Striving for justice and peace means never giving up on anyone

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017 (Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part 4 of a 7-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12, Baptismal Covenant Question #5

The themes emerging from our collect and the lectionary readings today are related to peace and justice – we heard the Beatitudes in the Gospel reading, and our Hebrew scripture was a passage from Micah 6 often quoted in social justice work by both Christians and Jews:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

So this week, as we continue our preaching series on baptism, we’ll consider the fifth and last question of our Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

It is interesting to note that this is the only question in our Baptismal Covenant that does not say anything about God, Jesus, or the Christian faith. It is a question that people of all faiths and none could answer affirmatively:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

Yes, they will, and yes they do: Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Baha’is and Hindus and indigenous people and agnostics and atheists – I know people who identify with all of those theological perspectives who “strive for justice and peace among all people” and “respect the dignity of every human being” in their daily lives, people for whom these values are the bedrock of their activism and their advocacy for vulnerable and marginalized communities.

But as part of our Baptismal Covenant, this question is asked of us in the context of a ceremony that marks our commitment to following in the way of Jesus. Even though the question doesn’t specifically mention God or Jesus or say anything about being a Christian, it is, in a sense, the culmination of all the questions that came before it. It is a summary of our church’s understanding of what it means to follow Jesus: to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

We come to this understanding from the example and teachings of Jesus in the scriptures. Jesus consistently advocated for a peaceful ethic in the form of nonviolence, teaching his followers “not [to] resist an evildoer” (Matthew 5:39), to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), and to “love [their] enemies” (Luke 6:28). He said, as we heard in the Beatitudes today, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

But as the phrasing of this question in the Baptismal Covenant makes clear, the kind of peace Jesus advocated was not one that allowed the continuance of injustice. It was not a peace that stood back quietly and did nothing while God’s children and God’s creation were abused and misused, denigrated and destroyed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is famous for saying, “There can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice.” In doing so, he was articulating a deeply biblical truth: that peace and justice are inextricably connected. You can’t have one without the other. And that’s why our Baptismal Covenant words the question this way: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people” – it doesn’t allow us to squirm out of the hard work of justice by saying we’re advocating for peace in not stirring things up, not rocking the boat.

Last week, Mark and Tom performed a hymn during communion about the calling of the first disciples. The text is a poem by William Alexander Percy, and it describes how God called Peter, Andrew, James and John from the “peaceful” lives they had known as fishermen to a life where they knew a different kind of peace, “the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too,” [1]  recounting the suffering they experienced as a result, even unto death. The final verse is a powerful summary of the cost of discipleship and the type of peace to which God calls us and offers us:

“The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife cast in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing: the marvelous peace of God.”

When we vow to work for “justice and peace,” we acknowledge that one does not come without the other, and that working for peace sometimes brings no peace, but “strife cast in the sod.” We will encounter conflict and sometimes even violence directed at us as we strive for justice for all God’s creation.

The second part of the question asks,
“Will you respect the dignity of every human being?”

Including this question along with the question of striving for justice and peace again reminds us that the peace we seek is a peace that comes with justice. If peace comes at the cost of the dignity of our brothers and sisters, it is not a peace we can accept as Christians.

This week, our new President signed executive orders banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days and suspending the admission of all refugees for the next 120 days. He did this in the name of peace, in the name of making America safer. But these actions and the chaos that have resulted from them over the last several days have not brought true peace, nor will they, because they do not respect the dignity of every human being. The peace President Trump seeks comes at the cost of the dignity of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and the dignity of citizens of those countries or refugees who aren’t Muslim, but will also be denied entrance to our country by the so-called “Muslim ban.”

For me, this vow of our Baptismal Covenant is why I signed a petition against this ban and while I plan to continue to be a vocal critic of it. It’s why the Bishop’s Committee voted to accept John and Milene Rawlinson’s donation of a large banner that states, “Refugees and immigrants welcome,” with a depiction of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt, which I’d love some help hanging up on the front of the church after the service today.

But this vow is also why I carried a sign in the Women’s March with quotes from Jesus and the Buddha about loving your enemies, and why I continue to use the lovingkindness meditation techniques I’ve learned from Buddhism to try to direct kindness and goodwill toward our new President, toward the members of ISIS, and toward any person or groups of people I have begun to nurture ill-will or hatred toward. Because respecting the dignity of every human being means EVERY human being, not just the ones I find it easy to respect. It means respecting the dignity of the oppressors as much as I respect the dignity of the oppressed.

