25 Pentecost

November 10, 2013

Luke 20.27-38

+ Lately, I have been in some strange mood. Well, stranger mood than usual.  Anyway, I have been downsizing considerably lately. I realized one day that I had too many books. It’s a good problem to have, I know.  But I realized I need to start going through and cutting back. I sometimes do this.

I start feeling at times before I do downsizing as though I am some kind of hoarder.  I just have more books than I will ever read or re-read. It’s a good problem.

Well, some of the books I ended up shedding were some of those theologians I was reared on.  I have, as of this morning, commended them to a very safe home—to very own Cathy McMullen.

One of the theologians I have commended to Cathy is a theologian who captured my imagination in my twenties—John Shelby Spong, the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey.  One of the first books of his I read in my twenties was called Resurrection: Myth or Reality? I don’t think I’m giving the end away by saying that Bishop Spong’s answer to that question was: Myth.

Bishop Spong believed that there was no resurrection—rather that whatever resurrection one believed in was purely metaphorical.  Yes, Jesus died on the cross.  Yes, he lives on among those of who believe in him. But there was no bodily resurrection.

In fact, in this book, Spong asserts his belief that Jesus’ body was probably taken down from the cross and given to the dogs to feed on. The tomb is empty, Spong said. But not because of any supernatural events. The tomb is empty and Jesus is not here because he was never there in the first place.

Certainly the Sadducees in our Gospel reading today viewed the Resurrection of the body in a similar way. Now, to give them credit, the Sadducees were smooth and they were smart. They knew how to present a sly argument without being blatant. And they did believe that by bringing up the resurrection, they would show Jesus to be the fool and the charlatan.

For the Sadducees, the resurrection of the body was a fairy tale.  It was something gullible people hoped in. It was absurd and ridiculous.

I’m not, of course, saying Bishop Spong sees it as absurd and ridiculous. He does not. But he does not see it as a litmus test for our faith in Christ.

But there are some circles in the Church, for whom belief in the Resurrection is a litmus test for one’s orthodoxy. I know of a former parishioner who later joined the Eastern Orthodox Church over his belief in the Resurrection.  He refused to receive Communion from priests whom he knew did not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus.  In fact, one of the first questions he would ask a new priest when he would meet them is: So what do you believe regarding the Resurrection? I luckily passed that test, but many other priests did not.

So, what do we believe about the resurrection? Certainly we profess our collective faith in this every Sunday in the Creed. But have we really thought about it?

Well, of course,  one of the best places to look when we are our examining our faith is, of course, our trust Catechism, found in the back of the Book of Common Prayer. So, let’s take a looksee at what the Prayer Book says about the resurrection. If you will take your Prayer books and turn to page 862. There we find that question:

What do we mean by the resurrection of the body?   The answer:   We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints.

I love that definition of resurrection. God will raise us up in the fullness of our being, that we live with Christ and the saints. I think the imagery of that sort is beautiful and at least helps us to wrap our minds around the resurrection.  But I also believe that our understanding of such things allows for a certain freedom of movement.

I often use the image of jazz to explain what it is we believe. In jazz, there is a certain musical structure one has to abide by. There’s a frame work, shall we say.  Within that framework, a jazz musician has the freedom to do many things. But they still have to stay within that basic framework.

I feel the same way about our faith as Christians. The Creeds, scripture, even a definition from our Catechism such as this helps form that very basic framework.

But, when we start becoming too specific, we start losing something of the beauty of our faith.  We lose the purity and the poetry of our faith.  When we start trying to examine too closely how the resurrection will happen and when it will happen and how a pile of bones or cremated remains or a body destroyed in the sea can be resurrected into another body, we find ourselves derailed.

What we do know, however is that what the resurrection promises is raising up in the fullness of our being.  The whole basis of what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel, in this discourse on marriage, is that the resurrection is , as the great theologian Reginald Fuller said, not “a prolongation of our present life, but a new mode of existence.”
 We will still be us, it seems from what Jesus is saying, but we will be living into that fullness of our being—with a different understanding of what it means to be alive.  Issues like marriage will no longer be an issue.

Now some of us might despair at that fact.  We want to know that when we awake into the fullness of our being, into that resurrected life, we will have our families there, our spouses and our loved ones. I have no doubt that our loved ones will be there, but it seems that it will be different. We will have a truly fulfilled and complete relationship with all of our loved ones, and also with those who we may not have loved.

What this leads us to is, at the same time, a glimpse of the freedom that we will gain at the resurrection. Just as some things such as marriage will no longer be an issue, all those other issue we are dealing with now in our lives and in the church will also no longer be with us. The issues that divide us as a church, as a community—issues of sexuality or differing religious views or race or culture, will all be done away with at the resurrection.

And these bodies too will be done away with as well.  These bodies that will fail us and betray us—these bodies that will die on us and be buried or be burned will no longer be a part of who we are anymore. We will, at the resurrection, be made whole and complete and perfect, in Christ, who is perfect.

The reason we know this is because the God we serve—the God we have gathered together to worship this morning, is not a God of the dying bodies we have with us now. The God we serve and worship is a God of the living.  When Jesus identifies God as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, he is saying that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive and that their God is the God of the living—the God of us who, because of Christ, will not die.

