Sermon delivered Sunday, April 2, 2017 (Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): 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 the Lenten themes of sin and repentance. What’s going on here? If Easter is still two weeks off, 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 the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land, and it is during our own periods of wilderness that we are most in need of resurrection. When we come face to face with our shortcomings, our mortality, and our need, 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. While only God has the power to bring life from death, 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 unbound from his burial shroud. But for whatever reason, God didn’t do it that way. He 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 is in control,” this theology insists that human beings are active partners with God in God’s redemption of the world.
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, but the theologian who first coined the term, Phillip Hefner, actually used the phrase “created co-creator.” We are not 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. From this perspective, 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 stresses the ways in which 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 certain things for us to do, so that we become partners 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 all by himself, God often asks for our help in doing so. 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. Even though he had been restored to life, Lazarus’s freedom was still restricted by the shroud tied around him 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. We must do the difficult internal work of unbinding the painful memories, the negative self-talk, the grudges and resentments – whatever keeps us bound to the ways of sin and death. We must cut loose those cords in order to experience the full power of the liberation given to us in the resurrection.
And often, that process requires the help of others. 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 – therapists, spiritual directors, friends, mentors. Those helpers cannot do the work for us, but we do need companions 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, because the two are inextricably linked. As we strive to do the difficult spiritual work of opening ourselves to God and others, of rolling away the stones and unbinding the shroud of death, we often find that our best guides and companions on the way are those people who know something about rolling away stones and unbinding shrouds because they have done so in their own lives, 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 understand how to participate more fully in God’s redemptive work in the world and to help others in their quest for liberation.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Jesus invites us to focus on "what can I do?" instead of "why did this happen?"
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 26, 2017 (Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): John 9:1-41“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
The question would have been a natural one in Jesus’ day; it was widely assumed that sin and physical illness were connected in a directly causal relationship: if you were sick or had a disability of any sort, it must have been because you had sinned. If you were born with an illness or disability, either you must have committed some sin while still in the womb, or your misfortune was due to the sins of your parents. So the disciples were trying to figure it out, to determine which category they should place this man in to explain his abnormality, to find someone to blame.
Despite the advances of modern science, we’re not so different in 21st century America from the disciples who sought to explain the condition of this blind man by blaming it on sin. We’re always looking for ways to blame someone for the uncomfortable abnormalities and disabilities we see in others – “That poor child is deformed because her mother used drugs during her pregnancy,” or “If only he’d stop smoking, he wouldn’t have gotten lung cancer,” or “She has AIDS; that must be a punishment for her lifestyle or drug use.” And if we can’t find a reasonable person on whom to pin the blame, we pin it on God. “Why, God? What have I – or my sister or my uncle or my friend – done to deserve this?” we ask, the assumption being that illness and suffering are only inflicted upon those who “deserve” it as punishment for something they have done wrong.
But the interesting thing is that Jesus rejects this assumption that physical illness is an indication of the presence of sin. “Neither this man or his parents sinned,” Jesus says, “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
But is this really any better? The man’s blindness – and by consequence, the miserable life he would have experienced as a blind person in first-century Palestine, with no real opportunities for making a living open to him besides begging by the side of the road – was created just so Jesus could come along and perform a miracle? Does that mean all our sufferings are created just so God can be glorified through them? Certainly God can be glorified through our sufferings, but does God create them on purpose – does God make us suffer – just to glorify himself? What kind of God would that be?
But several biblical scholars have suggested that that is not necessarily what Jesus meant to say in this passage. Some scholars propose an alternative translation of the Greek text from the one we heard this morning, a translation that goes like this: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but in order that the works of God might be revealed in him we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.” (9:3-4a). In this translation, Jesus does not give an explanation for the man’s blindness, but simply accepts it as a given. Rather than dwelling in the “why” questions, Jesus is concerned with the more practical “what” questions – what can I do for this man now, and how can God’s glory be revealed in his life, regardless of his condition or his past?
In a similar vein, the blind man is not interested in explaining or justifying Jesus’ behavior when he is interrogated by the Pharisees; he is only concerned with testifying to his personal experience of Jesus. “We know this man is a sinner,” the Pharisees say to him, trying to get him to speak ill of Jesus. “I do not know whether he is a sinner,” the formerly blind man replies. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He offers no other explanations beyond this simple statement.
In the story as we have received it, both the blind man and Jesus are concerned with the here and now – with responding to the facts of the present situation without over-analyzing them. Jesus does not try to explain the reason why this man was born blind to his disciples, and the blind man does not try to justify Jesus’ actions to the Pharisees. Jesus sees a need and responds to it; the blind man receives a gift and testifies to it. The disciples are so caught up with trying to find a reason for the man’s blindness, to find someone to blame for this misfortune, that they miss seeing a real human being in need in front of them. The Pharisees are so caught up in arguments over what is and isn’t lawful according to religious tradition that they miss the miracle that has taken place in front of them.
The Pharisees tend to get a bad rep in the Gospels, since they’re always set as the “bad guys” in the story, in opposition to Jesus. But as this story shows, the disciples don’t always “get it” either. And aren’t we a little more like the disciples and the Pharisees in this story than we’d like to admit?
I sometimes wonder how Jesus would be received if he were to appear in an Episcopal church on any given Sunday morning. Might we not find ourselves to be modern-day Pharisees, more worried about whether Jesus was performing the liturgy correctly than about the miracle of his presence among us?
And don’t we often look around for people and institutions to blame when things go wrong in our lives, rather than accepting the circumstances for what they are and trying to think creatively about how we could contribute to making the works of God be revealed in that situation?
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus says, “but in order that the works of God might be revealed in him we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.”
“I do not know whether he is a sinner,” says the formerly blind man. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
John’s Gospel this morning is inviting us to let go of the urge to explain, to analyze, to justify, and simply open our eyes to the world around us. Where is there a need that you can respond to, regardless of the reasons it exists? Where have you received a gift that you can testify to with gratefulness? Our personal stories about how we have experienced God working in our lives are the most powerful evangelism tools we have. What is the “one thing you do know” about God in your life? I invite you to share your answer to that question with someone in your life this week, and see what happens. Maybe you too have the power to open the eyes of the blind.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Meeting our spiritual needs is just as critical to our survival as meeting our physical needs
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 19, 2017 (Third Sunday in Lent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42
Water is essential for all known forms of life. It could even be said that water is the key to life, biologically speaking. So it no surprise that religious symbolism around water is extensive and widespread. We are dependent on water for our very survival, and we are dependent on God to provide us that water.
In our baptismal service, we give thanks to God for this physical, earthly element and recount the ways in which it is part of our religious history:
“We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise.
In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism.
In it we are buried with Christ in his death.
By it we share in his resurrection.
Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (BCP 306-07)
But this brief summary of significant events in the history of our faith that happened in water, with water, or through water doesn’t include the two we hear about in our readings today. The framers of our Prayer Book could have added a few more lines to that prayer:
“With it you nourished the children of Israel in the wilderness.
Through it your Son Jesus connected with a Samaritan woman, breaking down religious boundaries and bringing her to acknowledge him as the Messiah.”
God not only brought the children of Israel out of Egypt through water – by walking through the parted waters of the Red Sea – he sustained them during those forty years in the wilderness with water, providing them water from the rock in the desert. Despite the people’s quarreling and grumbling and complaining, questioning the purpose of that very liberation God had brought to them, God continues to be faithful and provides them with the basics for life – water from the rock, and food in the form of manna from heaven and quail.
And Jesus was not just baptized in water; he continued to use water as a powerful image in his teaching, including when he spoke to Nicodemus about being born “of water and the spirit” in the passage we heard last week, and when he told the Samaritan woman in our reading today that he had “living water” to give her, water that would never leave her thirsty again.
She doesn’t understand at first that he’s not talking about actual physical water, some kind of magic liquid that could slake her thirst forever, but about a spiritual sustenance that could feed her soul from within, an internal “well” of strength, of support, of love, of comfort, of protection, offered to her through a connection with this man standing before her, this man who “told me everything I have ever done.”
Jesus’s reference to this internal spiritual sustenance as “living water” draws on its vital importance to human existence: it is key to life; without it we die. The same is true of our relationship with God. We must continually seek it – like this woman coming day after day to draw water from the well – or else we perish.
