2 Lent

February 21, 2016

Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Luke 13.31-35

+ I don’t think I shared this with many of you. But…I may have. About nine years, I had a very unpleasant situation take place in my life. It was a situation that, even now, when I look back on it, seems very unreal. In about 2007, as I was serving as a priest at another congregation, I had a stalker. A pretty awful stalker actually. A very unstable person. He was bi-polar and was purposely not taking medication for his illness.

After I had to confront him when his erratic behavior become inappropriate, he turned his anger on me. And he manifested this anger in some very disturbing ways.  He began keying my car. Not just once. But many times.  After several months, after some five or six times, he did over $3,000 worth of damage to my car. That wasn’t all he did. He would call my house and leave very confrontational messages to me. He would show up at places he knew I would be and park his car in a way that he knew I would see it.  He was menacing. And he was frightening.

But, I was more afraid of what he was going to do to me. I really thought he was going to hurt me or kill me.  I imagined every kind of scenario. I imagined he was going to sneak into my bedroom at night and kill me. I imagined him surprising one day and stabbing me on the street. I went through it all. I had never experienced a situation like this before, so I didn’t know what could happen.  

And, what was even worse about it all, was that none of my superiors did anything about it. I went to them and asked them to help. And what happened?  Nothing happened. They didn’t help. They turned their collective back on me.  Although this happened on church property, involving a parishioner of that church,  the church did nothing to help pay my bills, even though this was all part of my job as a priest. Only when this particular person finally acted out against another person at the church (he stole her purse), was there finally some action.

It was a frightening and isolating experience for me. I felt alone. The only time I ever felt that frightened and alone before was 14 years ago today, when I had surgery for cancer.

With the stalker, the police couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t caught in the act (though they knew all about him). The Church, sadly, chose not to help until it was someone else who needed the help. And everyone who had not experienced it couldn’t even imagine the reality of this bizarre situation.

There were many nights in which I lamented and cried out to God and begged for God’s strength to keep me sane and strong.

Eventually, after the church finally stepped in as a result of this other person’s purse being stolen and put a restraining order on him, he eventually left me alone, although he did eventually contact me (he left a message on my answering machine about seven years ago) to tell me he was back on medications, although he never admitted he did it or apologized.

I thought about him a lot and kept up on him. I kept up on his multiple arrests for harassment, for terrorizing other people. And I wondered about him and, yes, even prayed for him over the years.

Well, this year, right before I left on vacation, I saw his obituary in the paper. Seeing that obituary, I reacted in a way I did not expect. I thought maybe I would feel relief. I thought maybe I will feel as though there was a great weight lifted off me.

But no. I felt genuine sadness. I felt a real sorrow for this person. And I felt as though I had failed this person in some way. I don’t know in what way or how I did—I couldn’t articulate exactly how I felt I failed him—but I felt I had. I still don’t know why I feel that way.   And all I could do was pray for him, remember him at Mass and hope that he finally found a peace he was unable to find in his life.

One of the lessons I learned from this incident—among several lessons—was a very hard  lesson on living with the threat of real violence. Violence, I realize, is something most of us don’t even consider in our lives. It very rarely rears its ugly head in our lives. But let me tell you, when it does, it is terrible. And you are not the same person afterward that you were before. 

And also, very importantly, we realize that violence is not always expressed physically. Violence can be expressed in multiple ways, including through intimidation, bullying and downright terror.  There’s no getting around violence in our lives.  We see it in the news. We, as a community here in Fargo, have seen it in the very recent shooting of Officer Jason Moszer and in the suicide of his assailant.

And even today, in our scriptures readings, we get some violent images.  First, let’s take a look at the reading from Genesis. In it, we find God making a covenant with Abram (soon to be called Abraham).  God commands Abram to sacrifice these different animals, to cut them in half and to separate them.

Violent and strange, yes. But the really strange part of the reading is the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch passing between the pieces.

If we don’t know the back story—if we don’t understand the meaning of the cut up animals—then the story makes little sense.  It’s just another gruesome, violent story from the Hebrew scriptures.

But if we examine what covenant is all about, then the story starts taking on a new meaning. Covenant of course is not a word we hear used often anymore. In fact, none of us use it except when talking about religious things. But a covenant is very important in the scriptures. A covenant is a binding agreement. And when one enters into a covenant with God, essentially that bound agreement is truly bound.

In the days of Abram, when one made a covenant with someone, it was common practice for that person entering the agreement to cut up an animals and then to stand in the middle of the cut-up pieces. Essentially what they were saying by doing so was: “let this happen to me if I break our covenant.”

Let this violence come upon me if I break what we have sworn.  What we find happening in our reading this morning is that it is not Abram standing in the midst of those cut-up animals. Rather it is God.  God is saying to Abram that if I ever break this covenant with you let happen to me what has happened to these animals. God is saying to Abram: “my word is good. If this relationship between the two of us I breaks down it is not I who breaks the covenant.”