So, Resurrection is important to us. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Resurrection is so important to us, despite what the Sadducees in our midst tell us. Resurrection is essential to our faith, because in it we have met and faced death. Death no longer has control over it. It longer has any power in our lives. The power and strength of death has been defeated in the resurrection. In the resurrection, we have the almost audacious ability to say, at the grave, that power-packed word of life: Alleluia.

So, let us ignore the Sadducees in our midst—those glitzy, smooth voices of supposed reason that lull us into believing that the resurrection is a fantasy. Resist any voices that wrestle hope away from us. Because it is our faith in the resurrection that will truly sustain us in those moments of doubt and despair, in those moments when death and darkness seem to have won out, when our hope has waned.  For our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. Our God is a God of life.   And only in life can we fully and truly serve our living God.

 

All Saints Sunday

November 3, 2013

 

Ephesians 1.11-23

+ There are sometimes, in my job, when all I seem to do to is field questions from people. Normally, as some of you might know firsthand, I can handle so many in a certain period of times. Nothing makes me more impatient at times.

But, for the most part, I really don’t mind questions, as long as they are well-intended questions. In fact, as long as they’re valid questions, I actually enjoy answering questions.

Well, yesterday I got one of those questions I actually enjoy getting. But the person asking was very apprehensive. A regular parishioner here  very apprehensively asked this question,

Why pray for the dead, as they have lived their lives in this world and will reap due payment in the afterlife? How will my prayers help them after the fact?

It was a great and, dare I say, a very timely question, certainly at this time in the Church Year in which we commemorate both the saints of God, and pray and remember all those who have died.

Yes, like the Roman Catholic Church, we do pray for our dead as Episcopalians.  You will hear us as Episcopalians make a petition when someone dies that you won’t hear in the Lutheran Church, or the Methodist Church or the Presbyterian Church. When someone dies, you will hear me say, “I ask your prayers for the repose of the soul of…”

Praying in such a way for people who have passed has always been a part of our Anglican tradition, and will, no doubt, continue to be a part of our tradition.  And I can tell you, I  like that idea of praying for those who have died.

But we don’t pray for people have died for the same reasons Roman Catholics do. In other words, we don’t pray to free them from purgatory, as though our prayers could somehow change God’s mind.  Rather, we pray for our deceased loved ones in the same way we pray for our living loved ones. We pray for them to connect, through God, with them.

Actually, that answer falls a bit flat. Let’s hear what the Book of Common Prayer says about it. And, yes, the Book of Common Prayer addresses this issue directly.  I am going to have you pick up your Prayer Books and look in the back, to the Catechism. There, on page 862 you get the very important question:

Why do we pray for the dead?

The answer (and it’s very good answer): We pray for them, because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God's presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is.

That is a great answer. We pray that those who have chosen God will grow in God’s love.  So, essentially, just because we die, It does not seem to mean that we stop growing in God’s love and presence.  I think that is wonderful and beautiful. And certainly worthy of our prayers.

But even more so than this definition, I think that, because we are uncertain of exactly what happens to us when we die, there is nothing wrong with praying for those who have crossed into that mystery we call “the nearer Presence of God.” After all, they are still our family and friends. They are still part of who we are.

Now, I know that this idea of praying for those who have died  makes some of us very uncomfortable. And I understand why. I understand that it flies in the face of our more Protestant upbringings. This is exactly what the other Reformers rebelled against and freed us from. But, even they never did away with this wonderful All Saints Feast we are celebrating this morning.

This morning we are commemorating and remembering those people in our lives who have helped us, in various way, to know God. As you probably have guessed from the week-long commemoration we have made here at St. Stephen’s regarding the Feast of All Saints, I really do love this feast.  With the death of many of my own loved ones in these last few years, this Feast has taken on particular significance for me. What this feast shows me is what you have heard me preach in many funeral sermons again and again.

I truly, without a doubt, believe that what separates those of us who are alive here on earth, from those who are now in the “nearer presence of God” is truly a very thin one. And to commemorate them and to remember them is a good thing for all us.

Now, I do understand, as I said before, that all this talk of saints makes some of us more “Protestant minded” a bit uncomfortable.  But…I do want us to think long and hard about the saints we have known in our lives. And we have all known saints in our lives.

We have known those people who have shown us, by their example, by their good, that God works through us.  And I want us to at least realize that God still works through us even after we have departed from this mortal coil. Ministry in one form or the other, can continue, even following our deaths.

Hopefully, we can still, even after our deaths, do good and work toward furthering the Kingdom of God by the example we have left behind. For me, the saints—those people who have gone before us—aren’t gone. They haven’t just disappeared. They haven’t just floated away and dissipated like clouds out of our midst. No, rather they are here with us, still.  They join with us, just as the angels do, when we celebrate the Eucharist.

For, especially in the Eucharist, we find that “veil” lifted for a moment. In this Eucharist that we celebrate together at this altar, we find the divisions that separate us are gone. We see how thin that veil truly is.  We see that death truly does not have ultimate power over us.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have heard stories from one priest or layperson or the other who have said they have experienced, especially during the Eucharist, the presence, in a sometimes nearly empty church, of the multitude of saints, gathered together to worship. That is the way Holy Communion should be.  It’s not just us, gathered here at the altar.  It’s the Communion of all the saints.

In fact, before we sing that glorious hymn, “Holy, Holy Holy” during the Eucharistic rite, you hear me say, “with angels and saints and all the company of heaven we sing this hymn of praise.” That isn’t just sweet, poetic language. It’s what we believe and hope in.