In 21st century America, where clean water is readily available with little to no effort or money expended on our part, many of us have lost touch with just how important the search for and acquisition of water is when one does not have easy access to it. To us, an offer of “living water” that would never leave us thirsty might be a nice but unnecessary additional convenience. It wouldn’t really impact our lives that much, because for us, acquiring water is as simple as turning on a tap only a few steps from where we happen to be at any given moment. For this woman, though, to have access to water that would assuage her thirst forever would be life-changing. It would mean she would not have to keep coming back to this well to draw water and cart it back to her household. She would have time and energy to devote to things other than mere survival. And so we can almost hear the desperation in her voice when she responds, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
It is with that kind of intensity, that kind of passion, that we should seek God as well. Our physical needs are so primary, so essential, that we can get stuck in seeking to fulfill them alone, but fulfilling our spiritual needs is the only way we will find true sustenance, true life, life beyond the physical, biological meaning of the word. Psychologist Abraham Maslow observed that until our basic physiological needs are met, it is nearly impossible for human beings to focus on anything else. Only when we have enough to eat, shelter, and water, can we begin to explore higher level needs like spiritual awakening. But what we often don’t realize is that our hunger, our craving, for those “higher needs,” is just as essential to our survival as the physical needs. Too many of us stop when we have our basic physiological needs met, neglecting to continue up that hierarchy of needs to pursue the rest of the things we need in order to be truly alive, truly fulfilled.
Jesus is telling the woman by the well that she has a deeper need even than the physical thirst that brings her here day after day, and that only when she addresses that need will her real thirst be quenched.
When the disciples come back and meet up with Jesus and encourage him to “eat something,” his response is, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Just like the woman at the well, they don’t get it either, asking one another, “Did you give him some food? I didn’t give him any food. Did you give him some food?” - but again, he’s talking about a deeper hunger than the physiological. The “food” he has is of the same sort as the “living water” – an internal source, connected to a higher spiritual power, that has the ability to truly nourish in a way that literal, physical food cannot do.
Jesus reminds us that we will only assuage our true hunger and thirst when we seek God as desperately as we seek to fulfill our physical needs. “Give me this water,” we should cry out, like the woman at the well, give me the living water of God that will quench my soul.
But since it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do that seeking after God if our basic needs for food and shelter are not met, those of us who do have our basic needs met are called to do all in our power to assist others in meeting those basic needs so that they, too, can seek the kind of spiritual sustenance that will truly nourish them, completely, wholly, at every level of their being.
Sermon Text(s): Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42
Water is essential for all known forms of life. It could even be said that water is the key to life, biologically speaking. So it no surprise that religious symbolism around water is extensive and widespread. We are dependent on water for our very survival, and we are dependent on God to provide us that water.
In our baptismal service, we give thanks to God for this physical, earthly element and recount the ways in which it is part of our religious history:
“We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise.
In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism.
In it we are buried with Christ in his death.
By it we share in his resurrection.
Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (BCP 306-07)
But this brief summary of significant events in the history of our faith that happened in water, with water, or through water doesn’t include the two we hear about in our readings today. The framers of our Prayer Book could have added a few more lines to that prayer:
“With it you nourished the children of Israel in the wilderness.
Through it your Son Jesus connected with a Samaritan woman, breaking down religious boundaries and bringing her to acknowledge him as the Messiah.”
God not only brought the children of Israel out of Egypt through water – by walking through the parted waters of the Red Sea – he sustained them during those forty years in the wilderness with water, providing them water from the rock in the desert. Despite the people’s quarreling and grumbling and complaining, questioning the purpose of that very liberation God had brought to them, God continues to be faithful and provides them with the basics for life – water from the rock, and food in the form of manna from heaven and quail.
And Jesus was not just baptized in water; he continued to use water as a powerful image in his teaching, including when he spoke to Nicodemus about being born “of water and the spirit” in the passage we heard last week, and when he told the Samaritan woman in our reading today that he had “living water” to give her, water that would never leave her thirsty again.
She doesn’t understand at first that he’s not talking about actual physical water, some kind of magic liquid that could slake her thirst forever, but about a spiritual sustenance that could feed her soul from within, an internal “well” of strength, of support, of love, of comfort, of protection, offered to her through a connection with this man standing before her, this man who “told me everything I have ever done.”
Jesus’s reference to this internal spiritual sustenance as “living water” draws on its vital importance to human existence: it is key to life; without it we die. The same is true of our relationship with God. We must continually seek it – like this woman coming day after day to draw water from the well – or else we perish.
In 21st century America, where clean water is readily available with little to no effort or money expended on our part, many of us have lost touch with just how important the search for and acquisition of water is when one does not have easy access to it. To us, an offer of “living water” that would never leave us thirsty might be a nice but unnecessary additional convenience. It wouldn’t really impact our lives that much, because for us, acquiring water is as simple as turning on a tap only a few steps from where we happen to be at any given moment. For this woman, though, to have access to water that would assuage her thirst forever would be life-changing. It would mean she would not have to keep coming back to this well to draw water and cart it back to her household. She would have time and energy to devote to things other than mere survival. And so we can almost hear the desperation in her voice when she responds, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
It is with that kind of intensity, that kind of passion, that we should seek God as well. Our physical needs are so primary, so essential, that we can get stuck in seeking to fulfill them alone, but fulfilling our spiritual needs is the only way we will find true sustenance, true life, life beyond the physical, biological meaning of the word. Psychologist Abraham Maslow observed that until our basic physiological needs are met, it is nearly impossible for human beings to focus on anything else. Only when we have enough to eat, shelter, and water, can we begin to explore higher level needs like spiritual awakening. But what we often don’t realize is that our hunger, our craving, for those “higher needs,” is just as essential to our survival as the physical needs. Too many of us stop when we have our basic physiological needs met, neglecting to continue up that hierarchy of needs to pursue the rest of the things we need in order to be truly alive, truly fulfilled.
Jesus is telling the woman by the well that she has a deeper need even than the physical thirst that brings her here day after day, and that only when she addresses that need will her real thirst be quenched.
When the disciples come back and meet up with Jesus and encourage him to “eat something,” his response is, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Just like the woman at the well, they don’t get it either, asking one another, “Did you give him some food? I didn’t give him any food. Did you give him some food?” - but again, he’s talking about a deeper hunger than the physiological. The “food” he has is of the same sort as the “living water” – an internal source, connected to a higher spiritual power, that has the ability to truly nourish in a way that literal, physical food cannot do.
Jesus reminds us that we will only assuage our true hunger and thirst when we seek God as desperately as we seek to fulfill our physical needs. “Give me this water,” we should cry out, like the woman at the well, give me the living water of God that will quench my soul.
But since it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do that seeking after God if our basic needs for food and shelter are not met, those of us who do have our basic needs met are called to do all in our power to assist others in meeting those basic needs so that they, too, can seek the kind of spiritual sustenance that will truly nourish them, completely, wholly, at every level of their being.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Faith is a two-way relationship, and we can control only our side
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 12, 2017 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): 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” – 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 told me that she had 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," between two extremes. Rather than asserting that faith is entirely our choice or entirely a gift, I’m proposing that it’s both. Somehow at the same time it’s both a choice we make and a gift from God.
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, and we cannot 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 life of 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.
Sermon Text(s): 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” – 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 told me that she had 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," between two extremes. Rather than asserting that faith is entirely our choice or entirely a gift, I’m proposing that it’s both. Somehow at the same time it’s both a choice we make and a gift from God.
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, and we cannot 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 life of 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.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Shame and fear: two things God never intended for humanity
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 5, 2017 (First Sunday in Lent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, Romans 5:12-19
Since the season of Lent invites us to reflect on sin and its consequences, it is appropriate that we begin with the story of Adam and Eve, the story of the first sin, the “original sin,” in the Garden of Eden.
According to the story, humanity’s first sin was disobedience. God said not to do something, Adam and Eve did it, and wham: God expels them from the Garden.
Setting aside any philosophical questions about whether God’s rules were just and worthy of obedience or not, this story attempts to make sense of one of humanity’s fundamental flaws: our inability to accept limits, to acknowledge that “God is God and we are not.” We never seem to be satisfied with what God gives us; we always want more. As a species, we have a tendency to go after precisely the things we know we cannot have. Many a parent will tell you that the quickest way to get a child to do something is to tell them not to do it.
So what are the consequences of this sin? Immediately after their disobedience, after refusing to accept the limits placed on them, Adam and Eve feel shame -- they become aware of their nakedness and cover themselves, something they had previously not felt it necessary to do -- and fear -- they hide when God comes looking for them in the garden. Their relationship with each other and with God is changed because of their disobedience; rather than relationships characterized by trust and comfort and safety, they have become relationships tainted by fear and shame.
