.  It means crying out with him in anguish.  It means feeling with him the humiliation and loneliness of being betrayed—yes, even by one’s friends or own followers.

But, it also means following him to the very end.  Just as the cross is a symbol of death and torture and pain—it is, for us Christians, also the symbol of the temporal nature of those things.  The cross is the doorway through those awful things, to the glory that awaits us beyond the cross.  The cross is the way we must travel, it is what we must carry, it is what we must be marked with, if we wish to share in the glory that awaits us beyond the cross.

I said earlier that no one promised us a rose garden in scripture.  I should revise that.  While we might not have been promised a rose garden, we have been offered glory.  Glory comes to us, when we follow Jesus.  It comes to us when we let our love for God and others lead us through the dark and frightening places this world can throw at us.  If we let that love guide us, if we let ourselves be led by Jesus, we will find true and unending glory awaiting us.

So, as we encounter the crosses of our lives—and we will—as we allow ourselves to branded with the cross, as we allow our love for God and others to lead us into places we might not want to go, let us do so with the realization that glory has been offered to us.  Just because we have been branded with the cross, we know that, in our branding,  there will be no shame for us. But that, one day, was seems to be a brand, what seems to us a symbol of pain and loss and failure, will be transformed.  It will be transformed into jewels, into a crown upon our heads. And, on that day, there will be joy replacing our pain and sorrows.

I Lent

February 22, 2015

Genesis 9.8-17; 1 Peter 3.18-22; Mark 1.9-15

+ While I was on vacation in Florida, I ended up talking with friends about the subject of a film that has been very important to my life came up.

When I was little, there was an event that would happen, about twice a year. Twice a year, The Wizard of Oz would come on TV. This, of course, in the days before Cable and DVDs and BlueRay and Netflix.

I LOVED The Wizard of Oz. I’ve preached about my love of The Wizard of Oz before. I’ve peached about my views that Dorothy is a wonderful example of leadership.  She is. She leads by example.

But there is an aspect of that movie that I have never preached about. And when I was talking about that aspect of The Wizard of Oz in Florida, people were a bit surprised by my observation. I said—and I still maintain to this day—that there was one thing about that movie I hated. The ending. I think I must be the only person in the world who hated the ending of The Wizard of Oz.  While everyone else applauded and felt good for Dorothy clicking her ruby slippers together and waking up in at home in Kansas, I remember just hating that ending.

Why? I wondered. Why would she want to go back? Here she was in this beautiful

Technicolor world in which she is loved and lauded. Any dangers that might exists she’s already defeated. Why would she want to go back to that ugly, black and white, miserable world of Kansas, with the pig sty and her mean Auntie Em. What kind of future would Dorothy have there? She’ll probably get married young and live on a farm for the rest of her life (Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

And, if you notice, there’s one little story line that never gets resolved in the movie. Miss Almira Gluch, the mean neighbor, whom Toto bites—well, she’s gonna come back for Toto. Toto just jumped out of the basket. That situation was never resolved.  Things look kind of bleak for Dorothy—and definitely for poor Toto.  No, I did not like that ending at all.

For me, I know this sounds kind of terrible for a priest to say, but for me, this Season of Lent is kind of like that black and white world of Kansas. It’s kind of depressing at times.

And, as we head toward Holy Week, the future seems kind of bleak. Look at what awaits there. Betrayal. The whipping. The carrying of the cross. The crucifixion.

But on this first Sunday in Lent, if we were expecting, in our scripture readings, doom and gloom, well, we don’t get any of that.  Ah, no. Instead, we get… water?  We get Noah and the ark? And baptism?  Now, this is my way to begin Lent!

We begin Lent as we begin any important step as Christians—with solid footing in our baptismal understanding.  We begin Lent with a remembrance of our baptismal covenant—that covenant that we formed with God at our baptisms—a covenant that is still binding on us, even now.  This covenant is a covenant very much like the covenant God made with Noah after the waters of the flood that we hear about in our reading from Genesis.  I wasn’t expecting to do it, but here we are on this first Sunday of Lent, and I am preaching about, of all things, baptism.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also get another special treat.  In our Gospel reading, we get, in a very brief scripture, an upheaval. What?  You missed the upheaval in our Gospel reading? You missed the reversal?  You missed, in that deceptively simple piece of scripture, a mirror image?  