And for me, that’s where it gets really hard. That’s where I’m reminded that it’s called “spiritual practice” for a reason – because in order to live it out, we need practice. We need training.

This week, Krista Tippet’s show On Being on NPR aired a repeat of an interview she did with Congressman John Lewis in 2013 where he talks about the training he got in nonviolent resistance during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s:

“It’s just not something that is natural,” Lewis said. “You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence… We, from time to time, would discuss - if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person — years ago, that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Did something go wrong? Was it the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being. And you don’t give up. You NEVER give up - on anyone.” [2]

That’s what it means to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” – to never give up, on anyone. And as with all our baptismal vows, we can commit to keep them only “with God’s help.” When we find ourselves starting to give up on someone, starting to hate, starting to hold a grudge, starting to think that peace for some is ok because peace for all is impossible, we must call out for help from God – from the God who calls us to never give up on anyone because he never gives up on us.

[1] Hymn #661 from The Hymnal 1982, Words: William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), alt. Music: Georgetown, David McKinley Williams (1887-1978)

[2] Congressman John Lewis, “Love in Action,” On Being with Krista Tippet, NPR, Jan. 26, 2017, http://onbeing.org/programs/john-lewis-love-action/ Accessed Jan. 28, 2017.

Do our divisions within Christianity compromise our witness?

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017 (The Third Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part three of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

As we enter week three of this preaching series on baptism, we’re going to spend another week on the third question of the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

Why are we spending two weeks on this question? Well, the collect and the scriptures for today continue to focus on God’s call to us to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. The opening collect says:

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…”

For our reading from the Hebrew scriptures we have that famous passage from Isaiah that we just heard during Advent and Christmas – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!” – and in the Gospel passage we have a narrative about how Jesus fulfilled that scripture and called his first disciples by the Sea of Galilee. But as we continue to consider the topic of evangelism this week, we’ll look at it from a slightly different angle, from the perspective represented in our second reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

This passage takes on particular meaning in light of the fact that this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. So today, I’d like to think about Christian unity and in what ways our division compromises our witness.

Many people look at the mind-boggling number of different churches and denominations in Christianity, particularly in the U.S., and become disillusioned. All this infighting, all this disagreement! So much for Christians being “one body in Christ” and having “all things in common,” as the scriptures tell us the early church did. Instead, we’ve got bishops excommunicating each other, fights over whether one particular phrase is included in the Creed or not, parishioners refusing to receive communion from certain priests, arguments about predestination and free will – and that’s just a small section of our dirty laundry! For all our theology about being “one in Christ,” we seem pretty divided. How can we “proclaim the Good News of God in Christ” to the world if we can’t even agree amongst ourselves?

Our passage from Paul’s letter reminds us that the church has always had to deal with conflict and division.

“It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters,” Paul writes to the church at Corinth.

What? Quarrels? In the church?
Oh, yes.

He continues, “What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ’” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12).

He chastises those who identify with the person who baptized them rather than with Christ, who is the proper object of their faith.

“Has Christ been divided?” he asks. “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor. 1:13)

Later, in chapter 3 of the letter, he drives his point home:

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:5-7).

This critique of the Corinthians is certainly relevant to the church today, with so many denominations centered on the person who started that movement. Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists… by identifying ourselves in this way, aren’t we doing the very same thing the church at Corinth was doing and saying, “I belong to Luther” or “I belong to Wesley” or “I belong to Calvin” rather than “I belong to Christ”?

It’s gotten to the point that the church is so divided that we don’t even recognize one another as being part of the same religion anymore. When I talk about interfaith dialogue in Christian contexts, inevitably someone will say, “Oh, yeah, we did some interfaith dialogue one time! We had a meeting with the Baptists!” or “We held a joint service with the Lutherans!”

But guess what, people? That’s not interfaith dialogue! Christians talking to other Christians is not interfaith dialogue! Interfaith means talking to someone of a different religion -- a Muslim, or a Sikh, or a Jain, or a Jew, or a Buddhist -- a different religion. All of these denominations of Christianity -- Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Charismatics and Evangelicals – they’re all Christians! Their denomination may be Lutheran or Baptist or Methodist, but that's not their religion. Their religion is Christianity. Unfortunately, we often talk of our denomination as if it is our religion. If someone were to ask you, "What's your religion?" We might say, “I’m an Episcopalian.” Our friends at United Lutheran might say, “I’m Lutheran.” Our friends at Church Without Walls might say, “I’m Baptist.” But really, we should all have the same answer to that question: What religion are you? “I’m CHRISTIAN!”