If fear and shame only entered Adam and Eve’s consciousness after the Fall, then it’s safe to say that fear and shame were not part of God’s intentions for humanity. Fear and shame are a consequence of sin, and in fact are sinful themselves, in a way, having nothing to do with what our relationship with God is intended to be like. Yet unfortunately, many people associate fear and shame with God. They think of God as a judgmental figure to be feared, someone in front of whom they should feel shame. Perhaps this is because so many churches and other religious communities -- the organizations that represent God to so many people -- use and rely on fear and shame to motivate and control people. Instead of seeing this as a characteristic of humanity’s sinfulness, people come to see it as a representation of how God relates to us.
And so when we enter a season like Lent, a season about repentance, a season that encourages us to look closely at our sin, it can stir up fear and shame for many people. They may feel they are being judged and shamed for their shortcomings in all areas of their lives. But while Lent encourages us to look seriously at our actions and make amends for any harm we have caused to others, it doesn’t invite us to wallow in shame or cower in fear.
Psychologists have written about the distinction between guilt and shame -- guilt is a feeling of remorse over some action we have done that we regret, while shame is a general feeling of unworthiness, a painful feeling about how we appear to others, whether or not we have actually done anything wrong. Guilt is about specific actions, whereas shame is about our sense of identity, our understanding of self [1]. That’s why shame is so destructive and unhealthy. It’s appropriate to feel guilt over something we’ve done that upset or harmed someone, and the season of Lent encourages us to acknowledge the sins of which we are guilty. But it’s not appropriate to feel like we are a horrible, unworthy person because we’ve done something that upset or harmed someone else -- that’s shame, one of the consequences of the Fall, something that God never intended for humanity.
According to psychologists, people who are overrun with shame often have an inability to feel true guilt, because they are so consumed with feeling bad about themselves they don’t have the ability to notice when they have hurt others or to feel remorse about it [2]. Feeling guilt, however, is considered a sign of emotional health. Emotionally healthy people are able to recognize that their actions may have caused pain to someone else, empathize with that person, and feel remorse and make amends [3]. Guilt may be painful, but it is healthy. Shame, on the other hand, is both painful and unhealthy.
And what about fear? Aren’t we supposed to “fear God?” The Bible constantly tells us things like “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 111:10). Doesn’t fear motivate us to behave ethically, fear of punishment if we don’t?
Well, yes, that kind of fear can be a motivator, but the ancient wisdom of the elders in both Jewish and Christian traditions tell us that that kind of fear is an insufficient foundation for true faith, because it relies on an incomplete understanding of God [4]. Yes, God can punish us, God has the ability to punish us, but God is also merciful. The story of the Fall in the Qur’an says that while God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden for disobeying his law, he also provided them guidance for living in the world to which he banished them. In other words -- with the punishment also came mercy. That is a complete picture of God: as the psalmist says, “You were a God who forgave them, yet punished them for their evil deeds” (Psalm 99:8). With sin comes consequences, but we can also rest assured that God is merciful, that God is always working for our good, even when it may seem we are being slammed with a punishment. Because, as Paul points out in our reading from Romans today, God managed to turn even the Fall into a good thing. Yes, he punished Adam and Eve by expelling them from the Garden, but he righted their wrongs -- and all of our wrongs -- by sending Jesus to us as the “new Adam,” a new creation, a picture of humanity restored to God’s original intentions for us and a gateway to accessing that restored humanity ourselves.
When the Bible talks about “fearing God,” it is not talking primarily about being scared, dreading punishment, pleading with God, “please don’t hurt me.” The Hebrew word used in the phrase “the fear of the Lord” is yirat, a word that means awe, reverence, wonder, amazement [5]. If you’ve ever had a theophany, a moment where God’s presence was revealed to you, made known to you in a powerful way, then you will know that that kind of experience can be slightly “scary” in our normal sense of the meaning of that word, but the emotion generated is one that comes from feeling overwhelmed at being connected in a positive way to something larger than ourselves, not one that comes from worrying that that thing larger than us will squash us.
So this Lent, I invite you to focus more on guilt -- acknowledging and admitting when you hurt others -- than on shame -- thinking you are an unworthy person, and to focus more on awe -- marveling at the presence of God and your connection with God -- than fear -- worrying that God will punish you. Don’t allow Lent to be a season of shame and fear. In fact, maybe this year, you could try giving them up for Lent.
[1] Joseph Burgo, “The Difference Between Guilt and Shame,” Psychology Today Blog, 30 May 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shame/201305/the-difference-between-guilt-and-shame Accessed 4 March 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Eikev/Yirah/yirah.html
[5] Tara Sophia Mohr, “Is it Fear or Awe?” http://www.jonathanfields.com/is-it-fear-or-awe/ Accessed 4 March 2017.
Sermon Text(s): Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, Romans 5:12-19
Since the season of Lent invites us to reflect on sin and its consequences, it is appropriate that we begin with the story of Adam and Eve, the story of the first sin, the “original sin,” in the Garden of Eden.
According to the story, humanity’s first sin was disobedience. God said not to do something, Adam and Eve did it, and wham: God expels them from the Garden.
Setting aside any philosophical questions about whether God’s rules were just and worthy of obedience or not, this story attempts to make sense of one of humanity’s fundamental flaws: our inability to accept limits, to acknowledge that “God is God and we are not.” We never seem to be satisfied with what God gives us; we always want more. As a species, we have a tendency to go after precisely the things we know we cannot have. Many a parent will tell you that the quickest way to get a child to do something is to tell them not to do it.
So what are the consequences of this sin? Immediately after their disobedience, after refusing to accept the limits placed on them, Adam and Eve feel shame -- they become aware of their nakedness and cover themselves, something they had previously not felt it necessary to do -- and fear -- they hide when God comes looking for them in the garden. Their relationship with each other and with God is changed because of their disobedience; rather than relationships characterized by trust and comfort and safety, they have become relationships tainted by fear and shame.
If fear and shame only entered Adam and Eve’s consciousness after the Fall, then it’s safe to say that fear and shame were not part of God’s intentions for humanity. Fear and shame are a consequence of sin, and in fact are sinful themselves, in a way, having nothing to do with what our relationship with God is intended to be like. Yet unfortunately, many people associate fear and shame with God. They think of God as a judgmental figure to be feared, someone in front of whom they should feel shame. Perhaps this is because so many churches and other religious communities -- the organizations that represent God to so many people -- use and rely on fear and shame to motivate and control people. Instead of seeing this as a characteristic of humanity’s sinfulness, people come to see it as a representation of how God relates to us.
And so when we enter a season like Lent, a season about repentance, a season that encourages us to look closely at our sin, it can stir up fear and shame for many people. They may feel they are being judged and shamed for their shortcomings in all areas of their lives. But while Lent encourages us to look seriously at our actions and make amends for any harm we have caused to others, it doesn’t invite us to wallow in shame or cower in fear.
Psychologists have written about the distinction between guilt and shame -- guilt is a feeling of remorse over some action we have done that we regret, while shame is a general feeling of unworthiness, a painful feeling about how we appear to others, whether or not we have actually done anything wrong. Guilt is about specific actions, whereas shame is about our sense of identity, our understanding of self [1]. That’s why shame is so destructive and unhealthy. It’s appropriate to feel guilt over something we’ve done that upset or harmed someone, and the season of Lent encourages us to acknowledge the sins of which we are guilty. But it’s not appropriate to feel like we are a horrible, unworthy person because we’ve done something that upset or harmed someone else -- that’s shame, one of the consequences of the Fall, something that God never intended for humanity.
According to psychologists, people who are overrun with shame often have an inability to feel true guilt, because they are so consumed with feeling bad about themselves they don’t have the ability to notice when they have hurt others or to feel remorse about it [2]. Feeling guilt, however, is considered a sign of emotional health. Emotionally healthy people are able to recognize that their actions may have caused pain to someone else, empathize with that person, and feel remorse and make amends [3]. Guilt may be painful, but it is healthy. Shame, on the other hand, is both painful and unhealthy.
And what about fear? Aren’t we supposed to “fear God?” The Bible constantly tells us things like “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 111:10). Doesn’t fear motivate us to behave ethically, fear of punishment if we don’t?