In these last few years, after losing so many people in my family and among close friends, I think I have felt their presence most keenly, at times, here at this altar when we are gathered together for the Eucharist then at any other time.  I have felt them here with us.  And in those moments when I have, I know in ways I never have before, how thin that veil is between us and “them.”

You can see why I love this feast. It not only gives us consolation in this moment, separated as we are from our loved ones, but it also gives us hope.  We know, in moments like this, where we are headed.  We know what awaits us.

No, we don’t know it in detail.  We’re not saying there are streets paved in gold or puffy white clouds with chubby little baby angels floating around. We don’t have a clear vision of that place.

But we do sense it. We do feel it. We know it’s there, just beyond our vision, just out of reach and out of focus. And “they” are all there, waiting for us. They—all the angels, all the saints, all our departed loved ones.

So, this morning—and always—we should rejoice in this fellowship we have with them. We should rejoice as the saints we are and we should rejoice with the saints that have gone before us.

In our collect this morning, we prayed that “we may come to those ineffably joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.”

Those ineffably joys await us.  They are there, just on the other side of that thin veil.  And if we are only patient, we too, as Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians this morning, will obtain that inheritance that they have gained and we will live with them in that place of unimaginable joy and light.

 

23 Pentecost

October 27, 2013

Luke 18.9-14

+ I must be in an ornery mood lately. Last week, in my sermon, I actually mentioned cracking my knuckles. And I got some major feedback about my feistiness and knuckle cracking. I’m still in that mood this week.

Partly I am because, I saw someone on Facebook say something that really set me off.   For all my years in the church, there is one thing you can almost guarantee will set me off. In fact, you’ve no doubt heard me go off about this before. But one of the things some people in the church love to say is something that I simply cannot stand.  You’ve heard this phrase before, I know.  The phrase is this.

“I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.”

Grrrr. My blood runs cold when I hear such a thing.

Now, to be fair, people who say it feel they are saying something kind and selfless. But the reality is it really isn’t kind. Or selfless. It is, quite simply, self-righteous statement. And it’s a terribly judgmental thing to say.

When we say such things, we end up sounding very much like the proud Pharisee in Jesus’ parable this morning.  That stupid phrase just makes no sense to me.

I love the sinner, but I hate their sin.

It sounds too much like we are saying,  I am just so thankful that I am not sinning in that same way. And most times, the so-called “sin” the person hates, is really a sin they themselves are not guilty of.

And that is the real rub here. How easy it is for any of us to say we hate someone else’s sin, when it isn’t our sin. OK. I need to get over this feistiness.

I just need to relax and let things like this go. And I need to remind myself of what to do in those situations when I confront someone’s sin in a way in which I really do hate their particular sin (which, yes, happens). In those moments when I am confronted with what seems like someone’s else’s sin, I realize what I have to do is the example of the tax collector in our Gospel reading for today.  

I too need to beat my breast and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

It’s probably one of the purest and more honest prayers we can make. And what I love even more about this parable is the fact that the prayer of the Pharisee isn’t even necessarily a bad prayer in and of itself. I mean, there’s an honesty in it.

The Pharisee is the religious one. He is the one who is doing right according to organized religion.  He is doing what Pharisees do; he is doing the “right” thing; he is filling his prayer with thanksgiving to God.  We should all thank God for all the good things God grants us.

The problem arises in the fact that the prayer is so horribly self-righteous and self-indulgent that it manages to cancel out the rightness of the prayer. The arrogance of the prayer essentially renders it null and void. The tax collector’s prayer however is so pure. It is simple and straight-to-the-point. This is the kind of prayer Jesus again and again holds up as an ideal form of prayer. But what gives it its punch is that is a prayer of absolute humility.

And humility is the key here. It gives the prayer just that extra touch.  There is no doubt in our minds as we hear this parable that God hears—and grants—this prayer, even though it is being prayed by someone considered to be the exact opposite of the Pharisee. Whereas the Pharisee is the religious one, the righteous one, the tax collector, handling all that pagan unclean money of the conquerors, is unclean. He is an outcast.

Humility really is the key.

And it is one of the things, speaking only for myself here, that I am sometimes lacking in my own spiritual life. But, humility is important. It is essential to us as followers of Jesus.

St. Teresa of Avila, the great Carmelite saint, once said, “Humility, humility. In this way we let our Lord conquer, so that he hears our prayer.”

I think we’re all a bit guilty of lacking humility in our own lives, certainly in our spiritual lives and in being self-righteous when it comes to sin. We all occasionally take some delight, as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable does, in the shortcomings and failures of others.  We watch with almost gleeful joy when politicians are involved in scandals, or movie stars get in trouble with drugs or the law, or even when clergy fall and fall hard.

In those moments I find myself saying: “Thank God it’s them and not me.”

And maybe that’s an honest prayer to make. Because what we also say in that prayer is that we, too, are capable of being just that  guilty.

There but for the grace of God go I, we may say.

We all have a shadow side. There’s no way around that fact.  But the fact is, the only sins we’re responsible for ultimately are our own sins—not the sins of others. We can’t pay the price of other’s sins—only Jesus can and has done that—nor should we delight in the failings of others.

I remember reading a saying once by an Eastern Orthodox saint, Barsanufios.  He said, “”He who recognizes his own stench in his nose cannot recognize any other smell even if he stands on a pile of dead bodies.”

