Sermon delivered Sunday, May 25, 2014 (at the 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. services; bishop's annual visitation at 8:45 and 11:00 meant the bishop was preaching) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21)
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
This line from our reading from 1 Peter today is one of my favorite scriptures on the topic of evangelism.
Now, I know that the subject of evangelism can make some of us in the Episcopal Church uncomfortable – we tend to associate evangelism with the street corner preacher telling everyone to “repent or perish,” with people who bring a message of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We tend to think that evangelism is synonymous with that triumphalist message that Ann was talking about in her sermon last week – a message that says Christians have the market cornered on knowledge of God and everyone else is damned.
Many of us who are not cradle Episcopalians chose this church because we liked the fact that it is not about using the Bible as a weapon and shoving our faith down other people’s throats, so whenever the topic of evangelism comes up, we get a little squirmy. Maybe we thought we left that behind with those “other” churches. But evangelism doesn’t have to be synonymous with those negative images. Evangelism simply means sharing the good news – the good news of Jesus’s resurrection and the content of his teachings. Evangelism is about bringing a positive message, a liberating message, a message of love and reconciliation. Evangelism is about sharing with others the reason for the hope that is in us, as 1 Peter says.
Many Episcopalians think about sharing their faith through their actions rather than through words. We certainly don’t want to be the street corner preacher, and we don’t want to push our faith on anyone else, so we figure we’ll just share our faith by example through the good deeds we do in the world. I’ve heard many people within the Episcopal Church – myself included! – reference St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement on evangelism to describe their approach: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” While there is deep wisdom in that statement about allowing our lives to be our testimonies, sometimes we hear that statement as an excuse never to use words. Instead of “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words,” we hear it as, “Preach the Gospel at all times; it’s not necessary to use words.” But that’s not what St. Francis was saying. It is necessary to use words sometimes. We lose something when, in our desire to not be like those overbearing street preachers, we go to the opposite extreme of never talking about our faith to others. For one thing, we cede the market to the street corner preachers because theirs are the only voices being heard. Our voices are silenced because we’re so focused on feeding the hungry and working for justice that we forget to talk about why we’re feeing the hungry and working for justice – what the faith is that motivates us to do this work.
If we don’t talk about why we’re living our lives the way we are, we really are not distinguishable from any number of other people who may be doing similar things. People of many other faiths and none can and do feed the hungry and work for justice – so those things do not make us unique as Christians, nor are they the definition of what it means to be Christian. What defines us as Christians is our faith in Jesus, and our commitment to follow him as our Lord. Yes, that commitment is fleshed out by the way we live our lives, but our actions in and of themselves cannot express the specific words of our faith. Our actions, by themselves, cannot literally say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We must use words to do that. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP 305) – notice that it says “by word and example” – not just “by example.”
We are reminded of this call to use words to share the content of our faith especially during this Easter season when we recall how the church spread throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century – all through people speaking to others about their faith, sharing the news of Jesus’s resurrection. The tradition of reading through the book of Acts during Easter season reminds us of the evangelism of the early church and how they spread the faith throughout their entire known world.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians, persuading them of the truth of the Christian message and inviting them to join the church. This speech has long been considered a model evangelism speech, because Paul meets the people where they are, acknowledging the truth in their own tradition, quoting some of their own poets, and working to rationally persuade them of the truth of his faith. While Paul certainly had his share of arrogance and triumphalism, tending to think his way was the only right way – whether he was persecuting the church or advocating for it – in this passage we see Paul at least willing to concede that others might have had some glimpse of the truth before Paul came on the scene, and presenting his argument in a way that is framed as good news – “I come to bring you more full knowledge of something that you yourselves have said you do not fully know.”
But even though Paul’s speech has been held up as a model for evangelism, I still prefer the approach in 1 Peter. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) The assumption behind this statement is that we are always ready to explain our faith to others, but in general, we wait for them to ask. And, it also assumes that they’re asking because of the way we’re living, because of something about us that is different, because of something they see in us that they wish they had. The impetus behind us sharing our faith comes not from our desire to “fix” others, but from others’ curiosity at how we can live our lives with such hope and faith.
Although Paul was a wonderful wordsmith, even he recognized that all the words in the world are worthless if they are not backed up by actions. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he says in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1). And Jesus says in our Gospel today that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). In another passage, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Words by themselves are not enough, just as actions by themselves are not enough. The way I read this statement from 1 Peter, we have to be truly “walking the walk” in order to earn the privilege of speaking about our faith. To me, this seems like a good recipe for ensuring a healthy balance between evangelism by word and evangelism by example. If we want to speak about our faith to others, our lives have to be saying something loudly enough that someone asks for us to translate.
But it also requires that we have done the intentional work of thinking about why we have faith, why we have hope – so that when someone asks us, we have an answer ready. Just because our usual modus operandi is to share our faith through our actions rather than through our words doesn’t mean that we therefore have no words to explain why we do what we do. When someone asks us about our faith, we should be ready to explain it to them. And we should be living in such a way that compels people to ask.
So what is the hope that is in you? What would you say if someone asked you how you can believe in God, about why Jesus is so important to you, about how you can live with faith and hope? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that is in you?
If you feel like you’re not sure what you’d say, or worry that you aren’t the most eloquent speaker in the world, remember that many of our biblical leaders felt the same way. Jesus reassures the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be with them, to lead them into all truth and to give them the words to say. So when someone asks, take a deep breath, ask for guidance from the Spirit, and tell them about your faith.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Easter Message: God goes beyond what would have been "enough" to lavish abundant blessings on us
Sermon delivered Saturday, April 19, 2014 (The Great Vigil of Easter, Year A) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Participating in Resurrection
Sermon delivered Sunday, April 6, 2014 (Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45)
Our readings for today seem to be getting a little ahead of themselves. They’re all about resurrection! God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones to bring them back to life, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and Paul tells us that “he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Romans 8:11).
Resurrection, bringing life from death, is everywhere in these readings. With the exception of the psalm, there’s hardly a word anywhere about our Lenten themes of sin and repentance. What’s going on here? If Easter is still two weeks away, why all this talk about resurrection in the middle of Lent?
Perhaps it is because we most need to remember the promise of resurrection during times of repentance. Whenever we stop to take a cold, hard look at the ways we are dead in our sins, we need to simultaneously remember the promise that we can and will be made alive through the Spirit of God working in us. The 40 days of Lent metaphorically recall Jesus’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and it is during our own wilderness periods that we are most aware of our need for resurrection. When we come face to face with our shortcomings and our mortality, we are most open to the gift of grace and new life that God offers to us. By anticipating the resurrection two weeks before we make it to Easter, our readings today remind us that God’s offer of new life is available even in the midst of the wilderness.
And these readings also remind us of something about resurrection that we don’t hear as clearly in the Easter passages – they remind us that God invites us to participate in the process of resurrection. In today’s passages, the people are not passive bystanders to God’s miraculous power to bring life from death; they actually join with God in bringing about resurrection.