Well, yes, that kind of fear can be a motivator, but the ancient wisdom of the elders in both Jewish and Christian traditions tell us that that kind of fear is an insufficient foundation for true faith, because it relies on an incomplete understanding of God [4]. Yes, God can punish us, God has the ability to punish us, but God is also merciful. The story of the Fall in the Qur’an says that while God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden for disobeying his law, he also provided them guidance for living in the world to which he banished them. In other words -- with the punishment also came mercy. That is a complete picture of God: as the psalmist says, “You were a God who forgave them, yet punished them for their evil deeds” (Psalm 99:8). With sin comes consequences, but we can also rest assured that God is merciful, that God is always working for our good, even when it may seem we are being slammed with a punishment. Because, as Paul points out in our reading from Romans today, God managed to turn even the Fall into a good thing. Yes, he punished Adam and Eve by expelling them from the Garden, but he righted their wrongs -- and all of our wrongs -- by sending Jesus to us as the “new Adam,” a new creation, a picture of humanity restored to God’s original intentions for us and a gateway to accessing that restored humanity ourselves.
When the Bible talks about “fearing God,” it is not talking primarily about being scared, dreading punishment, pleading with God, “please don’t hurt me.” The Hebrew word used in the phrase “the fear of the Lord” is yirat, a word that means awe, reverence, wonder, amazement [5]. If you’ve ever had a theophany, a moment where God’s presence was revealed to you, made known to you in a powerful way, then you will know that that kind of experience can be slightly “scary” in our normal sense of the meaning of that word, but the emotion generated is one that comes from feeling overwhelmed at being connected in a positive way to something larger than ourselves, not one that comes from worrying that that thing larger than us will squash us.
So this Lent, I invite you to focus more on guilt -- acknowledging and admitting when you hurt others -- than on shame -- thinking you are an unworthy person, and to focus more on awe -- marveling at the presence of God and your connection with God -- than fear -- worrying that God will punish you. Don’t allow Lent to be a season of shame and fear. In fact, maybe this year, you could try giving them up for Lent.
[1] Joseph Burgo, “The Difference Between Guilt and Shame,” Psychology Today Blog, 30 May 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shame/201305/the-difference-between-guilt-and-shame Accessed 4 March 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Eikev/Yirah/yirah.html
[5] Tara Sophia Mohr, “Is it Fear or Awe?” http://www.jonathanfields.com/is-it-fear-or-awe/ Accessed 4 March 2017.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
An invitation to take stock of individual and corporate sins during Lent
Sermon delivered Wednesday, March 1, 2017 (Ash Wednesday) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: all the right ritual actions are meaningless if not accompanied by the right intentions. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.
This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers.” And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.
The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.
Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of denying and emptying oneself in order to open oneself more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love one’s neighbor as oneself. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet of Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance.”
The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own hearts and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?
But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Cuthbert’s, as the Diocese of California, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?
But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people. In our current political climate, these communal sins of our culture are on display in a particularly vivid way. This year I am especially aware of “the evil done on our behalf” that our confession of sin refers to – sins we may have not have committed personally, but things our government has done “on our behalf,” in which we are implicated whether we like it or not.
On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our mortality and the fragility of human life. It is a time for examining our actions and behaviors and priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and taking stock of what is really important in the life of faith.
So as you begin Lent this year, take some time to consider: what is really important to you in your life of faith? What spiritual practices do you wish you were doing on a more regular basis? Could you commit to doing at least one of them during Lent? What relationship in your life do you most need to change in order for God’s love to be reflected in and through it? Could you take some steps toward changing that relationship during Lent?
Each of us may have a different Lenten discipline this year, but the underlying theme of our work is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: all the right ritual actions are meaningless if not accompanied by the right intentions. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.
This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers.” And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.
The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.
Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of denying and emptying oneself in order to open oneself more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love one’s neighbor as oneself. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet of Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance.”
The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own hearts and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?
But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Cuthbert’s, as the Diocese of California, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?
But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people. In our current political climate, these communal sins of our culture are on display in a particularly vivid way. This year I am especially aware of “the evil done on our behalf” that our confession of sin refers to – sins we may have not have committed personally, but things our government has done “on our behalf,” in which we are implicated whether we like it or not.
On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our mortality and the fragility of human life. It is a time for examining our actions and behaviors and priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and taking stock of what is really important in the life of faith.
So as you begin Lent this year, take some time to consider: what is really important to you in your life of faith? What spiritual practices do you wish you were doing on a more regular basis? Could you commit to doing at least one of them during Lent? What relationship in your life do you most need to change in order for God’s love to be reflected in and through it? Could you take some steps toward changing that relationship during Lent?
Each of us may have a different Lenten discipline this year, but the underlying theme of our work is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
The Transfiguration gives us a "spiritual booster" before Lent begins
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 (Last Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 17:1-9
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)
Peter, James, and John hear the voice of God speak these words about Jesus as they are gathered on the mountain in today’s Gospel reading.
We heard these exact same words just a few weeks ago, on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, when our Gospel reading was the story of Jesus’s baptism. After John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan, the Holy Spirit descends from heaven in the form of a dove and comes to rest on Jesus’s head, and a voice from heaven says,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
The season after the Epiphany is bookended by this phrase – “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The season starts and ends with moments where God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son and commands those around him to take notice. These two great revelations from God take place at the beginning of the two significant phases of Jesus’s life. The first event – Jesus’s baptism – occurs at the start of his public teaching ministry, and the second event – the Transfiguration – occurs at the start of his passion, his journey to the cross. We are told to “look, listen up, take notice!” – as he begins to show us how to live and as he begins to show us how to die.
After the story of Jesus’s baptism, we get a series of his teachings in the following weeks. This year, our readings came primarily from the Sermon on the Mount, and we used those readings as starting points to consider how Jesus taught us to live, and how we vow to follow those teachings through the promises we make when we, too, are baptized. Our Baptismal Covenant is our vow to behave in ways that echo the teachings of Jesus: love your neighbor and your enemy, serve God in all people, strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.
The Transfiguration marks the starting point of Jesus’s journey toward his death. Shortly before this revelatory moment, Jesus begins to predict his death and speak of it to his disciples, and shortly after shining with a holy light on the mountain, he “sets his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), where he will be killed. We always hear the story of the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent begins because it marks the beginning of Jesus’s journey to the cross, the journey we commemorate during Lent and Holy Week.
It also gives us a preview of the Resurrection: the image of Jesus changed in form but yet still recognizably Jesus, shining with an otherworldly light, being proclaimed God’s beloved son, worshipped above all other revered prophets of old, foreshadows his eventual triumph over death through his Resurrection.
On their way down the mountain afterwards, Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about what they have just seen until after “the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” The Transfiguration only makes sense in light of the Resurrection, but the Resurrection cannot happen without walking the road to Jerusalem, the road to death. Peter, James, and John, Jesus’s “inner circle,” are given the vision of the Transfiguration as a “spiritual booster” before they head down that difficult road. They may not understand it in the moment, but somewhere in their consciousness, when they find themselves in the midst of despair, they will remember this: the road may be long and dark, but the end result is Jesus standing triumphant, radiant, shining, glorified above all the prophets.
And as we remember these events of so many years ago, we too are given this “spiritual booster” right before Lent, a “foretaste of the feast to come,” a reminder that the doom and gloom of Lent isn’t all there is to the story. As we prepare for Lent, the Transfiguration reminds us that the Resurrection is not far behind. We enter Lent with the image of a shining, glorified Jesus to lead us through the darkness. In the words of the psalmist, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4). As we begin Lent this year, let us not forget that God is with us even as we walk through the wilderness. God is with us in our pain and God is able to transform that pain into new life. The road to death is lit by Resurrection light.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 17:1-9
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)
Peter, James, and John hear the voice of God speak these words about Jesus as they are gathered on the mountain in today’s Gospel reading.
We heard these exact same words just a few weeks ago, on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, when our Gospel reading was the story of Jesus’s baptism. After John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan, the Holy Spirit descends from heaven in the form of a dove and comes to rest on Jesus’s head, and a voice from heaven says,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
The season after the Epiphany is bookended by this phrase – “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The season starts and ends with moments where God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son and commands those around him to take notice. These two great revelations from God take place at the beginning of the two significant phases of Jesus’s life. The first event – Jesus’s baptism – occurs at the start of his public teaching ministry, and the second event – the Transfiguration – occurs at the start of his passion, his journey to the cross. We are told to “look, listen up, take notice!” – as he begins to show us how to live and as he begins to show us how to die.