Yes, it’s a disgusting image, but it strikes home. All we can do as Christians, sometimes, is humble ourselves. Again and again. We must learn to overlook what others are doing and concentrate on what we ourselves are doing wrong.  And when we recognize what we are doing wrong, we need to struggle to correct those wrongs and to strive to do right. And that’s hard work. It’s sometimes impossible work.

It exhausts me. And so I don’t know why I would want to deal with other’s sins if my own sins exhaust me.

There are too many self-righteous Christians in the world.  We know them. They frustrate us.  And they irritate us.  We don’t need anymore. What we need are more humble, contrite Christians.  We need to be Christians who don’t see anyone as inferior to us—as charity cases to whom we can share our wealth and privileges.

Rather, to paraphrase the great St. Therese of Lisieux: we should sit down with sinners, not as their benefactors but as the “most wretched of them all.”

That is true humility. We should because we are. In our own eyes, if we carry true humility within us, if we are our own stiffest and most objective judges, then we know that we are the most wretched of them all and that we are in no place to condemn others, nor are we in a place to hate the sins of others—only our own sins.

In dealing with others, we have no other options than just simply to love those people Sin or no sin, we must simply love them and hate our own sins.  That is what it means to be a true follower of Jesus. It is essential if we are going to truly love those we are called by Jesus to love and it is essential to our sense of honesty before God.

So, let us steer clear of such self-righteousness as hating other people’s sins and let us draw whatever hatred we might have within us onto our own failings and shortcomings—not so we can beat ourselves up and be self-deprecating, but so we can overcome our shortcomings and rise above them. Let us look at others with pure eyes—with eyes of love. Let us not see the sins of others, but the light and love of God permeating through them, no matter who they are. And with this perception, let us realize that all of us who have been humbled will be lifted up by God and exalted in ways so wonderful we cannot even begin to fathom them in this moment.

22 Pentecost

October 20, 2013

2 Timothy 3.14-4.5

+ Last evening our Diocesan Convention delegates limped home from Diocesan Convention. I think that’s an apt image. It was…well…let’s just say, as Cathy McMullen said last night, an “interesting” convention. Quite a bit contentious on some levels.

But I’m a person who has a somewhat love/hate relationship regarding Diocesan Conventions. I have been to too many of them in my life. On one level, for an extrovert like me, I can say that I always have a good time, no matter how contentious the convention might get. And this one was no exception.

But I must say, that  much the real gist of what happens at Convention happens not on the convention floor. Or at the Convention Eucharist.  Oh no. It happens at the meals. And it happens, yes, in the bar.

It just so happened that one of the most interesting conversations for me happened at the bar on Friday night. It seems that out little congregation of St. Stephen’s has been getting some notice in the diocese. Notice as a progressive, dare I say, “upstart” kind of congregation.

One of the conversation I had was with a deacon from another congregation. She and I have been friends for a very long time. We are still very dear friends.

But, during the course of the night, she said to me, “Jamie, I just don’t understand how, in scripture, you can defend being essentially a liberal, progressive congregation that welcomes all people.”

She said “welcoming” in a kind of derisive way, like it’s a bad thing. As in, “are you saying our congregation is ‘unwelcoming?’”

When I asked her why she had such issue with our supposedly progressive/liberal attitudes, she said, “I just believe  Scripture is clear about certain things that you profess in your congregation to welcome and embrace.”

We all know where she was going with this. I certainly did anyway. 

I said to her, in no uncertain terms, “Be careful, my friend, where you go with this. This is slippery slope, using scripture in such a way.”

“As long as I go with Scripture I will never be wrong,” she said. “Scripture cuts through everything. And with scripture as my guide, as the sword in my hand, I have no need to be careful.”

I smiled. And then I said, you are right. I will concede that. Scripture IS a sword. A two-edged sword, especially for those who use it as a weapon.

And then I very gently warned her, If our intention is to cut people with the swords of scripture, just be prepared that we too will in turn be cut. That is what scripture does when we misuse it.  But if we use scripture as it meant to be used—as an object of love—then it is also two-edged.  If we use it as way of open the channels of God’s love to others, then the channels of God’s love will be opened to us as well.

That, let’s just say, essentially ended out conversion. We, of course, parted friends as we always have. But when it comes to people using scripture as the basis for an arguments such as this, I love crack the knuckles.

I hope it doesn’t surprise anyone here this morning that I truly do love the Bible.  I mean, what kind of priest would I be if I didn’t love the Scriptures? After all, one of the vows I made when I was ordained as a Deacon and later reaffirmed when I was ordained a Priest was this (and renewed these vows yesterday at the Convention Eucharist):

“I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation…”

Now, that might sound like a somewhat fundamentalist view of such things. The scriptures are the Word of God? you might ask.  Even with all the apparent flaws and contradictions? And it contains everything necessary for salvation?  Come on. But I do believe these statements—though not in a fundamentalist way of thinking.

If we look in our Prayer Book, as we do on a very regular basis, back in that place I like to direct us to go sometimes—the Catechism—we find a little expansion on this thinking. On page 853, you will find this question:

“Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?”

The answer:

“We call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks through the Bible.”

I think that is a wonderfully down-to-earth, practical and rational explanation.

In our “Episcopal 101” classes that we do here on a regular basis and several of you have taken,  we have been having fun exploring what Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church are.  One of those fun ones for me, anyway, is what is called Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool.  Some of you might remember this.