Ezekiel joins with God in bringing new life to the dry bones by speaking the words God has given him to speak, and the bystanders in the Gospel join with Jesus in restoring Lazarus to life by moving away the stone from the grave and removing Lazarus’s burial clothes. [1] Clearly, the power to bring life from death is entirely God’s, but at least in these stories, God does not do so without involving others in the process. God could have showed Ezekiel a vision of the dry bones coming back to life without any required words or actions on Ezekiel’s part, and God could have moved the stone away from Lazarus’s tomb miraculously, without human involvement, and Lazarus could have walked out already free from his burial shroud. But for whatever reason, God didn’t do it that way. God chose to leave parts of the process for us to do.
It has become somewhat of a catch-phrase in modern theology to talk about people as being “co-creators with God.” This idea proposes that human beings partner with God in the maintenance of the created world and in bringing about God’s purposes in it. In contrast to a view that sees human beings as entirely passive because “God’s in control,” this theology insists that human beings are active partners with God in God’s activity in the world.
Although a common critique of this theology is that it ascribes too much power to humans, coming close to saying human beings are equal to God, the theologian who first coined the term, Phillip Hefner, actually used the phrase “created co-creator.” We are not just co-creators – as if we were fellow gods in the heavenly court – we are created co-creators. We are, in fact, creatures, and the creature is not greater than the creator.
But, because we are created in the image of God who is a creator, we are made to be creators as well. Our creative abilities – in the arts, in science and technology, in problem-solving – are seen as a stamp of the divine nature in us. This theology also emphasizes human freedom, because it says that God does not direct every little action that happens on earth, but gives us the freedom of self-determination. No, God does not need us to do anything, but rather than exert total and utter control over us, God chooses to leave parts of the process for us to do. To the extent that we do those things, we become a partner with God in the great work of the divine redemption of the world. It is an unequal partnership, to be sure, but it is a partnership all the same.
The people in our readings for today are examples of the created co-creator. They are partners – however unequal – with God in making resurrection happen. Ezekiel delivers the words, the bystanders in the Gospel roll away the stone and remove Lazarus’s burial clothes. They remind us that although God is fully capable of bringing about transformation without us, God often asks for our help in doing so. God gives us a role to play. God invites us to participate in the work of resurrection.
The actions that Jesus tells the people to perform in today’s Gospel reading are rather symbolic. His specific instructions to them are, “Take away the stone,” and “Unbind him and let him go.” Although we can assume the people were invited to do these things in a literal sense for very practical reasons, the stories in John’s Gospel always have a deeper symbolic meaning.
Jesus invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by taking away the stones – the obstacles in our lives and in the lives of others that prevent the power of God from reaching us. I’m sure we’ve all known people who have constructed such emotional walls around themselves that they shut out everyone around them, and even shut out God. We might have even done this in our own lives at some point. There is a saying of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, who relates that God said to him, “O Son of Being! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.” We must give love in order to be open to receiving love. If we do not take away the stones from the entrance to our hearts, the power of resurrection can in no way reach us.
Jesus also invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by doing the difficult work of unbinding the shroud of death – the painful memories, the negative self-talk, the grudges and resentments – whatever it is that keeps us bound to the ways of sin and death – he invites us to cut loose those cords so that we can experience and appreciate the full power of the liberation given to us in the resurrection. Even though he had been restored to life, Lazarus’s freedom was still restricted until the people unbound him and let him go. Likewise, even if we have received the gift of new life through the resurrection in our baptism, we too can remain bound by our old burial shroud of sin and death, unless we do our part in the resurrection process and work to loosen those bonds.
This partnering with God in the process of resurrection is not easy business. And we can’t do it alone. Just as Lazarus could not untie himself, and certainly could not have moved the stone away from his grave while he was still dead, so we too sometimes must rely on others to help us move the stones and unbind the shrouds in our lives. This is not to say that others can do it all for us, but that we need companions and guides as we do this work. And while others have a part to play in our liberation, we also have a part to play in theirs – in fact, the two are inextricably linked. As we strive to do this difficult work, this spiritual work of opening ourselves to God and others, of rolling away the stones and unbinding the shroud of death, we find that our best guides and companions on the way are those people who know something about rolling away stones and unbinding shrouds – those people who have been there and have found a way through.
So maybe it’s not so out of character to think about resurrection during Lent after all. For it is only when we have experienced resurrection in the midst of our own wilderness that we are able to joyfully claim our role as created co-creators in God’s great work of redemption in the world.
[1] Insight into the participatory nature of the Gospel passage came from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011): 101. I must give him credit for the inspiration behind the direction of and theme of this sermon.
Our readings for today seem to be getting a little ahead of themselves. They’re all about resurrection! God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones to bring them back to life, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and Paul tells us that “he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Romans 8:11).
Resurrection, bringing life from death, is everywhere in these readings. With the exception of the psalm, there’s hardly a word anywhere about our Lenten themes of sin and repentance. What’s going on here? If Easter is still two weeks away, why all this talk about resurrection in the middle of Lent?
Perhaps it is because we most need to remember the promise of resurrection during times of repentance. Whenever we stop to take a cold, hard look at the ways we are dead in our sins, we need to simultaneously remember the promise that we can and will be made alive through the Spirit of God working in us. The 40 days of Lent metaphorically recall Jesus’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and it is during our own wilderness periods that we are most aware of our need for resurrection. When we come face to face with our shortcomings and our mortality, we are most open to the gift of grace and new life that God offers to us. By anticipating the resurrection two weeks before we make it to Easter, our readings today remind us that God’s offer of new life is available even in the midst of the wilderness.
And these readings also remind us of something about resurrection that we don’t hear as clearly in the Easter passages – they remind us that God invites us to participate in the process of resurrection. In today’s passages, the people are not passive bystanders to God’s miraculous power to bring life from death; they actually join with God in bringing about resurrection.
Ezekiel joins with God in bringing new life to the dry bones by speaking the words God has given him to speak, and the bystanders in the Gospel join with Jesus in restoring Lazarus to life by moving away the stone from the grave and removing Lazarus’s burial clothes. [1] Clearly, the power to bring life from death is entirely God’s, but at least in these stories, God does not do so without involving others in the process. God could have showed Ezekiel a vision of the dry bones coming back to life without any required words or actions on Ezekiel’s part, and God could have moved the stone away from Lazarus’s tomb miraculously, without human involvement, and Lazarus could have walked out already free from his burial shroud. But for whatever reason, God didn’t do it that way. God chose to leave parts of the process for us to do.
It has become somewhat of a catch-phrase in modern theology to talk about people as being “co-creators with God.” This idea proposes that human beings partner with God in the maintenance of the created world and in bringing about God’s purposes in it. In contrast to a view that sees human beings as entirely passive because “God’s in control,” this theology insists that human beings are active partners with God in God’s activity in the world.
Although a common critique of this theology is that it ascribes too much power to humans, coming close to saying human beings are equal to God, the theologian who first coined the term, Phillip Hefner, actually used the phrase “created co-creator.” We are not just co-creators – as if we were fellow gods in the heavenly court – we are created co-creators. We are, in fact, creatures, and the creature is not greater than the creator.