It’s not an accident that when we are baptized in the Episcopal Church, we don’t profess faith in the Episcopal Church or in the Presiding Bishop or the Archbishop of Canterbury. We profess faith in JESUS CHRIST. Period! Our baptismal vows don’t say anything about the Episcopal Church. We don’t vow to follow the canon law of the Episcopal Church (priests and bishops may, but lay people don't!), we vow to follow Jesus! And so do each and every one of our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of which denominational structure oversaw the ritual of their baptism. What unites us as Christians is our common desire and commitment to follow Jesus, regardless of our disagreements over how the church should be structured or governed or who should be allowed leadership within it, or any number of other things over which we disagree.

As the testimony of the early church shows, it’s unlikely that we will ever be “of one mind” on all things, however much our leaders may urge us to be. But we must continue to work toward the ideal of “Christian unity,” even if we never reach it, because Jesus prayed for his followers to be “one, even as [he] and the Father [were] one” (John 17:11). “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,” Jesus prays the night before his death (John 17:20-21). Jesus believed that our oneness – with each other and with God in Christ – was key to our witness – we are to be one so that “the world may believe.”

But perhaps we’ve been thinking about “Christian unity” all wrong. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we all become members of the same church or govern ourselves in the same way or worship in the same style. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we share similar political opinions, similar cultures, similar backgrounds, or even similar interpretations of scripture. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as remembering who we were baptized into. Were we baptized into Paul or Apollos? Were we baptized into Luther or Wesley or Calvin? No, these were all merely servants of God who brought us to know Jesus. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as the affirmations at the beginning of our baptismal service:

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"  (BCP 302-303)

Our unity as Christians comes in the form of our answer to those three questions. Those of us who answer “yes” to those questions (or “I do,” as we say in the liturgy) are united with all others who answer those three questions the same way, regardless of whether we agree on anything else!

Ronald Rolheiser, a Canadian Roman Catholic theologian, describes the essential unity of the church in this way:

"To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart. Church is not about a few like-minded persons getting together for mutual support; it is about millions and millions of different kinds of persons transcending their differences so as to become a community beyond temperament, race, ideology, gender, language, and background." [1]

If we can truly do that – if we can form the kind of community that transcends differences through our shared love of Jesus and commitment to follow in his way, if we are intentional about forming that community with people of other denominations – then our witness will not be compromised. Despite our apparent divisions, we can still “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” – by showing that even in the midst of the messy human diversity in the church, a sense of shared consciousness and an acknowledgement of oneness in our Lord is possible, thanks be to God.

[1] Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999): 115.

Our call to God-led evangelism

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017 (Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part two of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 49:1-7, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

Last week, we remembered Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River, heard about the implications of baptism for our own lives, and renewed the vows of our Baptismal Covenant. This week, we begin exploring the Baptismal Covenant in more detail. From now through the end of the season after the Epiphany, we’ll consider one question from the Baptismal Covenant each week, digging more deeply into the meaning of it and how we are called to keep that vow in our lives as Christians. We won’t be moving through the vows in the same order that they appear in the prayer book because I structured this series so that the question we’re considering each week connects with the scriptures from the lectionary for that day. So today, because the scriptures relate to the subject of evangelism, we’ll start by looking at the third question in the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

The first thing we must define with regards to that question is: what exactly is the “Good News of God in Christ?” What are we proclaiming? What is the message we are called to share with others? The passage we heard from Acts last week offers us a good summary. Peter says this to a group of Gentiles gathered in the home of Cornelius, a Roman solider:

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:34-43)

That is the good news we are called to share: that Jesus was raised from the dead, that all the powers of this world and even death itself could not stop the message he came to bring. That message was not so different from what all the prophets throughout the history of Israel had taught: that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But the one who brought the message this time was different than those other prophets who had gone before: he was the promised Messiah of Israel, the chosen one foreseen by all the prophets, and in him the prophecies of old were fulfilled. And his message reminded the people of Israel that God’s favor and mercy are available to all people, not just the Jews.