Richard Hooker was a great 16th Century Anglican theologian. He explained that Anglican belief was based not on “The Church Alone” of the Roman Catholic Church nor even on “The Word Alone” of some Protestants, but is in fact based on a more balanced view.

The three legs of the stool of Anglicanism are Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  Take one of those legs away, the stool wobbles and falls.  But use all three and you will have a very a balanced view of religion. For example, if we only have Scripture, without Reason or Tradition, we end up with what I consider the heresy of fundamentalism.

And it is a heresy. Anytime we place anything on par with God—any time we claim anything is perfect and without flaw, except God—we have a created an idol. My view is that fundamentalists have made the Bible into an idol.

But for us Episcopalians, our view of scripture is based on a balance of tradition and reason. We can’t just believe anything we want with regard to Scripture.  There are scriptures that we don’t like hearing. But none of gets to edit the Bible.  We don’t get to cross out those things we don’t like. We have to confront them and meet them face-on. And we have to wrestle them and in wrestling with them we must use a good dose of reason, and a good dose of tradition.  And if we do that, we come away from those difficult scriptures with a new sense of what they say to us.

For example,  I personally might not like what the Apostle  Paul says sometimes—I might not even agree with it—but, good or bad, it isn’t up to me.  Or any of one of us.  It’s up to the Church, of which we, as individuals, are one part and parcel. For us Episcopalians, we don’t have to despair over those things Paul says that might offend our delicate 21st century ears. We just need to remind ourselves that our beliefs about Scripture are based on a rational approach tempered with the tradition of the Church.

In fact, if we continue reading on page 853 in the Catechism, we will find this answer to the question, “How do we understand the meaning of the Bible?”

The answer:

“We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of Scripture.”

There you see a very solid approach to understanding Scripture.  Reason (in this sense the inspiration of the Spirit), along with the Church (or Tradition) helps us in interpreting Scripture.  Such thinking prevents us from falling into that awful muck of fundamentalism.  Such thinking steers us clear of this misconception that that the Scriptures are without flaw. Such thinking also steers clear of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, with regard to Scripture as well.

Sometimes, if we use too much reason in our approach to Scripture, we find ourselves reasoning it all away and it becomes nothing but a quaint book of myths, morals and legends.

Yes, the Scriptures are not without flaws. As God-inspired as they might be, they were written by human beings. Pre-scientific human beings, writing in a language that has been translated and retranslated over and over again.  And human beings have been notorious—even in Scripture—of not always being able to get everything perfect, no matter how God-inspired they are. Not even Scripture expects us to be perfect.

But, the second part our explanation of the question from the Catechism of why we call Holy Scripture the Word of God is even more important to me.

“God stills peaks to us through scripture.”

I love the idea that God does still speak to us through these God-inspired writings by flawed human beings. And what God speaks to us through Scriptures is, again and again, a message of love, even in the midst of some of the more violent, or fantastic stories we read in Scripture.

Now, one of those flawed human beings in the Bible was of course, the Apostle Paul.  Paul himself would admit, on one of his less grandiose days, that he was a flawed person.  And I love the fact that, this morning, God seems to be speaking loud and clear through Paul in his letter to Timothy.

“All scripture is inspired by God,” Paul instructs, “and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

I love that. That is some rational, solid thinking, if you ask me. Scripture here is intended not to condemn, not bash, not to hurt, but to build up and equip us for “every good work.”

“Proclaim the message, “ he tells Timothy (and us), “be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorably; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.”

For any of who have been teachers, those words strike home. But, if you notice, nowhere does Paul say we must condemn or pound down, or coerce others using Scripture.

Scripture must build up and encourage and teach us to serve and to love.  And Scripture must be a conduit through which God continues to speak to us.

So, let us embrace this balanced and reasonable very Anglican approach to Scripture. Let us listen to Scripture and hear the Word of God speaking to us through it. Let us continue to place the Scriptures at the center of our lives and let us allow them to guide us into a pathway of love and service.  And, most importantly, let us use it, again and again, as an instrument of love rather than a weapon of war and hatred.  And when we do, we will find that the two-edged sword of that instrument of love, will open the doors of God’s love to us as well.

 

21 Pentecost

October 13, 2013

Luke 17.11-19

 + I was once accused, many, many years ago, of being—if you can believe this—morbid. Morbid? Me? I didn’t even know what morbid really meant when I was first accused of it.  But this friend of mine said I was morbid because, “Well, Jamie, you like to hang out in cemeteries.”

Guilty as charged! I do like cemeteries. I very unapologetically will admit to that. They’re great places. They’re not spooky or morbid to me at all.  For a history buff like me, they are perpetually engaging.

Well, yesterday, I was at a cemetery.  Yesterday, my family gathered at Maple Sheyenne Cemetery to dedicate my brother’s gravestone. For those who might not know, my brother died very suddenly at the end of July in Colorado.  So, we gathered on Saturday to dedicated and bless the stone that covers the place his ashes are buried, using a beautiful liturgy from the Anglican Prayer Book of New Zealand.

After the service, we stood around talking a bit and looking at the nearby stones. As my family was looking at my father’s gravestone, they realized that, on the back of it, there is my inscription.

OK. You know what… Maybe I am a bit morbid. I actually have my gravestone inscribed already. Yeah, that might be a bit morbid.

Actually, no. It’s just practical.  I had the inscription put on it not long after I went through cancer about twelve years ago.