But, because we are created in the image of God who is a creator, we are made to be creators as well. Our creative abilities – in the arts, in science and technology, in problem-solving – are seen as a stamp of the divine nature in us. This theology also emphasizes human freedom, because it says that God does not direct every little action that happens on earth, but gives us the freedom of self-determination. No, God does not need us to do anything, but rather than exert total and utter control over us, God chooses to leave parts of the process for us to do. To the extent that we do those things, we become a partner with God in the great work of the divine redemption of the world. It is an unequal partnership, to be sure, but it is a partnership all the same.
The people in our readings for today are examples of the created co-creator. They are partners – however unequal – with God in making resurrection happen. Ezekiel delivers the words, the bystanders in the Gospel roll away the stone and remove Lazarus’s burial clothes. They remind us that although God is fully capable of bringing about transformation without us, God often asks for our help in doing so. God gives us a role to play. God invites us to participate in the work of resurrection.
The actions that Jesus tells the people to perform in today’s Gospel reading are rather symbolic. His specific instructions to them are, “Take away the stone,” and “Unbind him and let him go.” Although we can assume the people were invited to do these things in a literal sense for very practical reasons, the stories in John’s Gospel always have a deeper symbolic meaning.
Jesus invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by taking away the stones – the obstacles in our lives and in the lives of others that prevent the power of God from reaching us. I’m sure we’ve all known people who have constructed such emotional walls around themselves that they shut out everyone around them, and even shut out God. We might have even done this in our own lives at some point. There is a saying of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, who relates that God said to him, “O Son of Being! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.” We must give love in order to be open to receiving love. If we do not take away the stones from the entrance to our hearts, the power of resurrection can in no way reach us.
 |
| Unbinding Lazarus |
This partnering with God in the process of resurrection is not easy business. And we can’t do it alone. Just as Lazarus could not untie himself, and certainly could not have moved the stone away from his grave while he was still dead, so we too sometimes must rely on others to help us move the stones and unbind the shrouds in our lives. This is not to say that others can do it all for us, but that we need companions and guides as we do this work. And while others have a part to play in our liberation, we also have a part to play in theirs – in fact, the two are inextricably linked. As we strive to do this difficult work, this spiritual work of opening ourselves to God and others, of rolling away the stones and unbinding the shroud of death, we find that our best guides and companions on the way are those people who know something about rolling away stones and unbinding shrouds – those people who have been there and have found a way through.
So maybe it’s not so out of character to think about resurrection during Lent after all. For it is only when we have experienced resurrection in the midst of our own wilderness that we are able to joyfully claim our role as created co-creators in God’s great work of redemption in the world.
[1] Insight into the participatory nature of the Gospel passage came from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011): 101. I must give him credit for the inspiration behind the direction of and theme of this sermon.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Reflections on "Ashes to Go" - an answer to the critics
 |
| Our rector, Bob Cowperthwaite, and parishioner Gerald Hancock offering Ashes to Go at our first shift from 8:30-9:30 a.m. |
Ashes to Go has become a nation-wide movement. It started with several Episcopal churches in the St. Louis and Chicago areas in 2007 and 2010, and it “went viral” in 2012, with more than 80 churches in 21 states participating. In 2013, it went international, with participants in Canada, the UK, and South Africa, in addition to the U.S. (Statistics from the Ashes to Go website at www.ashestogo.org.)
As Ashes to Go has become more known amongst “church people,” especially amongst professional church people like clergy and church staff, there has been a lot of discussion about it. It has its share of critics, who assert that this “quickie” liturgy cheapens what should be a somber call to repentance. The critics say that people should make time to attend the full-length liturgy on Ash Wednesday, and if they can’t attend church, that shows that their priorities are in the wrong place. They worry about people taking Ash Wednesday too lightly, or going to an Ashes to Go site just to “get their ashes” as some kind of a token or rote ritual rather than out of a true sense of repentance and desire for connection with God.
I must admit that despite the fact that my call to the priesthood emerged out of my involvement with a street church for homeless people in Cambridge, Mass., and the fact that I was naturally drawn to Ashes to Go when I first heard about it because of the "street church" element of it, my training in seminary conditioned me to always take a step back and listen to the other side of the story, to another perspective. The critics' arguments against Ashes to Go were well-crafted enough that they gave me pause. Maybe this was an inappropriate cheapening of the dignity of the liturgy. Maybe we shouldn't do it.
But after serving two one-hour “shifts” out on the street corner on Ash Wednesday, I can say that not a single person we encountered in those two shifts seemed to be taking this encounter lightly. Some people had driven from the other side of town just to participate in this brief encounter on the sidewalk. They’d seen an article that the local paper had run about the fact that we were going to do this, and they made time in their day, they went out of their way to come to downtown Franklin just to get their ashes. Their schedule may not have allowed them to attend services at the traditional times of noon or later in the evening, but for whatever reason they were able to get away mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and they were so appreciative because otherwise they really would not have gotten to have an Ash Wednesday experience today, however brief our encounter was. Several people even got tears in their eyes as they thanked us, clearly moved that we were taking the time to bring church to them.
There was a depth of gratitude in their voices as they thanked us that echoed the deeply grateful sincerity I’ve heard in people’s voices when I’ve taken communion to people who are in the hospital or homebound. “Thank you so much for doing this!” they say, with a depth of gratitude that goes beyond the cursory “thanks” we give the cashier at the grocery store or a friend or family member who passes us the salt at dinner. This is a different kind of thanks, a thanks born out of touching a place of need and vulnerability, of mediating a brief moment of grace from one human being to another – whether an Ashes to Go recipient or a parishioner recovering at home from surgery.
As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that I can’t imagine any of the critics of the Ashes to Go movement who are within the Episcopal Church saying that we shouldn’t take communion to people at home or in the hospital because it would “cheapen” the experience, that if they can’t get to church on Sunday for the entire celebration of the Eucharist, then their priorities must not be in the right place. We consider Eucharistic visitation to be one of the most sacred and holy things we do as priests. And yet, what we say and do when we take communion to people is a very shortened version of the full Eucharistic liturgy, just as Ashes to Go offers a shortened version of the full Ash Wednesday liturgy.
That’s when I realized that Ashes to Go is basically a series of “pastoral visits” on the street. It’s about offering a shortened version of the regular liturgy to those who can’t be with the rest of the gathered community. And just as we do when we visit people in the hospital, if there are several people present visiting with the patient, they are all invited to join in the communion, so on Ash Wednesday, when two people happened to walk up at the same time, we invited them to all join together with us in the brief liturgy. Even though none of us had ever met before, in that one brief moment, we were a community of faith praying together. “Wherever two of three are gathered,” Jesus said, “I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Not “wherever there is an officially sanctioned, full-length liturgy approved by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”
 |
| Praying with several people who walked up at the same time. "Wherever two or three are gathered..." |
So even the Ashes to Go recipients did get an opportunity to join with other Christians in prayer today. Yes, they could have gone home and read through the entire Ash Wednesday liturgy in their prayer books instead, to get the “full experience,” but there’s something about the encounter with another person, that incarnational experience that is really at the heart of our faith, that is sacred and powerful, however brief.