It’s easy to miss, after all.  Our Gospel reading is so simple, so sparse.  But then again, so is haiku.  But let’s look a little closer at what we’ve just heard and read.

In today’s Gospel, we find three elements that remind us of something else.  We find the devil. We find animals.  And we find angels.  Where else in scripture do we find these same elements?  Well, we find them all in the Creation story in Genesis, of course.  The story of Adam is a story of what? --the devil, of animals and of angels.  But that story ends with the devil’s triumph and Adam’s defeat.

In today’s Gospel, it has all been made strangely right.  Jesus—the new Adam—has turned the tables using the exact same elements.  We find Jesus not in a lush beautiful Oz-like place like Eden. Rather we find Jesus with wild animals in that Kansas-like desert—animals who were created by God and named by Adam.  We find him there waited on by the angels—and let’s not forget that an angel turned Adam away from Eden. And there, in that place, he defeats the Devil—the same Devil who defeated Adam.

I have found this juxtaposition between Adam and Jesus to be a rich source of personal meditation, because it really is very meaningful to us who follow Jesus.  If we lived with the story of Adam, if we lived in the shadow of his defeat, the story a somewhat bleak one.  It would seem like the end of The Wizard of Oz There doesn’t seem to be much hope.  The relationship ruined with Adam hasn’t been made right.

But today we find that the relationship has been right.  The story isn’t a story of defeat after all.  It isn’t a time to despair, but to rejoice.  The Devil has been defeated.  And this is very important.

We, in our baptisms, also defeat the Devil.  Now, by the Devil, I am not necessarily talking about a supernatural being who rules the underworld.  I’m not talking about the horns, forked tail and pitchfork.  By Devil I mean the personification of all that we hold evil.

In our baptisms, we renounce all the evil of this world and the next, and by renouncing evil, we are assured that it can be defeated.  By renouncing the devil and all the evils of this world, we turn away from the evil inherent within us. Our baptism marks us and in that mark we find the strength to stand up against evil.  This time of Lent—this time for us in the desert, this time of fasting and mortification—is a time for us to confront the demons in our lives.  We all have them.

In our wonderful collect for today, we prayed to God to “come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations.”

The poet that I am, I love the tradition language of Rite I better here.

“Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations.”

We all understand that term “manifold temptations.”  We all have those triggers in our lives that disrupt and cause upheaval.  Sometimes this upheaval is mental and emotional, sometimes it is actual.  We have our own demons, no matter what name we might call them.

I certainly have my own demons in my life and sometimes I am shocked by the way they come upon me.  I am amazed by how they lay me low and turn my life upside down. They represent for me everything dark and evil and wrong in my life and in the world around me.  They are sometimes memories of wrongs done to me, or wrongs I’ve done to others.  Sometimes they are the shortcomings of my own life—of being painfully reminded of the fact that I have failed and failed miserably at times in my life.  They are reminders to me that this world is still a world of darkness at times—a world in which people and nature can hurt and harm and destroy.  And their power and influence over my life is, I admit, somewhat strong.

Trying to break the power of our demons sometimes involves going off into the deserts of our lives, breaking ourselves bodily and spiritually and, armed with those spiritual tools we need, confronting and defeating those powers that make us less than who we are.

For me, I do find consolation when I am confronted by the demons of my life in that covenant I have with God in my baptism.  I am reminded by that covenant that there is no reason to despair when these demons come into our lives, because the demons, essentially, are illusions.  They are ghosts.  They are wispy fragments of my memory.  They have no real power over me despite what they make think sometimes.  Because the demons have been defeated by God.

Again, returning to our collect for today, we prayed, “as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save.” God has been “might to save” us.  The demons of our lives have been defeated by our Baptismal Covenant and the waters of those baptismal waters.  The real power they have over my life has been washed away in those waters, much as all evilness was washed away in the flood in Noah’s time.

So, as we wander about in the spiritual desert of Lent, let us truly be driven.  Let the Spirit drive us into that place—to that place wherein we confront the demons of our lives.  But let us do so unafraid.  The Spirit is the driving force and, knowing that, we are strengthened.  Let us be driven into that place.  Let us confront our demons.  Let us confront the very Devil himself.  Let us face the manifold temptations of our lives unafraid, knowing full well that God is “mighty to save.”  And in confronting evil and temptation, let us, with Jesus, defeat those demons.  Strengthened by our Baptismal Covenant let us then be able to return from this place, proclaiming loudly, by our words, and by our actions, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.