As Scot McKnight writes in his wonderful book, 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed: “What appears to us as gruesome was normal for Abraham; what was great was how graphic God got in the act of promise.”

Then, we come to our Gospel reading. Here too, we find a sense of impending violence.

 The Pharisees ominously come to tell Jesus that he is in danger from Herod.  This is real danger. Life-threatening danger.  And how does Jesus respond to this danger and impending violence?  He is not concerned at all over Herod or even the danger that he himself is in. His concern is for Jerusalem—for the city which, no doubt, was in sight as he was speaking. His concern is for the city he is about to enter and in which he knows he will meet his death. His violent death.  

As he does so, Jesus does something at this moment that really is amazing. He laments.  He uses words similar to those found in the lamenting psalms. He uses poetry.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

It is beautiful.  And it is powerful.  It’s incredible poetry.  Knowing what he knew—knowing that in Jerusalem he will be betrayed and murdered—Jesus laments. He knows that what essentially is going to happen in Jerusalem is what happened while Abram slept. In Jerusalem, God will once again stand in the midst of a shattered body and say to God’s people (as McKnight puts it): “I will remain faithful. My word is good.”

Lamenting is one of those things we don’t like to think about as Christians.  After all, it is a form of complaining. And we don’t like to complain. We, for the most part, shrug our shoulders and soldier on. And when it comes to our relationship with God, we certainly never think about complaining to God.

But the fact is, although we find it hard to admit at times, we do actually despair occasionally.  Even if we might not actually say it, we sometimes secretly do find ourselves crying out in despair, saying, if to no one else than ourselves, the words from our psalm today:

“Deliver me not into the hands of my adversaries.”

Let me tell you—that has often been prayer. It was definitely my prayer nine years ago with that stalker!

“Deliver me not in the hands of those who hate me.”

It’s good, honest language and it’s good to be honest about those negatives feelings we feel occasionally. It’s a strange moment when, as we examine our scriptures readings for today, and we ask ourselves: who do I relate to the most from our scriptures, that we find ourselves relating more to the cut-up animals than anyone else.  

It’s hard to be in such a place.  It’s hard to realize: people out there hate me, or don’t like me, or want to do me real harm.

So, what do we do in those moments?  Well, most of us just simply close up.  We put up a wall and we swallow that fear and maybe that anger and we let it fester inside us.  For the most part, we tend to deny it.

But what about those feelings in relationship to God? Well, again, we probably don’t recognize our fear or our anger or our pain before God nor do we bring them before God.

And that is where Jesus, in today’s Gospels, and those lamenting Psalms come in.  It is in those moments when we don’t bring our fear, our anger and our frustration before God, that we need those verses like the one we encounter in today’s  Gospel and Psalm. When we look at what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel and what the psalmist is saying today’s Psalm, we realize that, for them, it was natural to bring everything before God. It didn’t matter what it was.  And I think this is the best lesson we can learn from our Gospel reading today.

Jesus is letting us see his fear and his sadness.  Jesus is letting us see the fear he has in knowing that he, in a sense, has become the sacrifice that must be cut in two as part of the covenant God has made with us.  He is letting us see him for what he is about to be, a victim of violence.

In fact, Jesus lays it all out before God and us. He wails and complains and lays himself bare before God.   He is blatantly honest in his lamenting.  

The fact is: sometimes we do fear and despair.  I despaired and feared when I had to deal with that weird sort of violence in my own life… I despaired and feared when it seemed I was alone in the face of all of that.  Sometimes we do want to pray to God,

“Hide not your face from me…”

It is in those sometimes awful moments, that it is completely all right to complain to God. It is all right to vent and open ourselves completely to God.  Because, the important thing here is not how we are praying or even what we are praying for.  It is important that, even in our fear, in our pain, in our despair, in our horror at the gruesomeness and violence we find in this world, that we come to God.  We come before God as an imperfect person, full of insecurities, exposed and vulnerable.

Take what it is hurting you and bothering you and release it. Let it out before God. Be honest with God. Because God knows. God has stood in the midst of that violence.  God, in Jesus, has experienced that violence first hand.

And what we might sometimes find in those moments of complaining and ranting is that the words coming out of our mouths are not ugly, bitter words at all.

But sometimes the words coming out of our mouths in those moments of despair are beautiful poetry. Sometimes, even in those moments, God takes our fear-filled words and turns them into diamonds in our mouths.  See what we find in this morning’s Psalm.  After all that complaining, we find the Psalmist able to sing,

“O tarry and await the LORD’s pleasure;

be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord.”

See. Diamonds. 