The difference between Ashes to Go and a traditional pastoral visit, of course, is that we are doing it in a public place. It is no small irony that the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday is the passage from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus warns us to “beware of practicing your piety before others, in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1), and tells us not to “stand and pray… at the street corners, so that we may be seen [by others]” (Matthew 6:5). Um, gulp. The critics of Ashes to Go point out that we appear to be doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do! When I was “plugging” Ashes to Go to one of my classes at church, encouraging lay people to sign up to help out with it, I made a joke about the irony of this passage and what we were going to do. Everyone laughed, but one of the parishioners spoke up in a serious tone and said, “But I don’t think that’s the same thing as what you’re doing. Jesus was talking about being hypocritical. I don’t think that’s what this is. I think this is different.”
I was surprised by her immediate positive view of what we were doing with Ashes to Go and the disconnect for her in associating it with Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. But after my experience on the street and my insight into the ways in which Ashes to Go is a pastoral encounter, it makes me appreciate her insight even more. If we’re doing Ashes to Go primarily “to be seen by others” in a showy kind of way, then yes, we should hear Jesus’s words of rebuke in the Sermon on the Mount for showy displays of piety. But if we’re doing Ashes to Go out of a sincere desire to serve others and to care for them, then perhaps the more appropriate words of Jesus to remember would be the ways he rebuked the religious leaders for being unwilling to break tradition in order to address human need. “What is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil?” (Mark 3:4) he said to those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath. And while I’m not saying that it’s a matter of life and death for people to get their ashes on Ash Wednesday, I do think that we are addressing a very real need and a very real and sincere desire and longing to connect with God and the liturgies of the church, not throwing tradition to the wind or dismissing the gravity and seriousness of that day.
 |
| An Ashes to Go recipient jumps for joy after receiving her ashes. |
I hope that the critics of Ashes to Go might be willing to just give it a try one year and see what happens. The great thing about Ashes to Go is that if you do it, you do it on your own terms. Do you think people should recite at least part of Psalm 51 for it to really be Ash Wednesday? Then include that in the brief liturgy you offer to people. Or, decide to do the whole Ash Wednesday service at a non-typical time in a location more convenient to working people in your area. Take ashes to people in the hospital and in nursing homes and do an abbreviated version of the liturgy with them. Whatever you do and however you do it, the intention is to bring the church to people where they are, to represent symbolically the truth that although it is true that we must make the choice to step toward God in faith, God also is already stepping out to meet us wherever we are. I can think of no more sacred and holy task than to serve as a symbol of that for the world.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Is faith a choice or a gift?
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 16, 2014 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In our spiritual practice, we are building ourselves a wind turbine, so that when God’s Spirit does blow in our lives, we have the mechanism ready to capture its energy and allow it to fuel us.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
----
[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
----
[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Focusing on the positive is "choosing life"
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014 (6th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Matthew 5:21-37).
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor. After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish.
Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.
Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.
Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. [1]
Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.
But lest we think “choosing life” is a matter of simply doing the right things, Jesus’s teachings in today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 5:21-37) from the Sermon on the Mount remind us that obeying the letter of the law is not enough – we must embody the spirit behind the law in our thoughts and attitudes. It is not enough just to refrain from killing someone, Jesus says, because nurturing anger and ill will towards someone can be a kind of “death” as well, both for the other person and for us. Focusing only on our outward actions neglects to take seriously how powerful our thoughts really are. This is why so many religious traditions teach that it is important to purify one’s mind as well as one’s actions.
What we dwell on mentally has an enormous impact on our emotional and even physical well-being. We have the choice between life and death not only in our actions, but in our mindset. If we choose to focus on the negative all the time, we are essentially choosing death. If we choose to focus on the positive, we are choosing life. This is why the Apostle Paul offered the following advice in his letter to the church at Philippi: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). To a church dealing with disagreements and conflict amongst themselves, Paul urges them to focus on the positive. Find some common ground. Emphasize what they can agree on. In doing so, they “choose life” for their community, because we all know how destructive it can be to only focus on conflicts, disagreements, and things that divide us.
And this holds true not just within the church, but in broader contexts as well. If we can focus on the positive, on the things we share in common, on the ways we can get along with one another, we can choose life rather than death not just for the church, but for the world.
One of our current Sunday School classes for adults at 10 a.m. is called “Embracing Interfaith Cooperation.” The class is based on a series of videos of talks and interfaith group discussions led by Eboo Patel, founder of an organization called the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. The Interfaith Youth Core strives to hold up the stories of interfaith cooperation throughout the history of our various religious traditions, and to train college students to become the next generation of interfaith leaders. They seek to educate people about the fact that the dominant assumption that people of different religions have always fought and will always fight is simply not true. Although our history textbooks and the evening news tend to tell us the story of the “clash of civilizations” and the inevitability of religious strife, Eboo and the Interfaith Youth Core remind us that there is actually a long history of interfaith cooperation in our respective religious histories that is often unknown to the general public.
Tonight at our Nourish program, we will welcome some of our Muslim neighbors in Williamson County to St. Paul’s for dinner and conversation. Because today’s dialogue is a Christian-Muslim one, let me highlight a few stories of interfaith cooperation between Christians and Muslims from our shared histories.
We are all familiar with the storyline that tells us that Christians and Muslims can’t get along, that we must fight and compete with one another about religious claims and political views. But as far back as the 8th century in what is now Iraq, Christians and Muslims were engaging in peaceful dialogue and debate in the courts of a Muslim caliph named Harun al-Rashid, who intentionally invited people of many religious faiths to his court to participate in an exchange of ideas that would broaden the minds of all involved. [2]
In the 13th century, in the middle of the Crusades, St. Francis of Assisi met with the Egyptian sultan, Malik al-Kamil. Although Francis’s initial aim was to stop the wars over the Holy Land by converting the sultan to Christianity, when he actually met and spoke with the sultan, he discovered a devout man of God in whom he recognized something holy. The sultan likewise acknowledged Francis as a holy man, despite their disagreements on matters of religious doctrine. Francis came away from the encounter with at least some respect for Islam, and instructed his followers to live at peace with their Muslim neighbors. [3]
And closer to our own day, despite the news we hear in the U.S. about Christians being oppressed and mistreated in majority-Muslim countries, friendships and support between Christians and Muslims continues to go on at the grassroots level. During the political uprising in Egypt in 2011, hundreds of Christians joined hands to create a human chain to protect their Muslim neighbors as they prayed in Cairo. [4] And after an Anglican church was bombed in Pakistan last year, hundreds of Muslims joined hands to form a human chain around the church to protect their Christian neighbors as they returned for mass the next week. [5] The images of these two events (see below) went viral on Facebook and other social media sites, showing the power of the people to lift up positive stories to counteract the dominant narrative of conflict. These powerful displays of solidarity show that it is possible for us to choose life rather than death, to choose cooperation rather than competition and conflict.