Ash Wednesday

February 18, 2015

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

+ Occasionally, I find myself obsessed about certain news stories. I think we all do this at times. We find ourselves trying to find out any and every aspect of a particular news story, waiting for emerging details. Well, I’ve recently been obsessed about such a story. Many of you know about it all ready. It’s been going on since December.

In December, on Dec. 27, actually, the newly-elected Bishop Suffragan (or Assisting Bishop) of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Heather Cook, was involved in a horrific car accident.  She struck a cyclist, a husband and father. He struck the windshield of her car. She then drove away from the scene. The cyclist died at scene. Forty minutes later, she returned and was arrested for DUI and manslaughter.  It was discovered that she had a blood alcohol level equivalent to ten drinks. Now, that in of itself is horrible and terrible. But, it seems, she was arrested for DUI in 2010, also with an even higher blood alcohol level, as well as possessing marijuana paraphernalia. This DUI was not revealed to the Diocese of Maryland when she was elected last fall.

It seems that every few days new details of this horrendous story comes out.  The fact that her boyfriend, a defrocked Episcopal priest, paid a portion of her $2,000,000 bail. The fact that the Bishop of Maryland revealed that she was actually drunk at her consecration s Bishop in September. That fact that the Presiding Bishop probably knew about her being drunk and still consecrated her. The fact that the Standing Committee of the Diocese has called for her resignation (which still has not happened).  The fact that Presiding Bishop has now restricted her as Bishop. Etc etc.

It’s an ugly story. This story speaks to us in a particular way as we enter Lent. When we look at the shortcomings and failings of others, sometimes—I know we hate to admit this—I hate to admit this—but sometimes, sometimes, we sort of, very secretly, delight in these things.

We say things like, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!”

Or, “Mmmph, I guess Bishops aren’t perfect after all.”

Or, what I’ve had to hear ad nauseum in the days afterward from several clergy, “There but for the Grace of God go I,” a phrase about which Sandy Holbrook and I had an interesting discussion once after I used that same phrase referencing another situation.

We delight in the shortcomings of others partly because it makes us feel a little better about ourselves.  But, that begs the question then: how should we feel? How should we feel about this situation?  We, of course, should feel horrible. We should feel anger. We should feel sorrow for that poor man who died and for his family. But we should also feel pity too.

Yes, it’s easy to demonize Bishop Cook. It’s easy to set her up as an example of all we dislike about the Church or the policies of the Church or whatever grudges any of us might have toward Bishops and clergy (yes, let me tell you, there is a lot of anti-clericalism in the Episcopal Church, which does run counter of the inclusiveness of our Church).  But underneath it all, Heather Cook is a human being like all of us—a human being with a horrible illness—an illness that killed a person and could easily have killed Bishop Cook and others.  That’s not an excuse. I am making no excuses for what Bishop Cook did. But it is a fact.

We are all fallible. We all fail—and fail miserably—at times in our lives.  And when we do, it is painful. It hurts. And others get hurt too.

This time of Lent is a time for us to face those failings in our lives. I think that’s why some of us kind of resist Lent when it comes around again. But, recognizing our failures—and other’s failures, as well—for what they are is a way forward. We are all fallible human beings. We will continue to fail at times. We will never, on this side of the veil, be perfect. And if perfection is our goal, we have already set ourselves up for failure. But failure too should not be the goal.

Striving to learn from our failures is the goal. Changing and growing and moving beyond our failures is our goal. A successive evolution from failure to redemption is our goal.

Lent is a time for us to think about our failures, to ponder them, but not to revel in them. And it certainly is not a time to beat ourselves up over them.

Tonight, Ash Wednesday, is a time for us to think about that ultimate moment in our lives, that puts all of our failures into keen perspective. Tonight is the night to think about the fact that we will all, one day, die. In this service we are reminded in no uncertain terms that one day each every person in this church this evening will stop breathing and will die.  Our bodies will be made into something that will be disposed of—either by being cremated and being buried in the ground.  But, all of this can—and more importantly, should—be something in which we find ourselves opened up to a new understanding and new perspectives on the world and our relationships with God.