So, when we pray these psalms together and when we come across those scriptures full of violence that might take us by alarm, recognize in them what they truly are—honest prayers before God. Let us follow the example of Jesus, who even in the face of violence and death, was still able to open his heart and his soul in song and poetry.  More importantly, let us, as Jesus himself did over and over again in his life,  pray those psalms when we are afraid or angry or frustrated.  Let the Psalms help us to release our own anger to the God who loves us and knows us more completely than anyone else.

In the shattered, cut-open pieces of our lives, God, as a bright light, passes back and forth.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that even in that “deep and terrifying darkness” God appears to us as a light. All we have to do is recognize God in that midst of that darkness. And in doing so, all we can sometimes do is open our mouths and let them the poems within us sing out to our God.

1 Lent

February 14, 2016

Luke 4.1-13

+ Lent is a strange time. It’s so different than the rest of the Church year, for me anyway. Because, what we’re forced to do in Lent is do something I don’t like doing sometimes.

I’m not talking about fasting or confession or giving up something for Lent.  No, what Lent forces me to do that I don’t really want to do is: look in the mirror. And not just look—but really look—honestly, bluntly—in the mirror.

That is not fun to do. It is not a pleasant experience to look at ourselves honestly and bluntly in the mirror. It is not fun to confront ourselves. It’s probably easier for most of us to confront the Devil—however we might view this personification of evil—in our own lives.

But, if you notice in our Gospel reading for today, that  three-fold commandment of Jesus is all about looking in the mirror and confronting ourselves. We find Jesus repudiating the Devil’s temptations with some strongly worded quotes from Scripture:

“One does not live by bread alone”

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only [God]”

and

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

When we look at them, these commandments are really all about us. About me—the ego.  The Devil becomes this almost peripheral character in our reading, if you notice. He’s kind of like a whispering shadow at the edge of the story. The main characters of this story are, of course, Jesus and us.

So, in our Gospel reading, we hear first that we do not live by bread alone.  Looking in that mirror, looking at ourselves, we find that, yes, honestly, we’ve had too much bread—too many carbs—too much of everything.  This season of Lent is the prime time for us to look long and hard at our eating practices.

For the most people, we simply eat without giving a second thought to what we’re eating or why we’re eating it. And this goes for drinking too.   Certainly we have doctors who tell us that this is one of the leading causes of a good many of our health problems in this country.  Nutrition. Food. And too much food. And too much bad food.

When we realize how high the rate of obesity and related illnesses are, we know that food really is a major factor in our lives.  When we look at issues like obesity and eating disorders and alcoholism and all kinds of addictions, we realize that there is often a psychological reason for our abuse of food or alcohol.

We do eat and drink for comfort. We do eat physically or partake of others things thinking that it will sustain us emotionally. We put food or drink into that place in which God should suffice. A time of fasting is a time for us to break that habit and to nudge ourselves into realizing that what should be sustaining us spiritually is the spiritual food we receive from God.

Then, we hear “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only [God].” Here again is a major temptation for us. Let’s face it, for us: the world revolves around us. Around me. And one of the sources of our greatest unhappiness is when we realize others don’t feel that way.

We want people to notice us, to like us.  Ideally, we would like to have people fall at our feet and adore us. We have all thought about what it would be like to be noticed—truly noticed—when we enter a room, like a movie star at the Oscar’s. OK. Maybe that’s a bit extreme. But, just think about it for a moment. Look at how we feel when we send an email—and there’s no response. Or when we post something meaningful on Facebook—and no one likes it. I hate that!

But, it’s not about others. That’s all about me and my ego. And I’m the only one angry or frustrated. And I put myself in this position. Yes, I might be mad at others, but it’s ultimately MY fault for feeling this way.

We are all susceptible to self-centeredness, to that charming belief that the world revolves me—the individual.  That, we believe, will make us truly happy.  If we can be fully accepted, fully loved and appreciated.

But Jesus again nudges us away from that strange form of self-idolatry and reminds us that there is actually someone who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows our thoughts better than we do.  We are truly loved, truly accepted, truly appreciated—by God. And we shouldn’t worry about the rest. Rather than falling to the self-delusion of believing our world revolve around ourselves, we must center our lives squarely and surely on God.

Finally, we are warned not to put the Lord our God to the test.  We’ve all done this as well. We have railed at God and shaken our fists at God and bargained with God. We have promised things to God we have no intention of truly keeping. We have all said to God, “If you do this for me, I promise I will [insert promise here].”

Again, like all the previous temptations, this one also revolves around self-centeredness and selfishness.  This one involves us controlling God, making God do what we want God to do.  This one involves us treating God like a magic genie or a wishing pond.

I’ve done this. I’ve been here. I’ve shaken that fist at God and railed loudly at God.

The realization we must take away from this final temptation is that, yes, God always answers our prayers. But the answer is not always what we want. Sometimes, it’s yes. Sometimes it’s no. Sometimes it’s not yet.