Some might say that focusing on the positive is a form of living in denial, that if we only look at what we have in common, we miss the importance of our very real differences, that if we ignore our points of disagreement, we sweep things under the rug and don’t get a realistic view of the complexity of our relationships, whether we’re dealing with family dynamics, church conflicts, or interfaith dialogue. This is certainly a valid critique; if we deny that we have any differences at all, we do ignore the reality of our uniqueness as individuals and the particularities of our various traditions. But given the extent to which our culture encourages us to focus on conflict, it is important that we remind ourselves that conflict is not the only storyline out there.
And so, we keep lifting up the positive, we keep looking for common ground – not to ignore our differences or particularities, but in order that we might choose life rather than death, that we might choose peaceful encounters and life-giving friendships rather than fear, suspicion, and violence.
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
----------
Footnotes:
[1] See the Baptismal Covenant, p. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer
[2] See the introduction to Zachary Karabell, Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation. Vintage Books, 2008.
[3] The Saint and the Sultan, Paul Moses. Online information at http://www.saintandthesultan.com/about.html
Hoke, Wendy A. “St. Francis and the Sultan: Lessons for Today.” Catholic Universe Bulletin, 31 October 2006. Accessed online at http://www.catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=21816 10 February 2014.
[4] “Images of solidarity as Christians join hands to protect Muslims as they pray during Cairo protests,” The Daily Mail (UK), 3 February 2011, accessed online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353330/Egypt-protests-Christians-join-hands-protect-Muslims-pray-Cairo-protests.html 10 February 2014.
[5] “Pakistani Muslims Form Human Chain to Protect Christians During Mass,” Huffington Post, 8 October 2013, reprinted from The Express Tribune. Accessed online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/muslims-form-human-chain-pakistan_n_4057381.html 10 February 2014.
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor. After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish.
Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.
Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.
Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. [1]
Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.
But lest we think “choosing life” is a matter of simply doing the right things, Jesus’s teachings in today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 5:21-37) from the Sermon on the Mount remind us that obeying the letter of the law is not enough – we must embody the spirit behind the law in our thoughts and attitudes. It is not enough just to refrain from killing someone, Jesus says, because nurturing anger and ill will towards someone can be a kind of “death” as well, both for the other person and for us. Focusing only on our outward actions neglects to take seriously how powerful our thoughts really are. This is why so many religious traditions teach that it is important to purify one’s mind as well as one’s actions.
What we dwell on mentally has an enormous impact on our emotional and even physical well-being. We have the choice between life and death not only in our actions, but in our mindset. If we choose to focus on the negative all the time, we are essentially choosing death. If we choose to focus on the positive, we are choosing life. This is why the Apostle Paul offered the following advice in his letter to the church at Philippi: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). To a church dealing with disagreements and conflict amongst themselves, Paul urges them to focus on the positive. Find some common ground. Emphasize what they can agree on. In doing so, they “choose life” for their community, because we all know how destructive it can be to only focus on conflicts, disagreements, and things that divide us.
And this holds true not just within the church, but in broader contexts as well. If we can focus on the positive, on the things we share in common, on the ways we can get along with one another, we can choose life rather than death not just for the church, but for the world.
 |
| Eboo Patel (center) in the midst of an interfaith dialogue. Image from Inside Islam, http://insideislam.wisc.edu |
Tonight at our Nourish program, we will welcome some of our Muslim neighbors in Williamson County to St. Paul’s for dinner and conversation. Because today’s dialogue is a Christian-Muslim one, let me highlight a few stories of interfaith cooperation between Christians and Muslims from our shared histories.
We are all familiar with the storyline that tells us that Christians and Muslims can’t get along, that we must fight and compete with one another about religious claims and political views. But as far back as the 8th century in what is now Iraq, Christians and Muslims were engaging in peaceful dialogue and debate in the courts of a Muslim caliph named Harun al-Rashid, who intentionally invited people of many religious faiths to his court to participate in an exchange of ideas that would broaden the minds of all involved. [2]
 |
| An icon of St. Francis greeting Sultan Malik al-Kamil. |
And closer to our own day, despite the news we hear in the U.S. about Christians being oppressed and mistreated in majority-Muslim countries, friendships and support between Christians and Muslims continues to go on at the grassroots level. During the political uprising in Egypt in 2011, hundreds of Christians joined hands to create a human chain to protect their Muslim neighbors as they prayed in Cairo. [4] And after an Anglican church was bombed in Pakistan last year, hundreds of Muslims joined hands to form a human chain around the church to protect their Christian neighbors as they returned for mass the next week. [5] The images of these two events (see below) went viral on Facebook and other social media sites, showing the power of the people to lift up positive stories to counteract the dominant narrative of conflict. These powerful displays of solidarity show that it is possible for us to choose life rather than death, to choose cooperation rather than competition and conflict.
 |
| Christians protecting Muslims at prayer in Cairo, 2011 (image from the U.K.'s Daily Mail) |
 |
| Muslims surrounding church to protect their Christian neighbors in Pakistan, 2013 (image from Huffington Post) |
Some might say that focusing on the positive is a form of living in denial, that if we only look at what we have in common, we miss the importance of our very real differences, that if we ignore our points of disagreement, we sweep things under the rug and don’t get a realistic view of the complexity of our relationships, whether we’re dealing with family dynamics, church conflicts, or interfaith dialogue. This is certainly a valid critique; if we deny that we have any differences at all, we do ignore the reality of our uniqueness as individuals and the particularities of our various traditions. But given the extent to which our culture encourages us to focus on conflict, it is important that we remind ourselves that conflict is not the only storyline out there.
And so, we keep lifting up the positive, we keep looking for common ground – not to ignore our differences or particularities, but in order that we might choose life rather than death, that we might choose peaceful encounters and life-giving friendships rather than fear, suspicion, and violence.
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
 |
| Participants in the interfaith scripture study circle between St. Paul's, the Islamic Center of Williamson County, and the Nashville Gurdwara (Sikh community). The group met once a month for three months, January-March, to study common topics in our sacred texts (the Bible, the Qur'an and the Guru Granth Sahib). |
----------
Footnotes:
[1] See the Baptismal Covenant, p. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer
[2] See the introduction to Zachary Karabell, Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation. Vintage Books, 2008.
[3] The Saint and the Sultan, Paul Moses. Online information at http://www.saintandthesultan.com/about.html
Hoke, Wendy A. “St. Francis and the Sultan: Lessons for Today.” Catholic Universe Bulletin, 31 October 2006. Accessed online at http://www.catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=21816 10 February 2014.
[4] “Images of solidarity as Christians join hands to protect Muslims as they pray during Cairo protests,” The Daily Mail (UK), 3 February 2011, accessed online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353330/Egypt-protests-Christians-join-hands-protect-Muslims-pray-Cairo-protests.html 10 February 2014.