As we were looking at it, I was reminded of an inscription found on several gravestones in the cemetery at my seminary, Nashotah House. In the cemetery there, many of the stones carried a very brief, but beautiful epitaph:

Jesu, Mercy.

And I’ve always wanted that inscription on my stone as well.  Because I love that phrase.

Jesu, Mercy.

I love it because I really love that word, Mercy. It’s an incredible word.

Mercy.

And it’s one that I think sums up so many of the prayers we pray. Certainly, the prayers I pray. In those moments in which I am overwhelmed or exhausted or simply don’t know what to pray, I often find myself just praying, Jesus, have mercy on me.

Today, in our Gospel reading, we find that word, Mercy, in a very prominent place. In fact the prayer the leper prays to Jesus is the pray any of, in our deepest moment of moments, finds ourselves praying.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on me!”

And he does.  We see, in our Gospel reading today, mercy in action.  And it is wonderful.  These lepers are healed.

But, before we lose track of this story, let’s take a little deeper look.  Now, first of all, we need to be clear about who lepers were in that day. Lepers were unclean according to Jewish Law. But they were worse than that. They were contagiously unclean. And their disease was considered a very severe punishment for something. So, to even engage these lepers was a huge deal.

But, the real interesting aspect of this story is what you might not have noticed. The lepers themselves are interesting. There are, of course, ten of them. Nine lepers who were, it seems, children of Israel. And one Samaritan leper.

Now a Samaritan, for good Jews like Jesus, would have been a double curse. But the nine other lepers, knowing who they are and what they are, do the “right” thing. Again and again, throughout the story they do the right thing. They first of all stand far off from Jesus and the others. That’s what contagious people do. And when they are healed, the nine also do the right thing. They heed Jesus’ words and, like good Jews, they head off to the priest to be declared clean. The only “wrong” thing they do is that, before heading off to the priest, they don’t first thank Jesus.

Only the Samaritan stays.  And the reason he stays is because, as Samaritan, he wouldn’t need to approach the Jewish priest. So, he turns back.  And he engages the One who healed him.  He bows down before Jesus and worships him. Jesus is irritated by the fact the others did not come back.

But, if notice, his mercy remained. They—along with the Samaritan—remain healed.

That is how mercy works. The interesting thing for us is, we are not always so good at mercy. We are good as being vindictive, especially to those who have wronged us. We are very good as seeking to make others lives as miserable as our lives are at times. But we are not so good at mercy, especially mercy to those who have turned away from us and walked away after we have showed mercy to them.

Luckily, none of us are Jesus. Luckily, none of us are God incarnate. Luckily, none of us will be the ultimate Judge of such things. Because the One who is Judge all of things, is a master at mercy.

Still, we, as followers of that One, are challenged. If the One we follows shows mercy, we know it is our job to do it as well. No matter what. No matter if those we show mercy to ignore us and walk away from us. No matter if they show no gratitude to us for that mercy.

Our job is not to concern ourselves with such things. Our job, as followers of Jesus, are simply to show mercy again and again and again. And to seek mercy again and again and again.

Jesus, Master have mercy on me.

Jesu, mercy.

This is or deepest prayer. This is the prayer of our heart. This is prayer we pray when     our voices and minds no longer function perfectly. This is the prayer that keeps on praying with every heartbeat within us.  And by praying this prayer, by living this prayer, by reflecting this prayer to others, we will know. We will know—beyond a shadow of doubt—that we too can get up and go our way. We too can know that, yes, our faith has made us well.

20 Pentecost

October 6, 2013

Luke 17.5-10

+ It happens rarely. Very rarely. Occasionally, in our collective Christian lives, there comes along a person. They change things. They rile things up. They challenge. They step outside the box, a bit.

I know what you’re thinking. That is soooo Father Jamie. Thank you. But no…I’m not talking about myself.

No, I am actually talking about someone who is taking the Christian world—at least here in the United States—by storm. I am talking about Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. She is a Lutheran pastor you have heard me talk about a few times before. I first heard her speak in 2010 in Des Moines, at a Provincial meeting, and was very taken with her style—she wore a band collar on her sleeveless black clerical shirt which showed off the tattoos on her arms.  (You all may remember me talking about how much I secretly wish to have a tattoo, if I wasn’t such a  wimp—so that kind of appealed to me)

I am not alone in my appreciation of her, obviously. Our own Senior Warden, John Baird, a few weeks ago, visited her church plant in Denver, called The House of All Sinners and Saints.  And when Pastor Nadia spoke at the Chester Fritz in Grand Forks this past Thursday, our own Sandy Kenz made the pilgrimage to cheer her on.

Pastor Nadia’s book, Pastrix, is definitely taking the Church by storm. Everybody’s talking about this book. I read it while I was on vacation and liked it very much. It’s full of fresh insight, new ways of thinking about God and the Church, solid theology—and a fair share of cussing (everything I like).  I will probably be quoting from this book again and again, but one thing she addressed in her book was this interesting anecdote.  

One time, while in Clinical pastoral Education, Pastor Nadia visited an elderly woman recovering from shoulder surgery is she would like he to pay for her.

“Oh that’s nonsense, dear. I’m an atheist.”

What I loved, was Pastor Nadia’s response: “Man, good for you. I wish I could pull that off.”

Which is very similar to the response I have when someone tells me they’re an atheist.