But what we fail to realize in all of this is that those moments in which God does grant us the answer to prayer in the way we wanted, it is only purely out of God’s goodness and God’s care for the larger outcome.  It has nothing to do what we do.  We cannot manipulate God and make God do what we want.  None of us are in the position to do that.  And if we had a God that we could do that to, I’m not certain I would truly want to serve that God.

These are the temptations we should be pondering during this Lenten season.  When I said earlier that these confessions of Jesus are the basis for our understanding of Lent, they really are.  Each of these statements by Jesus are essentially jumping off points for us as we ponder our relationship with God, with each other and with ourselves during this season. What Jesus experienced in that desert, we too experience this Lent—and at many other times in our lives. The confrontation with the Devil in the desert, is often a confrontation with ourselves in the mirror. It is a confrontation with that difficult and dark side of ourselves—that gossipy, self-centered, controlling, manipulative person we sometimes are.

These ego-centric behaviors really don’t promote our egos. They actually hurt our egos in the long-run. Yes, we might have full stomachs, Yes, we might be loved and appreciated and accepted, yes, we would have a fairy-godmother-God who grants all our wishes—but we would not ultimately be very happy.  We would still want more and more. But, in our core of cores—in our very spirits—we would still be incomplete and unfulfilled.

At some point during Lent, our job is to stop gazing in the mirror and to turn toward God.  Our job is to recognize this God who does truly grant us everything we really need and want, just maybe not in the way WE think those things should be given to us.   It is for that realization that we should be thankful during this season of Lent.

So, let us, when emerge from the desert, do so re-focused—not on ourselves, but on the God who truly does provide us with everything we need in this life, and the life to come.

Listening to Sufjan Stevens’ “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”

Listening to Sufjan Stevens’

“No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”

What we long for

has turned from us,

revealing its long backside

and its even longer shadow.

And still,

even here,

a voice as pristine

as distilled water

flows. It murmurs

in this desolate place,

which we find so familiar

and so terrible

The voice causes

that which we long for

to pause,

to glance back for a moment

into the agonizing wake

it leaves. From

that raised-up place,

from that agony and blood

above us, there

is movement and recognition.

There is a moment of

distraction from what

must be accomplished

and fulfilled.

In this awful place, in

this long and exhausting

realm, it is the voice

that sustains.

It ripples and

cuts through the murk.

It is then—

the curtain torn

the hands wrung out,

the knees bruised to

the color of monarch-wings—

the song ends,

and we can stand up

from the dark, bloody earth

in a groping manner

and shiver.

                                                                         Copyright (c) 2016

Ash Wednesday

February 10, 2016

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

+ Fourteen years ago—in 2002—Ash Wednesday fell on February 13. On that Wednesday, I was here, at St. Stephen’s. My friend, Andrea, and I had eaten supper at Juano’s that night and came over for the Ash Wednesday mass. I wasn’t a priest yet. But, I was, to be bluntly honest, in a bad place in my life on that Ash Wednesday. I had just been laid off from a job. And physically  I was not feeling well. Later that week, I would have to face that fact that something physically was not right in my life. And a week later to the day, on February 20, I was diagnosed with cancer.

It was a very hard Lent for me that year. For some reason, I think of that Ash Wednesday often in my life. It was an important night for me.  I remember, on that night in 2002, that I had made a concentrated resolve to change my life, to “turn my life around.” And just when I thought that was exactly what I was doing, the bottom dropped out.  

Not only did something bad happen to me. Something life-threatening happened to me. And I was faced not only with the unpleasantness of life. I was faced with sickness.  And death. My own death.

Maybe that’s why that Ash Wednesday and that Lent of 2002 was so important to me.  Because, let’s face it: that’s what Ash Wednesday and Lent are all about.  Ash Wednesday—and these ashes we are using tonight—are also ways in which we too face these harsh realities of our lives. They are reminders that we, one day, will die. I hate to be the one to tell you that news, just in case you hadn’t realized that before.  We are all, one day, going to die.

The traditional phrase for a reminder of our death is Momento Mori. Back “in the day”—we’re talking the medieval and renaissance day—it was common for people to keep some kind of momenti mori around—a reminder of death. Often, that was a human skull- a real human skull. Of course, when you think of it, what makes a better reminder of death than a skull? In those days, one was encouraged to look at the skull as one would look into a mirror, realizing that what one was looking at was really themselves.

Well, tonight, we have our own momento mori. These ashes that we are about to receive are, truly our momento mori—our reminder that we are al going to die one day.  To some extent, as morbid as it might seem, I think it wouldn’t hurt us to think about and ponder such things in our own lives.

In our lives, we do go about oblivious to death. We go around as though we are invincible, that we are eternal, that this moment in which we are living will last forever.  As much as we might wish for that and hope for that, the fact is, it is simply not the case. We don’t realize that we are bones and ash essentially.