[5] “Pakistani Muslims Form Human Chain to Protect Christians During Mass,” Huffington Post, 8 October 2013, reprinted from The Express Tribune. Accessed online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/muslims-form-human-chain-pakistan_n_4057381.html 10 February 2014.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Being a "light to the nations" means helping others to see the light in themselves
Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014 (2nd Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Isaiah 49:1-7)
The season of Epiphany is all about light. It begins with the light of the star of Bethlehem guiding the magi to the Christ Child, and ends with Jesus glowing in dazzling light on the mountain at the Transfiguration. These two dramatic manifestations of Jesus’s identity bookend a season chock-full of stories about Jesus being made known as Messiah and Son of God.
The light of the season of Epiphany carries with it a message: “Behold, to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior!” “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The light shines as a beacon to point us to Christ. And we, in turn, are called to let the light shine through us so that we may point others toward Christ. In the season of Epiphany, as we remember the ways Christ was made known to the people of his day, we consider the ways we can make him known to the people of our day.
Our collect for today summarizes this central theme of Epiphany: “Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.” We are “illumined” as we take in the light of Christ through the Scripture and through the Sacraments, and as it shines in us, others will come to know and worship him as well. The season of Epiphany reminds us of the call to evangelism and mission at the heart of our faith. Today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible contains one of the most well-known biblical “catch-phrases” on the subject of evangelism and mission: “a light to the nations.” God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
In an historical context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, whose role was to protect only the people of their nation, this was a revolutionary idea – that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations. In fact, most of the biblical writings prior to the time when the Israelites were in exile in Babylon – the period when this passage from Isaiah was probably written – assumed just the opposite: that the God of Israel cared only for Israel, and whatever “salvation” was promised had to do only with the success and prosperity of Israel, not of anyone else. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger. The goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to them, but to all people. The role of Isaiah – and of Israel as a whole – as a “light to the nations” is to bring that goodness and mercy and blessing to all people. It is not enough to receive it for themselves; they must be willing to share it with everyone.
Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, as the “New Israel” – has the light to share with others. As Christians sought to be a “light to the nations,” we saw ourselves as a shining example to those other more “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we considered to be in darkness, and through our actions and our theology we continued to assert our superiority over other nations and peoples. As this passage about being a “light to the nations” became one of the theological underpinnings behind Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach, we forgot the inclusive flavor that it had in its original context. Instead of saying, “I believe that God loves and cares for you and I am willing to include you in what is most holy and sacred to me,” too often the message expressed by the missionaries was more like, “I believe we have the light and you don’t, and God disapproves of the things you hold most holy and sacred.” In many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.
So how can we be obedient to Isaiah’s call to be a light to the nations, to Jesus’s call to make disciples of all nations, without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?
Well, we can think about the people we know or have known who truly are a “light” – to their community, to the nations, to the world. What are those people like? Are they angry, judgmental people? Are they in the habit of pointing out others’ flaws, or of telling them how much their behavior is unacceptable to God? Probably not. Their light most likely flows from a genuine love and acceptance of those around them. Are they the only ones who have the light? No, they probably cause others to shine too when they are around.
The true lights of this world cannot possibly judge the darkness, because they bring light to wherever they are, and they see the light in others. They don’t claim to be the only ones who have the light, but they help others to see the light in themselves. And in doing so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”
It is interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14)! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.
And he taught them that that light shines more brightly as a result of our actions. It is a cliché, but it is certainly true that actions speak louder than words. The trouble with the way some of our forefathers and foremothers approached the missionary task is that their actions did not match up with the words they were sharing. Their words said that God loved and cared for all, but their actions said that some people were worth more than others. They were more concerned with making sure that others had the right beliefs than they were with living out those beliefs themselves.
My favorite saying about evangelism is one attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” We preach the Gospel, the good news of Christ, not primarily by what we say, but by how we live. The truth of this statement has been illustrated powerfully in the past 10 months by the first Pope to take St. Francis as his namesake. What has captured the world’s attention about Pope Francis is not his words, but his actions. In word, he has not said much that departs from traditional Roman Catholic teaching, but what is different about him is the way he lives. While others have affirmed the church’s teachings about caring for the poor, Francis has chosen to give up the comforts of the papal palace, dress simply, and be among the poor as much as possible, inviting several street people to the Eucharist at his birthday celebration in December. While others have said and taught that the faithful should put their trust in God and not in human force, Francis has chosen to leave the bulletproof Popemobile behind and embrace the risk of traveling unprotected and vulnerable among the people. Francis is living proof that the Gospel, authentically lived, is powerful.
So how can we be a “light to the nations?” Perhaps we can take our cue from Pope Francis and from his namesake, seeking to live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus. The best way to be a light to others is not to assume we are bringing them a light they do not already have, but by to affirm and help them see the light in themselves.
The season of Epiphany is all about light. It begins with the light of the star of Bethlehem guiding the magi to the Christ Child, and ends with Jesus glowing in dazzling light on the mountain at the Transfiguration. These two dramatic manifestations of Jesus’s identity bookend a season chock-full of stories about Jesus being made known as Messiah and Son of God.
The light of the season of Epiphany carries with it a message: “Behold, to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior!” “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The light shines as a beacon to point us to Christ. And we, in turn, are called to let the light shine through us so that we may point others toward Christ. In the season of Epiphany, as we remember the ways Christ was made known to the people of his day, we consider the ways we can make him known to the people of our day.
Our collect for today summarizes this central theme of Epiphany: “Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.” We are “illumined” as we take in the light of Christ through the Scripture and through the Sacraments, and as it shines in us, others will come to know and worship him as well. The season of Epiphany reminds us of the call to evangelism and mission at the heart of our faith. Today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible contains one of the most well-known biblical “catch-phrases” on the subject of evangelism and mission: “a light to the nations.” God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
In an historical context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, whose role was to protect only the people of their nation, this was a revolutionary idea – that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations. In fact, most of the biblical writings prior to the time when the Israelites were in exile in Babylon – the period when this passage from Isaiah was probably written – assumed just the opposite: that the God of Israel cared only for Israel, and whatever “salvation” was promised had to do only with the success and prosperity of Israel, not of anyone else. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger. The goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to them, but to all people. The role of Isaiah – and of Israel as a whole – as a “light to the nations” is to bring that goodness and mercy and blessing to all people. It is not enough to receive it for themselves; they must be willing to share it with everyone.
Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, as the “New Israel” – has the light to share with others. As Christians sought to be a “light to the nations,” we saw ourselves as a shining example to those other more “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we considered to be in darkness, and through our actions and our theology we continued to assert our superiority over other nations and peoples. As this passage about being a “light to the nations” became one of the theological underpinnings behind Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach, we forgot the inclusive flavor that it had in its original context. Instead of saying, “I believe that God loves and cares for you and I am willing to include you in what is most holy and sacred to me,” too often the message expressed by the missionaries was more like, “I believe we have the light and you don’t, and God disapproves of the things you hold most holy and sacred.” In many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.
So how can we be obedient to Isaiah’s call to be a light to the nations, to Jesus’s call to make disciples of all nations, without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?
Well, we can think about the people we know or have known who truly are a “light” – to their community, to the nations, to the world. What are those people like? Are they angry, judgmental people? Are they in the habit of pointing out others’ flaws, or of telling them how much their behavior is unacceptable to God? Probably not. Their light most likely flows from a genuine love and acceptance of those around them. Are they the only ones who have the light? No, they probably cause others to shine too when they are around.