After the story of Jesus’s baptism, we get a series of his teachings in the following weeks. This year, our readings came primarily from the Sermon on the Mount, and we used those readings as starting points to consider how Jesus taught us to live, and how we vow to follow those teachings through the promises we make when we, too, are baptized. Our Baptismal Covenant is our vow to behave in ways that echo the teachings of Jesus: love your neighbor and your enemy, serve God in all people, strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.
The Transfiguration marks the starting point of Jesus’s journey toward his death. Shortly before this revelatory moment, Jesus begins to predict his death and speak of it to his disciples, and shortly after shining with a holy light on the mountain, he “sets his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), where he will be killed. We always hear the story of the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent begins because it marks the beginning of Jesus’s journey to the cross, the journey we commemorate during Lent and Holy Week.
It also gives us a preview of the Resurrection: the image of Jesus changed in form but yet still recognizably Jesus, shining with an otherworldly light, being proclaimed God’s beloved son, worshipped above all other revered prophets of old, foreshadows his eventual triumph over death through his Resurrection.
On their way down the mountain afterwards, Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about what they have just seen until after “the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” The Transfiguration only makes sense in light of the Resurrection, but the Resurrection cannot happen without walking the road to Jerusalem, the road to death. Peter, James, and John, Jesus’s “inner circle,” are given the vision of the Transfiguration as a “spiritual booster” before they head down that difficult road. They may not understand it in the moment, but somewhere in their consciousness, when they find themselves in the midst of despair, they will remember this: the road may be long and dark, but the end result is Jesus standing triumphant, radiant, shining, glorified above all the prophets.
And as we remember these events of so many years ago, we too are given this “spiritual booster” right before Lent, a “foretaste of the feast to come,” a reminder that the doom and gloom of Lent isn’t all there is to the story. As we prepare for Lent, the Transfiguration reminds us that the Resurrection is not far behind. We enter Lent with the image of a shining, glorified Jesus to lead us through the darkness. In the words of the psalmist, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4). As we begin Lent this year, let us not forget that God is with us even as we walk through the wilderness. God is with us in our pain and God is able to transform that pain into new life. The road to death is lit by Resurrection light.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Loving your neighbor -- and your enemy: some practical steps
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 (Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part seven of a seven-week series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 5:38-48, Baptismal Covenant Question #4
In this final week of our preaching series on baptism, we consider the fourth question in the Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”
Our readings today invite us to consider what it means to love our neighbor, a common instruction in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Our passage from Leviticus includes this instruction:
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin… You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)
Jesus takes this even a step further in our Gospel passage for the day:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)
For much of my life, I would hear passages like these and throw my hands up with exasperation.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge?”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
“Be perfect, as God is perfect?”
Yeah, right!! Thanks a lot, God. There you go again, setting your standards so impossibly high that we could never reach them.
And then, in my study of world religions in college and graduate school, I discovered lovingkindness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. For me, a lightbulb went on when I encountered this ancient practice. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but he didn’t teach us HOW – at least, not in the records that were preserved and passed down to us. Just saying, “Love your enemies” without giving any practical instructions as to how to do that, especially since it is so contrary to the instincts of human nature, was, for me, not helpful at all. Reading and hearing these biblical passages did nothing for me except frustrate me and induce feelings of guilt and shame over how poorly I did at trying to follow these instructions. But when I discovered lovingkindness meditation, I felt like FINALLY, here was a set of practices that gave me tools to actually change my behavior and follow the teachings of Jesus more closely.
Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, has noted the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha on loving one’s enemies, but he points out that Jesus was only able to teach for about three years before he was crucified. The Buddha, on the other hand,
At its most basic, lovingkindness meditation is the act of sending goodwill and well-wishes into the world. It involves repeating a certain set of phrases silently during meditation that express a wish for the person, people, or beings you are directing these wishes toward to be free from danger, to have mental and physical happiness, and to be content and at peace in the world.
The word translated into English as “lovingkindness” is the Pali word metta. (Pali is the language in which most of the Buddhist scriptures are written, a language that originated in ancient India.) Sharon Salzburg, a prominent American Buddhist teacher, writes about how metta differs from what Americans normally think of when we use the word “love:”
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word hesed, often translated as “lovingkindness” in English, also refers to this kind of unconditional love, the kind of love God offers to humankind. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for our enemies. Not passion or desire or sentimentality, not a feeling of liking or being drawn toward them, but that kind of unconditional acceptance of what is, a love that sees all things and accepts them as they are. This kind of love recognizes the common humanity of all people and genuinely seeks the happiness of all, rather than nurturing resentments and wishing ill upon those who have harmed us.
In traditional Buddhist lovingkindness practice, the meditator moves through a series of six categories of beings in a set order. One begins by directing metta -- lovingkindness, well-wishes -- towards oneself, then moves on to a benefactor or mentor, someone who has supported you in your life or work in such a way that feeling gratitude toward this person and wishing him or her well is easy. Then, you consider a beloved friend, then a neutral person, then an enemy, and finally, all beings.
There is a wisdom to the order of this structure. First, we have to be able to love ourselves before we can truly love others, which is why metta starts with a focus on self. And finally, we can only say we love all people when we have been able to send love toward our enemies, toward those we find it most difficult to love.
You may see different translations or expressions of the metta phrases, but they all convey those basic sentiments: that the person you are focusing on be free from danger, be mentally and physically well, and have ease of well-being – be content and at peace in the world. The set of phrases I use that express these wishes is:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Ideally, you would spend a good deal of time with each category before moving on to the next one, but for the purposes of illustration today, I want to focus on just the “friend” and the “enemy” categories, to show you how this works and how you might use this practice to help work with the feelings of anger or pain that may come up for you when you think about a “difficult person” or enemy in your life.
So now I’m going to walk you through a guided metta meditation.
Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position. Ideally, you’d sit with your spine straight, so that the air can flow unobstructed in and out of your lungs. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and exhale all the way out. Then let your breathing return to normal, and just watch it as it settles in to a regular rhythm.
Traditionally we always start by directing metta toward ourselves, but since that can be somewhat of a complex practice in and of itself, today we’ll start by focusing on a good friend, someone it is easy for you to love, someone you naturally wish well. It is best to pick someone who is not a family member, and not a romantic partner, since we want to generate a feeling of pure, unattached love and goodwill, not love that is mixed up with feelings of desire, whether that be sexual desire or a sense of needing that person’s approval or attention. Think of a friend with whom you have a relatively uncomplicated, positive relationship, and bring up an image of that person in your mind.
Now say these phrases silently, directing them toward that friend:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Now shift your attention toward someone it is difficult for you to love. You might think of this person as your enemy, or it just might be someone who you find difficult or annoying, someone you do not naturally feel positively toward. As you work with this practice, it is best to start with someone with whom the dislike or difficulty is relatively mild. Don’t start by trying to love the person who has caused you more pain than anyone else in the world! (Over time you can gradually work yourself up toward being able to direct goodwill toward that person, but for now, pick someone you just mildly dislike.)
Think of that difficult person or enemy in your mind, and then direct the metta phrases toward them:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if your interior landscape changes when you send positive wishes toward this difficult person. Do you feel areas of tightness loosening? Do you feel a relaxation or sense of relief?
If not, if you still find yourself angry and tight and clenched toward your difficult person, try playing with different visualizations to help you feel some sense of kindness and compassion toward them. You might imagine that person as a baby, as an innocent child. Or you might think of them in another situation where they are vulnerable or in pain – gravely ill, or on their deathbed – although be careful not to nurture any feelings of vengefulness or celebration at imagining this person suffering – that is not the point. The point is to open a door for you to connect with them, to see in their shared suffering your common humanity.
Sharon Salzburg says “you should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person.” One of Sharon’s students chose a difficult person who was extremely talkative and annoying, and it helped her send lovingkindness to that person if she imaged her sitting bound and gagged in a chair. Another student could only send lovingkindness toward his difficult person if he imagined him locked up in jail. Take some time to think of images or visualizations that would help you feel compassion toward this difficult person, situations that would soften your heart toward them.
Now with that image in mind, direct the metta phrases toward your difficult person again:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if anything changes in your body as you sit with that image of your difficult person as you repeat these phrases.
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Go ahead and open your eyes.