In this service this evening, we are reminded in no uncertain terms that one day each every person in this church this evening will stop breathing and will die.  It’s sobering, but it’s what we are reminded of this evening and throughout this season of Lent. We will stop breathing. We will die.  Our bodies will be made into something that will be disposed of—either by cremation or burial in the ground.

In my life as a priest, I have presided over many, many funerals, with embalmed bodies and cremated bodies. And, let me tell you, doing so certainly puts into perspective the fact that we are all physically disposable. With cremation so prevalent these days, out momemto mori is not so much a human skull anymore. Our momento mori is nowadays ashes.

I thought about that a lot back during Lent in 2002.  I can tell you that that Lent was one of the most difficult Lents of my entire life. But it was also, I have to say, one Lent in which the real meaning of this season was driven home for me.

As I went through the shock of diagnosis, the emotional and physical roller coaster of treatment, I found myself thinking a lot about the fact that I will one day die. 

And I thought a lot about what comes after all that. I thought about where I was going and what that place toward which I was going was going to be like.  I thought about my relationship with God, about how faithfully (or unfaithfully) I had followed Jesus in my life. And I thought about Jesus’ own encounter with his mortality in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Sometimes, as horrible as experiences like cancer are, they can be gateway events. They can be events in which we find ourselves opened up to a new understanding and new perspectives on the world and our relationship 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 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 and in our relationship with others. It isn’t easy to look at ourselves as disposable physical beings that can so easily be 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.  Yes, our mortality is frightening.  Yes, it is sobering and depressing to think that this life we 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 ashes and the skull were the end of our story. It would be sad and sorrowful if all we are reminded of when we ponder these ashes is the finality of this life. It would be horrible if we were not able to see the momento moris of our lives as gateways to something larger and more wonderful.

But for us, death is a gateway. Death does lead not to eternal non-existence, bur rather to eternal existence.  The darkness of death leads to the glorious light of Easter.

What I like about Lent is that is shows us that, even though we are living in the glorious light of Easter, bestowed on us at our Baptism, it’s not always sunshine and flowers and frivolous happiness all the time. If our Christian faith was only that, it would be a frivolous faith. It wouldn’t be taken seriously because it would ignore a very important part of our lives. But Lent shows us that, as Christians, we are to reflect about where we have failed—where we have failed God, failed others and failed ourselves. And it reminds us that death—death of our loved ones and our own deaths—is simply a fact of life.  It is a part of who we are and what we are. It forces us to realize that we are wholly dependent upon God for our life and for what comes after death.

Of course Ash Wednesday is not a time to disparage our bodies, to believe that our bodies are some kind of prisons for our souls. 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. Lent is not a time for us to deny our bodies or see our bodies as sinful, disgraceful things. Rather it is simply a matter of not making our bodies our treasures.  

Jesus tells us in tonight’s Gospel not to lay up our treasures on earth, in corrupting things, but to store up our treasures in heaven. A lot of us put more store in our bodies than we need. We sometimes don’t take great joy in our bodies at all, but rather abuse our bodies or become inordinately obsessed with our bodies and in what used to be called “the way of the flesh.” We eat too much. We drink too much. We get lazy sometimes. And we let our bodies go sometimes.

This time of Lent is a time for us to find a balance with our physical selves as well as with our spiritual selves.  That is really the true meaning of Lent.
Where are our treasures?  Are they here, in the corruptible, or in they in the incorruptible? This is the question we must ask. This is the question we should be pondering throughout this season.
So, as we head into this season of Lent, let it be a truly holy time. Let it be a time in which we ponder whatever momento mori we might have in our lives. 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.

3 Years Vegetarian

When I went vegetarian for the first time for any real length of time, it was March 1, 1994. I was 24 years old, and doing so was an accomplishment for someone who thought he had no discipline about food choices. But for 3 years, 11 months and 9 days, I was a very faithful and strict vegetarian. One of the biggest regrets of my youth was giving up my vegetarian diet in 1998.

When I look back as to why I gave it up, it had to do mainly with my health. To be blunt, I wasn’t feeling well, and I blamed my diet. My blame was partly true. It WAS my diet, but it was not my vegetarianism per se, I now realize, that was making me sick. It was all the cheese and dairy I had been using to replace the meat I had given up in 1994. But in 1998, I was still under the impression that dairy was not a bad thing.

Sadly, if I thought I wasn’t feeling well in 1998, I had no idea what was in store for me. Four years later, of course, came my cancer diagnosis. I do believe my diet had something to do with my cancer. But those realizations would only come much later, after much more trial and error.

Over the years I would go back to be a vegetarian, following the same patterns: give up meat, eat more cheese and dairy. Ethically, I still did not think that eating dairy was an issue. I was still living under the impression that cows needed milking, so partaking of milk and cheese certainly doesn’t hurt them. And, although I always felt slightly better as a vegetarian than as a meat-eater, I still believed that any issues with my health had little to do with my diet.