I love atheists, as many of you know. And I don’t mean, by saying that, that I love them because of some intent to convert them. No. My love for atheists has simply to do with the fact that “get” them. I understand them. I appreciate them—even if I don’t necessarily believe what they say. And I have lots of atheists in my life!

Agnostics and atheists have always intrigued me. In fact, I was an agnostic, verging on atheism, once a long time ago in my life. Now to be clear, agnosticism and atheism are two similar though different aspects of belief or disbelief.

An agnostic—gnostic meaning knowledge, an “a” in front of it negates that word, so no knowledge of God—is simply someone who doesn’t know if God exists or not.

And atheist—a theist is a person who believes in god, an “a” in front of it negates it, so a person who does not believe God—in someone who simply does not or cannot believe.

You have heard me say often that we are all agnostics, to some extent. There are things about our faith we simply—and honestly—don’t know. That’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. It keeps us on our toes.  I think agnosticism is an honest response.

But atheism is interesting and certainly honest too, in this sense. Whenever I ask an atheist what kind of God they don’t believe in, and they tell me, I, quite honestly, have to agree. When atheists tell me they don’t believe in some white-bearded man seated on a throne in some far-off, cloud filled kingdom like some Monty Python cut-out, I have to say, “I don’t believe in that God either.”

I am an atheist in regard to that God—that idolatrous god made in our own image. If that’s what an atheist is, then count me in.

But the God I do believe in—the God of mystery, the God of wonder and faith and love—now, that God is a God I can serve and worship. And this God of mystery and love that I serve has, I believe, chosen to come to us, here in the muck of our lives, and become one of us in Jesus. Certainly that is not some distant, strange, human-made God. Rather it is a close, loving, God-made-human.

But there are issues with such a belief. Believing in a God of mystery means we now have work cut out for us in cultivating our faith in that God.

“Increase our faith!” the apostles ask Jesus in today’s Gospel. And two thousand years later, we—Jesus’ disciples now—are still asking him to essentially do that for us as well.  It’s an honest prayer.  We want our faith increased. We want to believe more fully than we do. We want to believe in a way that will eliminate doubt, because doubt is so…uncertain. It is a sometimes frightening place to explore. And we are afraid that with little faith and a lot of doubt, doubt will win out. We are crying out to Jesus—like those first apostles—for more than we have.

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—turns it all back on us.  He tells us that we shouldn’t be worrying about increasing our faith.  We should rather be concerned about the mustard seed of faith that we have right now.

Think of that for a moment.  Think of what a mustard seed really is.  It’s one of the smallest things we can see. It’s a minuscule thing. It’s the side of a period at the end of a sentence or a dot on a lower-case i.  It’s just that small.

Jesus tells us that with that little bit of faith—that small amount of real faith—we can tell a mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea.”  In other words, those of us who are afraid that a whole lot of doubt can overwhelm that little bit of faith have nothing to worry about.  Because even a little bit of faith—even a mustard seed of faith—is more powerful than an ocean of doubt.  A little seed of faith is the most powerful thing in the world, because that tiny amount of faith will drive us and push us and motivate us to do incredible things.  And doing those things, spurred on and nourished by that little bit of faith, does make a difference in the world. Even if we have 99% of doubt and 1% of faith, that 1% wins out over the rest, again and again.

We are going to doubt. We are going to sometimes gaze into that void and have a hard time seeing, for certain—without any doubt—that God truly is there.  And that’s all right to do.

But if we still go on loving, if we still go on serving, if we still go on trying to bring the sacred and holy into our midst and into this world even in the face of that 99% of doubt, that is our mustard seed of faith at work. That is what it means to be a Christian.  That is what loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves does. It furthers the Kingdom of God in our midst, even when we might be doubting that there is even a Kingdom of God.

Now, yes, I understand that it’s weird to hear a priest get up here and say that atheists and agnostics and other doubters can teach us lessons about faith. But they can. I think God does work in that way sometimes. I have no doubt that God can increase our faith my any means necessary, even despite our doubts. I have no doubt that God can work even in the mustard-sized faith found deep within someone who is an atheist.

And if God can do that in the life and example of an atheist, imagine what God can do in our lives—in us, who are committed Christians who stand up every Sunday in church and profess our faiths in the Creed we are about to recite together.

So, let us cultivate that mustard-sized faith inside us. Let’s not fret over how small it is.  Let’s not worry about weighing it on the scale against the doubt in our lives.  Let’s not despair over how small it is.  Let’s fear doubt. Let us not be scared of our natural agnosticism. Rather, let us realize that even that mustard seed of faith within us can do incredible things in our lives and in the lives of those around us.  And in doing those small things, we all are bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst.

18 Pentecost

September 22, 2013

Amos 8.4-7;1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13

+ As I’ve shared with some of you, I have been studying Zen Buddhism intensely this summer. he writer I’ve been reading and re-reading intensely is the Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. If you do not know Thich Nhat Hanh (and I will quiz you after Mass on how to spell his name), I would highly recommend him, especially a book he wrote on the comparison between Christianity and Buddhism, Living Buddha, Living Christ. Thay is currently on tour of the United States and I’ve heard it’s quite the impressive.

As I’ve shared many times here over the years, back, many years ago, when I was doing a lot of spiritual searching after leaving the Roman Catholic Church, I found Zen Buddhism. Now before you bristle at the thought of your priest exploring strange Eastern religions my experience with Zen was a very good one. Zen—like all Buddhism—is not so much a religion, as it is a philosophy—it is a way of seeing things. And back in those days following my leaving the Roman Catholic Church, Zen filled a huge void.