Now, if that was difficult, or if you didn’t feel or see any immediate changes in your feelings or attitude toward this person, it’s important to remember that it’s called spiritual practice for a reason! It takes practice! It doesn’t always happen overnight. It’s important to go easy on yourself, to not set expectations too high in terms of what the results of the practice will be. Ideally, you’d spend 30 minutes in silent meditation each day, working with this or any other meditation techniques. People do this for a lifetime and are still working at it, so don’t expect to be the perfect example of “loving your neighbor” after only trying this a few times.
When Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he doesn’t mean you should never make any mistakes. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is teleios, which doesn’t mean “without flaws or mistakes,” but “complete, whole, having reached its end, full-grown, or mature.” Jesus is calling us to be mature Christians, to be grown-up Christians, to put the effort in to work on our faith and develop it over time. That means not being content to stay in that frustrated, exasperated state – “yeah, right, Jesus, how can I ever live up to what you’re asking of me!” – but to actively search for tools and techniques to help you work toward making those commandments a reality. Maybe lovingkindness meditation will help you as it has helped me, maybe not. But in any case, we’re called to make an effort, using whatever tools are most effective for us. Because at our baptism, we made a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is much wisdom in the teachings of the world’s religions about how to do that, and taking the time to find a practice that works for us is part of the way we keep our baptismal vows.
We’ll close with our 3 minutes of silent meditation that normally comes before the sermon. During that time, I invite you to try out these techniques more extensively, directing the phrases first toward a friend and then toward an enemy.
REFERENCE SHEET:
Metta (Lovingkindness) Phrases:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Metta Sequence:
1. Yourself
2. Benefactor or mentor
3. Friend
4. Neutral person – someone for whom you do not feel an immediate attraction or repulsion, someone who you do not like or dislike
5. Enemy or difficult person
6. All people/all beings
[1] “Sharon Salzburg & Robert Thurman: Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 15 December 2016, http://onbeing.org/programs/sharon-salzberg-robert-thurman-embracing-enemies-suffering-2/ Accessed 17 February 2017.
[2] Sharon Salzburg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995): 18-19, 21.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 5:38-48, Baptismal Covenant Question #4
In this final week of our preaching series on baptism, we consider the fourth question in the Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”
Our readings today invite us to consider what it means to love our neighbor, a common instruction in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Our passage from Leviticus includes this instruction:
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin… You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)
Jesus takes this even a step further in our Gospel passage for the day:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)
For much of my life, I would hear passages like these and throw my hands up with exasperation.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge?”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
“Be perfect, as God is perfect?”
Yeah, right!! Thanks a lot, God. There you go again, setting your standards so impossibly high that we could never reach them.
And then, in my study of world religions in college and graduate school, I discovered lovingkindness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. For me, a lightbulb went on when I encountered this ancient practice. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but he didn’t teach us HOW – at least, not in the records that were preserved and passed down to us. Just saying, “Love your enemies” without giving any practical instructions as to how to do that, especially since it is so contrary to the instincts of human nature, was, for me, not helpful at all. Reading and hearing these biblical passages did nothing for me except frustrate me and induce feelings of guilt and shame over how poorly I did at trying to follow these instructions. But when I discovered lovingkindness meditation, I felt like FINALLY, here was a set of practices that gave me tools to actually change my behavior and follow the teachings of Jesus more closely.
Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, has noted the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha on loving one’s enemies, but he points out that Jesus was only able to teach for about three years before he was crucified. The Buddha, on the other hand,
“had to slave away [teaching] for 46 years after his enlightenment,” Thurman says. “So he had time to provide more practical methodologies to underlie these sort of high moral-sounding slogans like ‘love your enemy.’” [1]Discovering those “practical methodologies” has been an incredible blessing to me, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned with you all, in the hopes that it will be useful to you, too, as you strive to “love your neighbor as yourself” and “seek and serve Christ in ALL persons,” even your enemies.
At its most basic, lovingkindness meditation is the act of sending goodwill and well-wishes into the world. It involves repeating a certain set of phrases silently during meditation that express a wish for the person, people, or beings you are directing these wishes toward to be free from danger, to have mental and physical happiness, and to be content and at peace in the world.
The word translated into English as “lovingkindness” is the Pali word metta. (Pali is the language in which most of the Buddhist scriptures are written, a language that originated in ancient India.) Sharon Salzburg, a prominent American Buddhist teacher, writes about how metta differs from what Americans normally think of when we use the word “love:”
“In our culture, when we talk about love, we usually mean either passion or sentimentality,” she says. “It is crucial to distinguish metta from both of these states. Passion is enmeshed with feelings of desire, of wanting, or of owning and possessing. Passion gets entangled with needing things to be a certain way, with having our expectations met… By contrast, the spirit of metta is unconditional: open and unobstructed… When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. Metta – the sense of love that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend things are other than the way they are – overcomes the illusion of separateness… and all of the states that accompany this fundamental error of separateness – fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair – all of the feelings of fragmentation. In place of these, the genuine realization of connectedness brings unification, confidence, and safety.” [2]
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word hesed, often translated as “lovingkindness” in English, also refers to this kind of unconditional love, the kind of love God offers to humankind. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for our enemies. Not passion or desire or sentimentality, not a feeling of liking or being drawn toward them, but that kind of unconditional acceptance of what is, a love that sees all things and accepts them as they are. This kind of love recognizes the common humanity of all people and genuinely seeks the happiness of all, rather than nurturing resentments and wishing ill upon those who have harmed us.
In traditional Buddhist lovingkindness practice, the meditator moves through a series of six categories of beings in a set order. One begins by directing metta -- lovingkindness, well-wishes -- towards oneself, then moves on to a benefactor or mentor, someone who has supported you in your life or work in such a way that feeling gratitude toward this person and wishing him or her well is easy. Then, you consider a beloved friend, then a neutral person, then an enemy, and finally, all beings.
There is a wisdom to the order of this structure. First, we have to be able to love ourselves before we can truly love others, which is why metta starts with a focus on self. And finally, we can only say we love all people when we have been able to send love toward our enemies, toward those we find it most difficult to love.
You may see different translations or expressions of the metta phrases, but they all convey those basic sentiments: that the person you are focusing on be free from danger, be mentally and physically well, and have ease of well-being – be content and at peace in the world. The set of phrases I use that express these wishes is:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Ideally, you would spend a good deal of time with each category before moving on to the next one, but for the purposes of illustration today, I want to focus on just the “friend” and the “enemy” categories, to show you how this works and how you might use this practice to help work with the feelings of anger or pain that may come up for you when you think about a “difficult person” or enemy in your life.
So now I’m going to walk you through a guided metta meditation.
Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position. Ideally, you’d sit with your spine straight, so that the air can flow unobstructed in and out of your lungs. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and exhale all the way out. Then let your breathing return to normal, and just watch it as it settles in to a regular rhythm.
Traditionally we always start by directing metta toward ourselves, but since that can be somewhat of a complex practice in and of itself, today we’ll start by focusing on a good friend, someone it is easy for you to love, someone you naturally wish well. It is best to pick someone who is not a family member, and not a romantic partner, since we want to generate a feeling of pure, unattached love and goodwill, not love that is mixed up with feelings of desire, whether that be sexual desire or a sense of needing that person’s approval or attention. Think of a friend with whom you have a relatively uncomplicated, positive relationship, and bring up an image of that person in your mind.
Now say these phrases silently, directing them toward that friend:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Now shift your attention toward someone it is difficult for you to love. You might think of this person as your enemy, or it just might be someone who you find difficult or annoying, someone you do not naturally feel positively toward. As you work with this practice, it is best to start with someone with whom the dislike or difficulty is relatively mild. Don’t start by trying to love the person who has caused you more pain than anyone else in the world! (Over time you can gradually work yourself up toward being able to direct goodwill toward that person, but for now, pick someone you just mildly dislike.)
Think of that difficult person or enemy in your mind, and then direct the metta phrases toward them:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if your interior landscape changes when you send positive wishes toward this difficult person. Do you feel areas of tightness loosening? Do you feel a relaxation or sense of relief?
If not, if you still find yourself angry and tight and clenched toward your difficult person, try playing with different visualizations to help you feel some sense of kindness and compassion toward them. You might imagine that person as a baby, as an innocent child. Or you might think of them in another situation where they are vulnerable or in pain – gravely ill, or on their deathbed – although be careful not to nurture any feelings of vengefulness or celebration at imagining this person suffering – that is not the point. The point is to open a door for you to connect with them, to see in their shared suffering your common humanity.