Three years ago I decided finally to give up meat for good, after several years of struggle. Meat was just no longer tasting good for me. I found myself suffering minor bouts of food poising (or suffering from symptoms like food poisoning) more and more often. And my body just wasn’t able to take it as it used to. So, after coming home from my annual Florida vacation, I had one final chicken burrito (of which I ate only a few bites). That poor chicken was the last meat I have eaten since.

It would take me another nine months or so to finally decide that it was the dairy that was making me feel somewhat rotten. Only then did the whole diet start coming together and my health improved drastically.

But, for now, I celebrate this first step down that road to health. I am thankful for this day and all it holds for me.

The big anniversary, of course, will happen on January 11, 2017, when I will make it past that 3 years, 11 months and 9 days threshold I didn’t make it to in my twenties.  

3 Epiphany

January 24, 2016

Luke 4.14-21

 +A few months, you might remember, I shared a poem by the German poet and theologian, Dorothee Soelle. It was a poem called “Credo,” and it received quite a bit of positive feedback. 

Here it is again:

Credo

by Dorothee Soelle

(adapted by Jamie Parsley)  

I believe in a God

who created earth

as something to be molded

and formed

and tried,

who rules not by laws

written in stone

with no real consequences

nor with distinction  between those

who have and those who have not

experts or idiots

those who dominate and those who are dominated

I believe in a God

who demands that creation

protests and questions God,

and who works to change

the failures of creation

by any means.

I believe in Jesus

who, as “someone who could do nothing”

as we all are

worked to change every injustice

against God and humanity.

In him, I can now see

how limited we are,

how ignorant we can be,

how uncreative we have been,

how everything attempted

falls short

when we do not do as he did.

There is not a day

in which I do not fear

he died for nothing.

Nothing sickens me more

than the thought

that he lies at this moment

dead and buried

in our ornate churches,

that we have failed him

and his revolution

because we feared instead

those self-absorbed authorities

who dominate and oppress.

I believe in a Christ

who is not dead

but who lives

and is resurrected in us

and in the flame of freedom

that burns away

prejudice and presumption,

crippling fear and destroying hatred.

I believe in his ongoing revolution

and the reign of peace and justice that will follow.

I believe in a Spirit

who came to us with Jesus,

and with all those

with whom we share

this place of tears

and hunger

and violence

and darkness—

this city of God—

this earth.

I believe in peace

which can only be created

with the hands of justice.

I believe in a life of meaning and purpose

for all creation.

And I believe

beyond all doubt

in God’s future world

of love and peace.

Amen.      

One of the things I did not mention about Soellee was what KIND of theology it was she followed.

Dorothee Soelle was a Liberation Theologian. And when I first read her back when I was a teenager, Liberation Theology was not only being widely discussed, it was also quite controversial.  (Which is why I liked it, of course).  Soellee’s books and poems were very important to me back then. And they still are.

And so is Liberation Theology.  Liberation Theology jarred me out of my old way of thinking about the Gospels and forced me to look at the message of Jesus as truly a proclamation of liberation to the poor and the disenfranchised.    Liberation Theology, which originally focused on the poor in Latin America, is now much more than it was back in those early days. Liberation Theology has spread and been defined and redefined many times.  It now encompasses liberation theology for women, for GLBT people, black people, for Asian people, for African people.  It’s an important theological expression. The current Pope, Francis, is no doubt a child of this movement, although he is very careful not to associate it with per se.

Back in those early days, Liberation Theology and Marxism were often used together and, as a result, Liberation Theology was seen being ultra-radical.  Whatever the case, Liberation Theology is important.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find this seed for all liberation theology.  I’ll get into that in a second. First of all, I want to stress that my view of liberation theology has not been political, per se.  I know that it’s easy to let this message of Jesus become a political statement.

I once even heard a pastor preach on the fact that Jesus died as a political prisoner, not a religious one—that ultimately the message of Jesus was not religious at all but political. As someone who daily ponders the message of Jesus, who wrestles with it, meditates on it, and who tries, more often not failing in my attempt, to live out the message of Jesus, I am solidly convinced that Jesus’ message was and remains purely religious. It’s all about our relationship with God and with one another. That doesn’t mean that this religious understanding of care for the poor and oppressed shouldn’t fire our political understanding, but I remain firmly convinced that it is ultimately religious.

So, back to our Gospel for today. By Jesus standing and proclaiming who is and what he has come to do, he really sets the standard for us as well.

We too should proclaim our faith in God in the same way. Now, as I say that I don’t mean we should be obnoxious and fundamentalist in our views. I think too many Christians proclaim themselves as Christian with their lips, but don’t live it out in their lives and by example (and I am guilty of this myself).

As the great theologian Richard Rohr famously says, “We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of “belonging and believing” instead of a religion of transformation.”