That essentially is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are all about. It is a time for us to stop, to ponder, to take a look around us and to take a long, hard, serious look at ourselves, our failures, and our relationship with God. It isn’t easy to do.  It isn’t easy to look at where we’ve failed in our lives in our relationship with others. It isn’t easy to look at ourselves as disposable physical beings that can so easily be or burned to ashes or buried.  It isn’t easy to imagine there will be a day—possibly sooner than later—when life as we know it right now will end.  It isn’t easy to shake ourselves from our complacent lives. Because we like complacency. We like predictability. We like our comfortable existence.

However, we need to be careful when we head down this path. As we consider and ponder these things, we should not allow ourselves to become depressed or hopeless.  Remembering our failures is depressing and can trigger depression or despair.  Our mortality is frightening.  Yes, it is sobering and depressing to think that we, at this moment, find so normal and comfortable will one day end.

But this season is Lent is also a time of preparation.  It is a preparation for the glory of Easter. It would be depressing and bleak if, in the end, all we are known for our failures.

My prayer for Bishop Cook is that this accident, this death, is not what she will ultimately be known for. In the midst of this horrendous situation, Bishop Cook’s story is not over. There are opportunities, as impossible as they might seem in this moment, for her to rise above this horrendous situation. One day, when she passes from this world, there will be references made to the horrible events of December. But hopefully, there will also be references made to how she rose above it, how she overcame her illness, how she found redemption in her own life and how she was ultimately sustained by the love and compassion of her God.

That is my hope. Yes, maybe I am the eternal optimist. But that’s also what it means to be a Christian, even in the midst of Lent.  Yes, we will hear, in a few moments, those sobering words,

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

And those words are true. But, the fact is, ashes are not eternal. Ashes are not the end of our story. Ashes are temporary. Resurrection is eternal.  Our life in Christ is eternal.  Our failures are temporary. Our life is eternal in Christ.  All we do on this Ash Wednesday is acknowledge the fact that we are mortal, that our bodies have limits and because they do, we too are limited.

There is a beautiful poem—one of my all-time favorites-written by probably one of my favorite poets, Robinson Jeffers.  In many ways it has a very healthy attitude to the body and the death of one’s body. Jeffers wrote this following the death from cancer of his wife, Una, in September of 1950.   The poem is titled “Cremation”

It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
When I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
Is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame — besides, I am used to it,
I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life,
No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.

We had a great joy of my body…

“We had great joy of my body.”

Hopefully, we can say the same of our bodies when the time comes for us to put our bodies aside.

So, it’s not a matter of denying our bodies or seeing our bodies as sinful, disgraceful things. The same can be said of our failures. Our failures make us who we are. We are not defined by them. But we are formed in the fires of our failures and shortcomings.  It is not a matter of dwelling on our failures in this life. Rather, it is a time for us to look forward, past our failures, to resurrection, to renewal, to rebirth.

As we head into this season of Lent, let it truly be a holy time or preparation for resurrection. Let it be a time in which we recognize the limitations of our own selves—whether they be physical or emotional or spiritual.  But more than anything, let this holy season Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment. Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in goodness in our life.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”
“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time. It is the day of salvation.  Let us take full advantage of it.

4 Epiphany

February 1, 2015

Mark 1.21-28

+ This past week, in our confirmation class, we had a very in-depth discussion on several topics. We talked about death and I had the students plan their funerals, which was interesting.  We talked about heaven, reincarnation and…we talked about hell.  I said something regarding that kind of shocked our students.

I said, “I don’t know if I really believe in hell.”

Then I had to make myself clearer, because that is quite the statement after all.

I said, “I should say that I’m not saying there’s no hell.  There could be. But my hope—my real, deep and abiding hope—is that is it exists, I hope it is empty and will remain so.”

This was not good enough of a statement for our confirmation students.

“What about terrible people?” they asked. “What about Hitler? What about people who do bad things?”

I then went into one of my sermonettes on examining the reasons why we do things. Do we do good because we fear hell and punishment, or do we do good things because doing good things is…good? It brings about good.

They really got that.

But then, I started thinking about it and realized I needed to revise what I said about hell.  I do believe hell exists, actually. In fact, just this past week, we heard about hell.

On Tuesday, many people observed the seventieth anniversary of hell being liberated. On

that day, January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated. Hell on earth was liberated.  And, as we all know, there are hells right here on earth.

There are hells existing right here in our midst at any given moment. We, each of us, are often, at times, existing in our own personal hells.