The true lights of this world cannot possibly judge the darkness, because they bring light to wherever they are, and they see the light in others. They don’t claim to be the only ones who have the light, but they help others to see the light in themselves. And in doing so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”
It is interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14)! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.
And he taught them that that light shines more brightly as a result of our actions. It is a cliché, but it is certainly true that actions speak louder than words. The trouble with the way some of our forefathers and foremothers approached the missionary task is that their actions did not match up with the words they were sharing. Their words said that God loved and cared for all, but their actions said that some people were worth more than others. They were more concerned with making sure that others had the right beliefs than they were with living out those beliefs themselves.
My favorite saying about evangelism is one attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” We preach the Gospel, the good news of Christ, not primarily by what we say, but by how we live. The truth of this statement has been illustrated powerfully in the past 10 months by the first Pope to take St. Francis as his namesake. What has captured the world’s attention about Pope Francis is not his words, but his actions. In word, he has not said much that departs from traditional Roman Catholic teaching, but what is different about him is the way he lives. While others have affirmed the church’s teachings about caring for the poor, Francis has chosen to give up the comforts of the papal palace, dress simply, and be among the poor as much as possible, inviting several street people to the Eucharist at his birthday celebration in December. While others have said and taught that the faithful should put their trust in God and not in human force, Francis has chosen to leave the bulletproof Popemobile behind and embrace the risk of traveling unprotected and vulnerable among the people. Francis is living proof that the Gospel, authentically lived, is powerful.
So how can we be a “light to the nations?” Perhaps we can take our cue from Pope Francis and from his namesake, seeking to live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus. The best way to be a light to others is not to assume we are bringing them a light they do not already have, but by to affirm and help them see the light in themselves.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013 (1 Christmas, Year A (John 1:1-18)), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.
But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.
The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.
But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.
The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Christmas Message 2013: Are you ready for Christmas?
Sermon delivered Christmas Eve 2013 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”
When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?
But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?
The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.
And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.
The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.
By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.
If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.
Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.
So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”
When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?
But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?
The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.
And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.
The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.
By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.
If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.
Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.
So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Remember the past or forget the past?
Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013 (26th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 28C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Franklin, TN (Isaiah 65:17-25, Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6))
There seems to be a tension between the messages in our two readings from Isaiah today. In the first reading, from Isaiah 65, the prophet brings us this word from God:
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”
But then, right after that, we read Canticle 9, which is from Isaiah chapter 12, which encouraged us to remember the things of the past and the “great things” that God has done:
“Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;
Make his deeds known among the peoples;
see that they remember that his Name is exalted.
Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things,
and this is known in all the world.”
So which is it that we’re supposed to do as people who want to be faithful to God – remember the things of the past, or forget the things of the past? Recall and retell the history of our relationship with God, or look for God to do a “new thing” in our midst? Should we look to the past or to the future for our sense of inspiration and connection with God?
The authors of these two passages from Isaiah had different opinions on this question. Even though both passages appear in the book of Isaiah, biblical scholars believe that they were written in two different times in Israel’s history, by different authors.
Isaiah 12, which exhorts the people to remember the “great things” that the Lord has done, was written during a period of Israel’s history when the recent past looked much better than the future. King Uzziah, who had recently died, had led Israel to be a prominent political and military force in the region. But now, the armies of the neighboring Assyrian Empire were gathering on the horizon, and the political future did not look so promising for the nation of Israel. In this context, the prophet calls the people to remember the great things of the past. The “new thing” that seemed immanent – attack by a hostile neighboring country – did not look like it would be a cause for rejoicing.
The writer of Isaiah 65, by contrast, is writing over 150 years later, after the nation of Israel has been defeated by the Babylonian Empire and the Israelites have spent 50 years in exile, away from Jerusalem and the land that was so sacred to them. When the Babylonians were then defeated by the Persians, all the peoples who had been displaced from their homelands under the Babylonians were allowed to return home. Some Israelites returned to Jerusalem, but when they arrived, they found their beloved city in ruins, with their temple, the most holy place in the city, destroyed. All those “great things” that God had done for them in the past that the author of Isaiah 12 had encouraged them to remember seemed a glimmer in the very distant past. Things had gotten so bad that no amount of turning to the past would be a comfort. It is in this context that the writer of Isaiah 65 brings this word from God to the people:
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.”
In this context – after having been to the depths of despair, to a place so low that it seemed they couldn’t go anywhere but up, the future looked brighter than the recent past for the people of Israel. Even though Jerusalem was in ruins, at least they had been allowed to return, and there was hope for the possibility of rebuilding. Dwelling on the loss and destruction of the past, or nurturing nostalgic memories of the way things used to be back in the “glory days” of the kingdom of Israel would only distract them from the necessary task of moving forward. And so the prophet encourages the people to forget the things of old and rejoice in the new thing God is about to do in their midst.
Though these two messages – the call to remember the past and the call to forget the past – can seem contradictory at first glance, the early church saw fit to include them both in our sacred scriptures, and it wasn’t because they were unaware of the tension. No, this tension between celebrating the past and looking to the future lies at the heart of the Christian faith, which, by definition, lives in a tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” We proclaim the truth that in Jesus, “the kingdom of God has come near,” and yet we acknowledge that the fullness of that kingdom will not be realized until the next world. In our Eucharistic proclamation, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” we both look to the past for inspiration – in the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus of Nazareth – and find inspiration in the future, through the promise that Christ’s “kingdom” – a new age of justice and peace – will indeed one day come “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it “will have no end.”
And what a blessing it is that both messages are included in our scriptures. There are times when one message seems more comforting or helpful than the other, just as it was for the ancient Israelites.
When we feel grateful and thankful for the many blessings we see and feel all around us, when we are in periods of our lives where we feel safe, happy, and fulfilled, we may find ourselves focusing on the sentiments in Isaiah 12 – “sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things.”
But when we go through those dark periods where, like the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon, we feel that our lives have turned into a series of one calamity after another, of trials and challenges that seem to have no end, when it seems that we have fallen so low that there is nowhere to go but up, we might find comfort in the words of Isaiah 65 – “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” No doubt many in the Phillippines right now, still reeling from the effects of the recent typhoon, would find themselves in this category. When the former things are not things we want to remember, such a message can come as a blessed relief, a source of true joy – that the former things that have caused us such pain and suffering will not be remembered or come to mind, but instead there will be this new creation of a world of peace, where even the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
Which message do you most need to hear in this season of your life? Are you in a place where you feel grateful for the wonderful things God has done in your past, or are you looking ahead, waiting and hoping for an entirely new creation? Are you singing the praises of the Lord because he has done great things, or are you longing for the days when the former things will not be remembered or come to mind?