Because the Spirit of God was upon Jesus, and because he was appointed to bring good news to the poor, that truly becomes our mission as well because we follow Jesus. Because Jesus breathes God’s Spirit upon us, that same mission that the Spirit worked in Jesus is working in us as well. And we should, like Jesus, stand up and proclaim that mission to others. We, like Jesus, should breathe God’s Spirit on others. That is our mission as followers of Jesus.

How do we do that? Jesus has empowered us to do what he says in today’s Gospel:  We are to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Well, that sounds great. But…how do I do that in my life? It’s easy for priests and poets to do that, you might say. But how do I do that in my own life?  What does that mean to us—to us who are here, in this place?

This is what it means: It means that we are not to go about with blinders on regarding those with whom we live and work.  It means that we are surrounded by a whole range of captives—people who are captive to their own prisons of depression and alcohol and drugs and conforming to society or whatever. Our job in the face of that captivity it to help them in any way we can to be released.  

It means that we are not to go about blind and not to ignore those who are blinded by their own  selfishness and self-centeredness.  I am still so amazed by how many people (especially in the Church, amazingly enough) who are so caught up in themselves.  (I, like all of us, have been guilty of this)  I really think self-centeredness is a kind of blindness.

One of the greatest sins in the Church today is not all the things Bishops and church leaders say is dividing the Church. The greatest sin in the Church today:

Hubris.

Self-centeredness. Selfishness. That “Jesus and Me” attitudes that essentially throws everyone else to wayside.  Hubris causes us to look so strongly at ourselves (and at a false projection of ourselves) that we see nothing else but ourselves.  

By reaching out others, by becoming aware of what others are dealing with, by helping others, we truly open our eyes and see beyond ourselves.  When we do these things, we are essentially letting the oppressed go free.  And I would add here that our job isn’t only to do this for others.  It’s also to do this for ourselves.  Just as people become self-centered, so conversely I think some people also deny themselves so completely that they slowly and systematically destroy themselves.  They neglect themselves.  Which anyone who does ministry on a regularly basis knows we simply cannot do.  We cannot help others if we are not taking care of ourselves to some extent.  This liberation from oppression, blindness and captivity is just as clearly proclaimed to ourselves as it is to others.

It’s all about balance.

Finally, we are called to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  This is simply the icing on the cake.  Once we have proclaimed liberation, we must then proclaim God’s blessings on us.  God favors a liberated people.  God does so , because God can only effectively work through a people who have been liberated from captivity, blindness and oppression.

This to me is where the heart of true liberation theology lies.  Although I still believe that liberation theology needs to speak to the poor and oppressed of the world, I also have realized quite acutely that the poor and oppressed of our world—here and now—are not only those who are poor financially.  The poor and oppressed of our world are those who are morally, spiritually and emotionally poor, as well.  

The oppressed are still women and Gay and Lesbian and bisexual and transgender and asexual people and those who don’t fit the social structures of our society.  They are the elderly and the lonely.  They are the criminals and those who are leading quietly desperate lives in our very midst.  We, as followers of Jesus, are to proclaim freedom to all those people who are on the margins of our lives both personally and collectively.  And often those poor oppressed people we need to be proclaiming this year of the Lord’s Favor to might be our own very selves.

This is the year of the Lord’s favor.  I am not talking this particular Year of Our Lord. I am talking about this moment and all moments in which we, anointed and filled with God’s Spirit, go out to share the Good News of Jesus by word and example.

This moment we have been given is holy. And it is our job is to proclaim the holiness of this moment. When we do so, we are making that year of the Lord’s favor a reality again and again.

So, let us proclaim the good news.  Let us bring sight to the blind, and hope to those who are oppressed and hopeless.  Let us be liberation theologians in our deeds to those who are crying out (in various ways) for liberation which only Jesus and his followers can bring.  And when we do, we will find the message of Jesus being fulfilled in our very midst.

2 Epiphany

Annual Meeting Sunday

January 17, 2016

Isiah 62.1-5; John 2.1-11

+ Today is our Annual Meeting Sunday. And I’m always pleased when we can get together to celebrate St. Stephen’s. There’s a lot to celebrate, after all.

Now, I know some of you might be groaning. Not another celebration, you’re thinking.  We, that’s what we do here. We do that a lot here. And we do it very, very well. It’s very natural to us. We celebrate at the drop of a hat here. And that’s a very good thing to do. After all, God is doing very good things here. We should celebrate that.

Now, I know it might not seem like there’s a lot to celebrate maybe in our larger Church. This week, of course, the Primates of the Anglican Communion met—the primates are the presiding bishops of each church body of the Anglican Communion. The meeting was, for the most part…let’s say…a bit disappointing.  We, in the Episcopal Church, were reprimanded by them in that meeting for our so-called “breech” of Catholicism by our vote last summer for marriage equality. And as a result, we had our wrist slapped.  And a collective finger was wiggled at us. And we were scolded.