Sharon Salzburg says “you should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person.” One of Sharon’s students chose a difficult person who was extremely talkative and annoying, and it helped her send lovingkindness to that person if she imaged her sitting bound and gagged in a chair. Another student could only send lovingkindness toward his difficult person if he imagined him locked up in jail. Take some time to think of images or visualizations that would help you feel compassion toward this difficult person, situations that would soften your heart toward them.
Now with that image in mind, direct the metta phrases toward your difficult person again:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if anything changes in your body as you sit with that image of your difficult person as you repeat these phrases.
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Go ahead and open your eyes.
Now, if that was difficult, or if you didn’t feel or see any immediate changes in your feelings or attitude toward this person, it’s important to remember that it’s called spiritual practice for a reason! It takes practice! It doesn’t always happen overnight. It’s important to go easy on yourself, to not set expectations too high in terms of what the results of the practice will be. Ideally, you’d spend 30 minutes in silent meditation each day, working with this or any other meditation techniques. People do this for a lifetime and are still working at it, so don’t expect to be the perfect example of “loving your neighbor” after only trying this a few times.
When Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he doesn’t mean you should never make any mistakes. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is teleios, which doesn’t mean “without flaws or mistakes,” but “complete, whole, having reached its end, full-grown, or mature.” Jesus is calling us to be mature Christians, to be grown-up Christians, to put the effort in to work on our faith and develop it over time. That means not being content to stay in that frustrated, exasperated state – “yeah, right, Jesus, how can I ever live up to what you’re asking of me!” – but to actively search for tools and techniques to help you work toward making those commandments a reality. Maybe lovingkindness meditation will help you as it has helped me, maybe not. But in any case, we’re called to make an effort, using whatever tools are most effective for us. Because at our baptism, we made a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is much wisdom in the teachings of the world’s religions about how to do that, and taking the time to find a practice that works for us is part of the way we keep our baptismal vows.
We’ll close with our 3 minutes of silent meditation that normally comes before the sermon. During that time, I invite you to try out these techniques more extensively, directing the phrases first toward a friend and then toward an enemy.
REFERENCE SHEET:
Metta (Lovingkindness) Phrases:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Metta Sequence:
1. Yourself
2. Benefactor or mentor
3. Friend
4. Neutral person – someone for whom you do not feel an immediate attraction or repulsion, someone who you do not like or dislike
5. Enemy or difficult person
6. All people/all beings
[1] “Sharon Salzburg & Robert Thurman: Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 15 December 2016, http://onbeing.org/programs/sharon-salzberg-robert-thurman-embracing-enemies-suffering-2/ Accessed 17 February 2017.
[2] Sharon Salzburg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995): 18-19, 21.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Repentance, reconciliation and return - in the liturgy and in our lives
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017 (Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part six of a seven-week series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-30, Matthew 5:21-37, Baptismal Covenant Question #2
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”
Moses’s speech to the Israelites in today’s reading from Deuteronomy reminds them that while God has given them a set of commandments and instructions for living, he does not make them behave in a certain way. They always have a choice whether they will follow the commandments or not.
We, too, have a real choice as to whether we will follow the commandments we have been given in our Baptistmal Covenant. Because we have free will, our obedience to our baptismal vows is by no means guaranteed. It is always a choice, and because we are human, we will mess up sometimes. We will make the wrong choice. Sometimes we choose death and curses instead of life and blessings.
This is why our baptismal covenant has built into it a vow about what we will do when that happens. In this sixth week of our preaching series on baptism, we look at the second question of the baptismal covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
Notice that the question does not say IF you fall into sin, but WHEN. The Baptismal Covenant does not assume perfection from us. It assumes we will mess up. Being faithful does not mean never sinning. It means properly making amends when we do.
Jesus’s teachings in today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount set an extremely high standard for our behavior, pretty much guaranteeing that we will always fall short! Don’t just refrain from murdering someone, but refrain from being angry at them, he says. Don’t just refrain from having an affair with a married person, but refrain from even thinking lustfully about anyone who is married.
Seriously, Jesus? How is it even humanly possible to obey these teachings completely? Maybe it’s not, but his point is that you’re not made right with God simply by refraining from certain actions. Fully embracing the ethical standards God sets means making an effort to live with integrity, purifying your inner life and thoughts as well as your outward actions. Even if you never kill someone, if you nurture anger and resentment toward that person, that in itself is its own kind of death, for you and for the person you are angry with.
Jesus encourages us to go the extra mile in the work of reconciliation and actively seek to restore relationships with our neighbors as part and parcel of what it means to be reconciled with God.
Right after the teaching about it not being enough to simply not murder someone, but not to be angry with them either, Jesus says,
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
This is the theological basis behind the passing of the peace during our liturgy. After we collectively confess our sins, first we are reconciled with God, symbolized by the priest pronouncing absolution over us, reminding us that God forgives us, and then we are reconciled with our neighbors, symbolized by our sharing the peace with one another.
When we say “peace” to one another, we are offering a sign of reconciliation, making peace with everyone before we receive the Eucharist, as Jesus instructs us to do in this passage from Matthew: “First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come [to the altar].” Some interpretations of this passage say that we should not receive communion if we are in a serious conflict with anyone in our lives that we have not attempted to resolve. I once voluntarily denied myself communion for several months because I was in conflict with a member of my family. He did not immediately respond to my attempts to reconcile, but after I had written a letter and reached out and done all that I felt I could at that point, after I had made a good faith effort to be reconciled, I started to receive communion again. As much as we enjoy greeting one another and being cheerful during the peace, the peace is not meant to be a time to casually greet one another on a social level. It is meant to be a time to seek forgiveness from anyone whom we may have harmed and to forgive anyone who may have harmed us in the community.
While I was serving a congregation in Omaha, Nebraska, as an intern through one of the Episcopal Service Corps discernment programs for young adults, I carelessly made a remark that offended one of my parishioners. At a book study one night, I was commenting about the lack of mental health services for veterans coming back from war. My intent was to express concern and to advocate for veteran’s needs, but the way I said it – making a comment about how the military “turns people into killing machines” through basic training and then doesn’t give them the tools to undo that training when they return to civilian life – inadvertently upset one of the people in the book study, who was a veteran and didn’t take kindly to my categorization of soldiers as “killing machines.” We talked about it afterwards and were able to come to a congenial resolution. That Sunday, we intentionally approached each other at the peace, and that handshake and brief eye contact we made while saying “peace” to one another had a much deeper meaning to me in that moment than it ever had before in the liturgy.
If you have ever been through a Twelve Step program, or know someone who has, you know about the importance of Step Nine – making amends. Making amends means approaching anyone we have wronged and attempting to make things right – to apologize for what we have done and to offer any kind of remuneration appropriate to the situation, anything we can do to “make it up to them,” as the saying goes. After this initial reconciliation, Step Ten is to “continue to take personal inventory and when we [are] wrong, promptly admit it.” Since the founders of AA and the Twelve Step program were influenced by biblical teachings, it is no surprise that Steps Nine and Ten echo these teachings of Jesus and the second vow of our Baptismal Covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
In other words, this question asks us, “Will you continue to be vigilant in your resistance against evil, against sin, against addiction, against whatever it is that draws you away from God, and whenever you find yourself going astray from that, whenever you realize you have done wrong, to promptly admit it and make amends – to others and to God?”
Of course, while we may be able to right some wrongs we have done to others in this life, some wrongs are impossible to correct. An apology doesn’t bring someone back from the dead, for instance. When we come up against the limits of our ability to make amends, we are forced to acknowledge our dependence on God’s grace.
Remember in stewardship season when we talked about how we can never really “give back to God?” Well, it is also true that we can never really “make amends” to God. What could we possibly give to God or do for God that would make up for all the ways we have harmed God when we have fallen short of God’s intentions for us, for God’s plan for us to live with one other in peace? Despite the universal foxhole prayer – “Dear God, if you just save my life, if you just get me out of this situation, I’ll make it up to you – I’ll go to church every week, I’ll give up all my possessions, I’ll become a preacher, I’ll….” whatever the bargain is we’re making with God” – in reality, we can never actually “make it up to God.” If we do make it through whatever difficult situation we’re in, we know that our success or relief is a gift of pure grace.
If our relationship with God is built on trying to “make up for” all the things we have done wrong, we will only sink further into guilt and despair. The heart of the Christian message is one of pure grace – completely undeserved, unearned mercy shown by God to us, a complete gift. It is a foundation in this overflowing mercy of God that frees us, that compels us, to forgive as we have been forgiven. Knowing that God forgives us for anything and everything we have done allows us to begin to work toward forgiving others.