I invite you to reflect on that question as we move into the season of Advent in a few weeks. This tension between looking backward and looking forward for inspiration and connection with God is particularly relevant during the season of Advent, since Advent both invites us to prepare for the celebration of an event from the past – the birth of Jesus in the first century – and calls us to prepare for an event in the future – the Second Coming of Christ. During Advent, we both “sing the praises of the Lord” for the great thing he has done in the birth of Jesus, and look forward to that new creation promised when Jesus will “return to judge the living and the dead.” As you prepare for Advent this year, think about where the emphasis is in your own life this season – looking back to remember the things God has done in the past, or looking forward to a new creation. Perhaps whichever one of these passages from Isaiah most resonates with you might become a meditation piece for you this Advent.
Of course, it is also important to remember that Scripture does not force us to choose only one way of thinking – EITHER remember and celebrate the past OR forget the past and look to the future. Both motifs are scriptural, and we are given the space to do both. So, if it feels like a false choice between the two, sit with both of them. You can both “sing the praises of the Lord for the great things he has done” AND “rejoice forever in what God is creating anew” in your life.
Because, of course, God has ALWAYS done “new things” in the midst of God’s people, and they never did completely forget the past as they moved into their new ways of being – otherwise they would not have preserved the stories of our faith that have been passed down through the ages. So we too do not have to completely forget the past in order to open ourselves to the new things God will do in our future – we only have to be willing to live with that Advent-flavored tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”
There seems to be a tension between the messages in our two readings from Isaiah today. In the first reading, from Isaiah 65, the prophet brings us this word from God:
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”
But then, right after that, we read Canticle 9, which is from Isaiah chapter 12, which encouraged us to remember the things of the past and the “great things” that God has done:
“Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;
Make his deeds known among the peoples;
see that they remember that his Name is exalted.
Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things,
and this is known in all the world.”
So which is it that we’re supposed to do as people who want to be faithful to God – remember the things of the past, or forget the things of the past? Recall and retell the history of our relationship with God, or look for God to do a “new thing” in our midst? Should we look to the past or to the future for our sense of inspiration and connection with God?
The authors of these two passages from Isaiah had different opinions on this question. Even though both passages appear in the book of Isaiah, biblical scholars believe that they were written in two different times in Israel’s history, by different authors.
Isaiah 12, which exhorts the people to remember the “great things” that the Lord has done, was written during a period of Israel’s history when the recent past looked much better than the future. King Uzziah, who had recently died, had led Israel to be a prominent political and military force in the region. But now, the armies of the neighboring Assyrian Empire were gathering on the horizon, and the political future did not look so promising for the nation of Israel. In this context, the prophet calls the people to remember the great things of the past. The “new thing” that seemed immanent – attack by a hostile neighboring country – did not look like it would be a cause for rejoicing.
The writer of Isaiah 65, by contrast, is writing over 150 years later, after the nation of Israel has been defeated by the Babylonian Empire and the Israelites have spent 50 years in exile, away from Jerusalem and the land that was so sacred to them. When the Babylonians were then defeated by the Persians, all the peoples who had been displaced from their homelands under the Babylonians were allowed to return home. Some Israelites returned to Jerusalem, but when they arrived, they found their beloved city in ruins, with their temple, the most holy place in the city, destroyed. All those “great things” that God had done for them in the past that the author of Isaiah 12 had encouraged them to remember seemed a glimmer in the very distant past. Things had gotten so bad that no amount of turning to the past would be a comfort. It is in this context that the writer of Isaiah 65 brings this word from God to the people:
“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.”
In this context – after having been to the depths of despair, to a place so low that it seemed they couldn’t go anywhere but up, the future looked brighter than the recent past for the people of Israel. Even though Jerusalem was in ruins, at least they had been allowed to return, and there was hope for the possibility of rebuilding. Dwelling on the loss and destruction of the past, or nurturing nostalgic memories of the way things used to be back in the “glory days” of the kingdom of Israel would only distract them from the necessary task of moving forward. And so the prophet encourages the people to forget the things of old and rejoice in the new thing God is about to do in their midst.
Though these two messages – the call to remember the past and the call to forget the past – can seem contradictory at first glance, the early church saw fit to include them both in our sacred scriptures, and it wasn’t because they were unaware of the tension. No, this tension between celebrating the past and looking to the future lies at the heart of the Christian faith, which, by definition, lives in a tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” We proclaim the truth that in Jesus, “the kingdom of God has come near,” and yet we acknowledge that the fullness of that kingdom will not be realized until the next world. In our Eucharistic proclamation, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” we both look to the past for inspiration – in the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus of Nazareth – and find inspiration in the future, through the promise that Christ’s “kingdom” – a new age of justice and peace – will indeed one day come “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it “will have no end.”
And what a blessing it is that both messages are included in our scriptures. There are times when one message seems more comforting or helpful than the other, just as it was for the ancient Israelites.
When we feel grateful and thankful for the many blessings we see and feel all around us, when we are in periods of our lives where we feel safe, happy, and fulfilled, we may find ourselves focusing on the sentiments in Isaiah 12 – “sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things.”
But when we go through those dark periods where, like the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon, we feel that our lives have turned into a series of one calamity after another, of trials and challenges that seem to have no end, when it seems that we have fallen so low that there is nowhere to go but up, we might find comfort in the words of Isaiah 65 – “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” No doubt many in the Phillippines right now, still reeling from the effects of the recent typhoon, would find themselves in this category. When the former things are not things we want to remember, such a message can come as a blessed relief, a source of true joy – that the former things that have caused us such pain and suffering will not be remembered or come to mind, but instead there will be this new creation of a world of peace, where even the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
Which message do you most need to hear in this season of your life? Are you in a place where you feel grateful for the wonderful things God has done in your past, or are you looking ahead, waiting and hoping for an entirely new creation? Are you singing the praises of the Lord because he has done great things, or are you longing for the days when the former things will not be remembered or come to mind?
I invite you to reflect on that question as we move into the season of Advent in a few weeks. This tension between looking backward and looking forward for inspiration and connection with God is particularly relevant during the season of Advent, since Advent both invites us to prepare for the celebration of an event from the past – the birth of Jesus in the first century – and calls us to prepare for an event in the future – the Second Coming of Christ. During Advent, we both “sing the praises of the Lord” for the great thing he has done in the birth of Jesus, and look forward to that new creation promised when Jesus will “return to judge the living and the dead.” As you prepare for Advent this year, think about where the emphasis is in your own life this season – looking back to remember the things God has done in the past, or looking forward to a new creation. Perhaps whichever one of these passages from Isaiah most resonates with you might become a meditation piece for you this Advent.
Of course, it is also important to remember that Scripture does not force us to choose only one way of thinking – EITHER remember and celebrate the past OR forget the past and look to the future. Both motifs are scriptural, and we are given the space to do both. So, if it feels like a false choice between the two, sit with both of them. You can both “sing the praises of the Lord for the great things he has done” AND “rejoice forever in what God is creating anew” in your life.
Because, of course, God has ALWAYS done “new things” in the midst of God’s people, and they never did completely forget the past as they moved into their new ways of being – otherwise they would not have preserved the stories of our faith that have been passed down through the ages. So we too do not have to completely forget the past in order to open ourselves to the new things God will do in our future – we only have to be willing to live with that Advent-flavored tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)