*shrug*

So be it.

As Bishop Chilton Knudson of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland wrote to her diocese:

“The sky is not falling!”

It’s discouraging, yes. It’s disheartening. It’s disappointing to see that equality is still not a common denominator in the Church.

For us at St. Stephen’s, that’s no surprise. We’ve been here before. But, we know this: We as a congregation certainly made the right choice for us in what did in December.  We sided with Christ and his Gospel, as we try to live them out in our congregational life.  And oftentimes, as I have said again and again, choosing in such a way often means receiving wrist slaps (or much worse). It often means treading through discouragement and disappointment. It often means being seen by others as representing everything wrong so we can do what we feel is right.

But, God is doing very good things for us, despite what Bishops and Archbishops might say.  Well, there was another Bishop who said some good things. Our own presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, probably said it best—and his words are words that could be used for everything we do and have done here at St. Stephen’s:

"Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all. While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.”

All are one in Christ. See, the sky is not falling In fact, look! There’s a wide and beautiful sky before us. And we should celebrate that.

In our Gospel reading for today, we also get another celebration.  It is the wedding at Cana. It’s such a great celebration the good wine has run out and the wedding feast is about to crash quickly. Yup, I’ve been at those weddings too. But Jesus of course—as always—saves the day.  What does he do? He turns water into wine.  And when he does, there is a renewed sense of joy and exultation.  

That I think is the gist of this experience from our gospel reading.   It is not just some magic trick Jesus performs to wow people.  It is not some action he performs at the whim of his mother.  He performs this miracle and in doing so instills joy in those gathered there.

But more than that, by doing this he does what we always does when he performs a miracle.  He performs miracles not just for the benefit of those at the wedding.  It is for our benefit of us as well.  Because by performing this miracle, he is giving us a glimpse of what awaits us all.  

If we look closely at the story and at some of the details contained in it, we will find clues of the deeper meaning behind his actions.

First of all, let’s look at those jars of water.   This is probably the one area we don’t give a lot of thought to. But those jars are important. They are not just regular jars of water. They are jars of water for the purification rites that accompany eating in the Jewish tradition.  That water is essentially sacred. We talked about this last week when we talked about the waters of baptism. It is used to purify people and things. A good Jew at that time would wash their hands in this water so they could eat their food.

There’s a wonderful phrase that perfectly captures what Jesus did: he turns the “waters of purity into wine.” And not just any wine. But abundant wines that bring about a joy among those gathered. 

In a sense, what Jesus has done is he has taken the party up a notch.  What was already probably a good party is now an incredible party.  It’s a beautiful image and one that I think we can all relate to.

And I think it speaks loudly to us on this Annual Meeting Sunday. We, at St. Stephen’s are planning this coming year. We are looking ahead.  We are planning a year in which there are so many great and wonderful opportunities and possibilities for us as a congregation.

God has blessed us—and blessed us abundantly, here. Look around at all the wonderful ministry we are experiencing. Look around at all the improvements and the good and positives changes that are happening here.

When God blesses, it is not just a little blessing here and there.  It is abundant blessings.  It is like the purification water turned into abundant wine.

The best part of this view of the wedding at Cana is that Jesus is saying to us that, yes, there is joy here in the midst of us, but a greater joy awaits us. Greater joys await us in our future together here at St. Stephen’s   And an even greater joy waits when the Kingdom of God breaks through into our midst.  

When these things happen, it is very much like a wonderful wedding feast.   When they happen,  the waters of purification are turned into the best-tasting wine because we will no longer have to worry about issues like purity. When we see these wonderful things happening in our midst, we can look closely at it and see God in our midst.

We can certainly see God working in the ministry we do together here at St. Stephen’s.  There are abundant blessings in our midst.  They are surrounding us on this day in which we gather to plan another year.

As we plan another year of looking for and finding Christ in our midst.  Another year of following Jesus in all that we do.  And as we do, there is a sense of joy at this—a joy very much like the joy one feels at a wedding feast—that is, a wedding in which true love is celebrated and blessed. That is our joy today. That is the way we celebrate—and celebrate well—here.

So, let us look and find Christ in this water turned to wine.  Let us continue to find Christ in all the wonderful blessings we have been granted here in our congregation and in our own lives.  And when we do, we too will be amazed at all the wonderful and amazing ways God has blessed us and supplied us to continue to do what we do best—to love, and to love fully and completely. To accept and to accept radically.

The sky is not falling. There is beauty, even today, even despite the bitter cold, despite the hardships of life, despite the scolding from those in authority, despite the frustrations of ministry.

The prophet Isaiah says in our reading today,

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,

And a royal diadem in the hand of God.

“You shall no more be termed Forsaken,

And your land shall no more be termed Desolate…

For the Lord delights in you.”

God delights in us.   How amazing is that?  God delights in us! That is what we should be celebrating today!  Amen.