And, as far as the question of bad things like Hitler that the confirmation students were asking about, I believe fully and completely that yes, evil no doubt does exists in this world. But that evil is not something that God cannot defeat.  I’ll get into that a bit later.

We get evil today in our Gospel reading. But first, before the evil, we get a bit of glory.  In the beginning of our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus in a place, at first, in which he is being marveled at.  People are amazed by his teaching.  It is certainly a high point for those early followers of Jesus.  It is a moment in which the decision they made to follow him has been, in some very real way, validated. And then, in the midst of that adulation, in the midst of that wonderful, high moment, those followers find themselves confronting evil.  There, in the middle of all that praise, comes a person possessed by an evil spirit.  It was, no doubt, an unpleasant moment.  Just when things seem to be going well, there’s a crazy, possessed person in their midst.

For us we have been confronted with things like this as well.  Well, maybe not crazy, possessed people.  Or maybe…crazy, possessed people.

But, let’s face it,  we do know a few things about evil. For all the grand and glorious things we see on occasion as followers of Jesus, we are also reminded that there is still injustice and oppression and sexism and homophobia and racism and a multitude of other really horrible things going around us in the world and in our society. Some of us have even seen the effects of violence in our own personal lives.

We see evil.  We know evil.  We are confronted with evil on a regular basis, and especially in those moments in which we really don’t want to confront evil. But, what Jesus’ encounter with the evil spirit shows, however—and, again, as we all know here—is that evil is not quite what we thought it was.

Yes, evil has much power in this world.  But it does not have ultimate power.  Evil does not—nor does it ever—win in the end.  History has shown this again and again.

Auschwitz, that seemingly impenetrable fortress of evil and death and horror, was liberated.  It was ended.  Nazism was destroyed.  Hitler was defeated.

And, in following Jesus, when we confront evil and injustice and oppression and discrimination, we know full well that these things will all one day be cast out.  They all will be quieted.  And goodness will triumph ultimately in the end.  We know this as followers of Jesus.  We know this because we know that’s what it means to follow Jesus.

For us, when God’s blessings flow and we can feel that Presence of ultimate goodness at work in our lives, we like those people who witnesses Jesus casting out the evil spirit, are amazed.  We wonder and we marvel at what is happening.  And hopefully, like those first followers, we are motivated.  We are motivated to continue following Jesus, wherever he leads us. We are motivated to continue to stand up and speak out against evil when we are confronted with it.

That is what we have always done here at St. Stephen’s and that is what we will continue to do here.  We do this, because that is what followers of Jesus do.

But, being followers of Jesus also means facing evil full-on, knowing full-well that evil ultimately has no control over us. Evil—which may come to us in many forms—whether we confront it in the daily news in the form of ISIS or North Korea or stories of horrendous violence in our own communities—or whether we are dealing with various forms of evil in our own lives, with discrimination or abuse or even things like illness and death, which are their own types of evil, we know that ultimately evil and hell will be defeated.   We know that, following Jesus, these things will not win out.

Yes, we know that in following Jesus, he isn’t always going to lead us through sun-lit fields full of easy pathways. He leads us again and again down paths in which we are forced to confront ugly things. We are led down path in which we must not only face, but confront evil. We are led down paths that we don’t want to go down, at times.

Certainly, as we journey through our Church year toward Lent, we know that following Jesus means following him on the Way of the Cross, a path that goes through a place of darkness and violence and evil. But if we keep following, we will realize, again and again, that none of those dark evil things triumph in the end.  The path we follow Jesus upon leads us ultimately to sun-lit fields ahead somewhere.  That path to the cross leads us also beyond the cross.

We know good always wins.  That is what we are celebrating this morning and every Sunday morning.  The fact that, yes, we have been through those dark moments.  We have been through those lean years in our lives.  We have been through moments when it seems as though Jesus was leading us through desert wastes and arid lands.

But this morning, in this moment, we know—we are reminded: he is leading through a verdant land.  And as we follow, we will continue to see amazing things.  And it is good.

So, let us rejoice and be thankful today and always, even when evil seems to triumph Let us be thankful for all that we have been given in this past year.  And let us look with joy into a future of unlimited possibilities. God is at work in the midst of us this morning and always.  And on this morning we can truly say that it is wonderful and glorious.  What more can we do on this beautiful Sunday, but rejoice?