Certainly much of what I learned during that time has stayed with me through the years, and through my faith life as a Christian.  Yes, I am very solid Christian. But I have a kernel of Zen deep inside me.  And I am very thankful for that Zen kernel.

One of the things I have always enjoyed exploring is what in Zen—and all Buddhism—is called  karma. Karma is one of those Buddhist words that is thrown around quite a bit. But Karma is more than just some strange esoteric concept.

Karma is fascinating. Essentially the thinking behind Karma is this: that when you do something, there will be a reaction. If you are cruel to someone, someone else will be cruel to you. If you are kind to someone, someone will be kind to you.  It’s all about balance. A cosmic balance. Anything we do results in a reaction.

Now, for those of you who have known me for any period time, you have heard me use a phrase that captures karma to some extent. I often use the term, “The chickens have come home to roost.”  Essentially it means that what goes around, comes around. We reap what we sow. There are consequences to our actions.

For us followers of Jesus, such concepts of karma might not make as much sense. But today, we get a sense, in our scriptures readings, of a kind of, dare I say, Christian karma. Jesus’ comments in today’s Gospel are very difficult for us to wrap our minds around. But probably the words that speak most clearly o us are those words, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful in much.”

Essentially, Jesus is telling us this simple fact: what you do matters. There are consequences to our actions. There are consequences in this world. And there are consequences in our relation to God.

It often surprises me that Christians think they can “get by” with dishonest things. We read in the news about clergy doing bad things. But not just clergy.  We hear about church treasurers doing bad things. We hear about people who claim to be good Christians doing very unchristian-like things. But Jesus message to us is very clear. For us, our faithfulness involves how we deal with others. It’s not just the big stuff, like sexual impropriety and financial misdealing’s. It is also about how we treat each other. How we treat each other as followers of Jesus and how we treat others who might not be followers of Jesus.

We have few options, as followers of Jesus, when it comes to being faithful. We must be faithful. Faithful yes in a little way brings about great faithfulness. So, logic would tell us, any increase of faithfulness will bring about even greater faithfulness.

Now, faithfulness in this sense means being righteous. Or to use a Zen word, Right-minded. Or even another word used in Zen, mindful.

Thich Nhat Hanh, that Vietnamese Zen master, often writes about mindfulness and, in speaking to Christians, says that mindfulness is the equivalent for us of the Holy Spirit in us. This Zen  writer, I have to admit, is one of the best writers I know on the Holy Spirit. And when I read about his belief that the Zen concept of mindfulness is equivalent to the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives, it made great sense to me. So, if we are faithful—if we are right-minded, if we are mindful in a few things, we are faithful in much.

Jesus is saying to us that the consequences are the same if we choose the right path or the wrong path. A little bit of right, will reap much right. But  a little bit of wrong, reaps much wrong.

I think most of us have found these to be true in our own lives. Doing wrong is a slippery slope. One we step foot on it, we find ourselves sliding farther and farther into more wrongness.  And it’s hard to stop.

That wrong path is not the path intended for us as followers of Jesus. Jesus is not walking that path, and if we are his followers, hen we are not following when we step onto that path.  Wrongfulness is not our purpose as followers of Jesus.  We cannot follow Jesus and willfully—mindfully—practice wrongness. We must strive—again and again—in being faithful. Faithful to God. Faithful to one another. Faithful to those who need us. Faithful to those who need someone.

Being faithful, being mindful, being right-minded, takes work. When we see wrong—and we all do see wrong—we see around us all the time—our job in cultivating faithfulness means counteracting wrongfulness. If there are actions and reactions to things, our reaction to wrongfulness should faithfulness.

Now that seems hard. And it is. But it is not impossible.  We can do something in the face of wrongfulness. We can, when we step foot on that slippery slope of wrongfulness, make a concentrated effort to not slip, to turn around and do the faithful action.  We can cultivate faithfulness in the face of wrongfulness.

One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s students wrote a fun book that I read this summer and really enjoyed. The book is called The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin.  Bortolin likes to make the comparison between Jedi master and students of Zen Buddhism. And he does it pretty well. In the appendix of the book, he includes, in a section called “Zen Contemplations for the Would-Be Jedi,” a series of thoughts that sound very much like Jesus own beatitudes. Bartholin writes that  the “Young Pupil” must always remember this:

Where there is anger, offer kindness.

Where there is selfishness,  offer generosity

Where there is despair, offer hope.

Where there are lies, offer truth.

Where there is injury, offer forgiveness.

Where there is sorrow, offer joy.

Where there is hatred, offer love.

Where there is evil, offer goodness.

Those actions are actions each of us as followers of Jesus are also called to cultivate and live into. As Christians, we are called to not only to ignore or avoid wrongfulness. We are called to confront it and to counter it. We are called to offering faithfulness in the face of wrongness.

So, let us do just that in all aspects of our lives.  Let us offer kindness and generosity and hope and truth and forgiveness and  joy and love and goodness, again and again and again whenever we are confronted with all those forces of wrongfulness. Let us offer light in the face of darkness.  Let us strive, again and again, to do good, even in small ways. For in doing so, we will be faithful in much.

“For surely I will not forget any of their deeds,” God says in our reading from Amos today.

What we do matters. It makes a difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us. So let us, as faithful followers of Jesus, strive, always to truly “lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”