This is why I like the absolution from the New Zealand Prayer Book and why I’ve been using it in our liturgy for the past several months:
“God forgives you. Forgive others, forgive yourself.”
It is through fully coming to understand that God forgives you that you can begin to forgive others and yourself.
And the second part of that absolution: “Through Christ, God has put away your sins. Approach your God in peace.” – reminds us that God has ALREADY forgiven us. I, as the priest, am not pronouncing you to be forgiven in that moment. I am reminding you that, as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” You are already forgiven. You are free. Free to approach God in peace, without fear of retribution. Free to approach your brothers and sisters secure in the knowledge of your own acceptance and forgiveness and therefore free to offer them your forgiveness.
After this, we flow seamlessly into the exchanging of the peace. We “approach our God in peace” by approaching one another in peace, being reconciled with one another, and then coming together to share the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ “given for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.”
Repentance, reconciliation and return. We rehearse these steps every week in the structure of our worship. It is meant to be a pattern for our lives outside these 90 minutes on Sunday mornings as well.
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
We will, with God’s help.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-30, Matthew 5:21-37, Baptismal Covenant Question #2
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”
Moses’s speech to the Israelites in today’s reading from Deuteronomy reminds them that while God has given them a set of commandments and instructions for living, he does not make them behave in a certain way. They always have a choice whether they will follow the commandments or not.
We, too, have a real choice as to whether we will follow the commandments we have been given in our Baptistmal Covenant. Because we have free will, our obedience to our baptismal vows is by no means guaranteed. It is always a choice, and because we are human, we will mess up sometimes. We will make the wrong choice. Sometimes we choose death and curses instead of life and blessings.
This is why our baptismal covenant has built into it a vow about what we will do when that happens. In this sixth week of our preaching series on baptism, we look at the second question of the baptismal covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
Notice that the question does not say IF you fall into sin, but WHEN. The Baptismal Covenant does not assume perfection from us. It assumes we will mess up. Being faithful does not mean never sinning. It means properly making amends when we do.
Jesus’s teachings in today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount set an extremely high standard for our behavior, pretty much guaranteeing that we will always fall short! Don’t just refrain from murdering someone, but refrain from being angry at them, he says. Don’t just refrain from having an affair with a married person, but refrain from even thinking lustfully about anyone who is married.
Seriously, Jesus? How is it even humanly possible to obey these teachings completely? Maybe it’s not, but his point is that you’re not made right with God simply by refraining from certain actions. Fully embracing the ethical standards God sets means making an effort to live with integrity, purifying your inner life and thoughts as well as your outward actions. Even if you never kill someone, if you nurture anger and resentment toward that person, that in itself is its own kind of death, for you and for the person you are angry with.
Jesus encourages us to go the extra mile in the work of reconciliation and actively seek to restore relationships with our neighbors as part and parcel of what it means to be reconciled with God.
Right after the teaching about it not being enough to simply not murder someone, but not to be angry with them either, Jesus says,
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
This is the theological basis behind the passing of the peace during our liturgy. After we collectively confess our sins, first we are reconciled with God, symbolized by the priest pronouncing absolution over us, reminding us that God forgives us, and then we are reconciled with our neighbors, symbolized by our sharing the peace with one another.
When we say “peace” to one another, we are offering a sign of reconciliation, making peace with everyone before we receive the Eucharist, as Jesus instructs us to do in this passage from Matthew: “First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come [to the altar].” Some interpretations of this passage say that we should not receive communion if we are in a serious conflict with anyone in our lives that we have not attempted to resolve. I once voluntarily denied myself communion for several months because I was in conflict with a member of my family. He did not immediately respond to my attempts to reconcile, but after I had written a letter and reached out and done all that I felt I could at that point, after I had made a good faith effort to be reconciled, I started to receive communion again. As much as we enjoy greeting one another and being cheerful during the peace, the peace is not meant to be a time to casually greet one another on a social level. It is meant to be a time to seek forgiveness from anyone whom we may have harmed and to forgive anyone who may have harmed us in the community.
While I was serving a congregation in Omaha, Nebraska, as an intern through one of the Episcopal Service Corps discernment programs for young adults, I carelessly made a remark that offended one of my parishioners. At a book study one night, I was commenting about the lack of mental health services for veterans coming back from war. My intent was to express concern and to advocate for veteran’s needs, but the way I said it – making a comment about how the military “turns people into killing machines” through basic training and then doesn’t give them the tools to undo that training when they return to civilian life – inadvertently upset one of the people in the book study, who was a veteran and didn’t take kindly to my categorization of soldiers as “killing machines.” We talked about it afterwards and were able to come to a congenial resolution. That Sunday, we intentionally approached each other at the peace, and that handshake and brief eye contact we made while saying “peace” to one another had a much deeper meaning to me in that moment than it ever had before in the liturgy.
If you have ever been through a Twelve Step program, or know someone who has, you know about the importance of Step Nine – making amends. Making amends means approaching anyone we have wronged and attempting to make things right – to apologize for what we have done and to offer any kind of remuneration appropriate to the situation, anything we can do to “make it up to them,” as the saying goes. After this initial reconciliation, Step Ten is to “continue to take personal inventory and when we [are] wrong, promptly admit it.” Since the founders of AA and the Twelve Step program were influenced by biblical teachings, it is no surprise that Steps Nine and Ten echo these teachings of Jesus and the second vow of our Baptismal Covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
In other words, this question asks us, “Will you continue to be vigilant in your resistance against evil, against sin, against addiction, against whatever it is that draws you away from God, and whenever you find yourself going astray from that, whenever you realize you have done wrong, to promptly admit it and make amends – to others and to God?”
Of course, while we may be able to right some wrongs we have done to others in this life, some wrongs are impossible to correct. An apology doesn’t bring someone back from the dead, for instance. When we come up against the limits of our ability to make amends, we are forced to acknowledge our dependence on God’s grace.
Remember in stewardship season when we talked about how we can never really “give back to God?” Well, it is also true that we can never really “make amends” to God. What could we possibly give to God or do for God that would make up for all the ways we have harmed God when we have fallen short of God’s intentions for us, for God’s plan for us to live with one other in peace? Despite the universal foxhole prayer – “Dear God, if you just save my life, if you just get me out of this situation, I’ll make it up to you – I’ll go to church every week, I’ll give up all my possessions, I’ll become a preacher, I’ll….” whatever the bargain is we’re making with God” – in reality, we can never actually “make it up to God.” If we do make it through whatever difficult situation we’re in, we know that our success or relief is a gift of pure grace.
If our relationship with God is built on trying to “make up for” all the things we have done wrong, we will only sink further into guilt and despair. The heart of the Christian message is one of pure grace – completely undeserved, unearned mercy shown by God to us, a complete gift. It is a foundation in this overflowing mercy of God that frees us, that compels us, to forgive as we have been forgiven. Knowing that God forgives us for anything and everything we have done allows us to begin to work toward forgiving others.
This is why I like the absolution from the New Zealand Prayer Book and why I’ve been using it in our liturgy for the past several months:
“God forgives you. Forgive others, forgive yourself.”
It is through fully coming to understand that God forgives you that you can begin to forgive others and yourself.
And the second part of that absolution: “Through Christ, God has put away your sins. Approach your God in peace.” – reminds us that God has ALREADY forgiven us. I, as the priest, am not pronouncing you to be forgiven in that moment. I am reminding you that, as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” You are already forgiven. You are free. Free to approach God in peace, without fear of retribution. Free to approach your brothers and sisters secure in the knowledge of your own acceptance and forgiveness and therefore free to offer them your forgiveness.
After this, we flow seamlessly into the exchanging of the peace. We “approach our God in peace” by approaching one another in peace, being reconciled with one another, and then coming together to share the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ “given for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.”
Repentance, reconciliation and return. We rehearse these steps every week in the structure of our worship. It is meant to be a pattern for our lives outside these 90 minutes on Sunday mornings as well.
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
We will, with God’s help.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Tradition without ethics is worthless, but ethics without tradition is exhausting
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 (Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part five of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.
“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)
And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:
"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)
Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.
As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”
At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?
This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!
So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”
The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”
What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.
“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.
And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.
This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.
Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”
But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.
We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.
“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)
And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:
"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)
Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.
As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”
At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?
This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!
So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”
The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”
What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.
“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.
And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.
This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.
Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”
But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.
We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.
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