And although Jesus’s followers took that to heart in such a way that the Jesus Movement became primarily a movement of Gentiles rather than Jews, this message of inclusiveness was not new with Jesus. In fact, the Christian concept of our call to be a “light to the nations” actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the scriptures of the Jews before the time of Jesus. Today’s reading from Isaiah contains that phrase, a phrase that became one of the theological underpinnings of Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach: God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

"I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

In a context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, who were concerned only with the people of that nation, the idea that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations was a revolutionary idea. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the stranger. No longer did the word “salvation” mean that our side had won, and to hell with everyone else. Isaiah – and Jesus after him – said that the goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to Israel, but to all people. Israel’s role as a “light to the nations” is to share that goodness and mercy and blessing with everyone.

Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, the “New Israel” – has the light. As we sought to be a “light to the nations,” we thought we were bringing “light” to “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we thought were in darkness without us. I requested our opening hymn (#539 in the 1982 Hymnal; "O Zion haste; thy mission high fulfilling") because it has some of that flavor to it. That last verse:

"make known to every heart his saving grace.
Let none whom he hath ransomed fail to greet him,
through thy neglect, unfit to see his face."

-- the assumption being that without you, O Enlightened Christian, those poor peoples of the rest of the world will perish. Through our actions and our theology we asserted a belief in our superiority over other nations and peoples. We forgot the inclusive flavor that this passage had in its original context, and in many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.

So how can we be obedient to our baptismal covenant, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?

Well, one way to do so is to follow the example of Peter and Cornelius in last week’s passage from Acts. Both Peter and Cornelius receive visions from God telling them to seek each other out. Peter receives a message from God that sends him to Cornelius, and Cornelius receives a message from God asking him to seek out Peter. The key here is that it is God’s initiative on both sides to bring the two people together. There have been plenty of cases in which Christians have thought, “God is sending me to bring a message to those poor, backward people and tell them how to live and worship correctly!” – but when they arrived, the “poor, backward people” weren’t so interested in hearing their message. Rather than paying attention to this, the missionaries pushed on, convinced they were right, that God was “on their side,” rather than trying to discern whether or not God was indeed behind their missionary impulse by assessing the situation among the people when they arrived. In contrast to that kind of stubborn one-sidedness, in the biblical story, Peter confirms first that God has been moving among the people he’s about to speak to before he launches into his “pitch” about why Jesus is Lord of all. He asks why Cornelius sent for him, and only after he has taken the time to listen to Cornelius’s experience and hear his story does he make that great speech in Acts 10, summarizing the Christian message.

I find it interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.

The true lights of this world do not judge the darkness, because they see only light. They see the light in others, and they help others to see that light in themselves. And as they do so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”

So how can we keep our vow to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” We can live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus, one in which our actions testify to something greater than ourselves. And when people ask us about it, when God sends them to us through God’s initiative, we can share with them the witness of scripture, passages like Peter’s speech in the book of Acts. And we can tell them our own story. We can tell them about why Jesus’s story and teachings mean so much to us, how the Gospel has touched our lives, and about any experiences we have had with Jesus directly or any moments we had when we knew God was truly with us. And rather than telling people we have the light and they don’t, we can affirm that we see light in them, too. We see it, we name it, we affirm it, and we invite them into a relationship with Jesus. And then, we wait for them to make their own decision -- and leave the rest to God.

Remember, we promise to do these things in our Baptismal Covenant only “with God’s help” – so we must take that to heart. We can’t keep these vows entirely on our own. It isn’t our job to “save” others. “Through your neglect, they will be unfit to see his face?” No. It’s not our job to save. It’s God’s job to save.

So, will we proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to the world?
Yes, we will – with God’s help.

Through baptism, we commit ourselves to God and accept God's will for our lives

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 (The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 3:13-17

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Fast-forward about 30 years from where we last left Jesus, fleeing with his parents from Herod into the desert and returning to grow up in Nazareth. This week, in an instant, Jesus is all grown up.

We begin the season after the Epiphany, the season after Christmas, with the story of Jesus’s baptism because it marked the beginning of his public ministry as a teacher and prophet. And while we might feel like we’ve gotten a little chronological whiplash from jumping so far forward in the story so quickly, we actually know very little about Jesus’s life between the time of his birth and the day of his baptism. The Gospel writers didn’t include many details about that in-between time, perhaps because from their perspective, this moment, the moment of Jesus’s baptism, is when all the really important stuff started happening. This is when he started publicly reminding Israel of God’s call to them. This is when he began to open himself to be used completely by God to the point of losing his earthly life. This is when the heavens opened a second time, as they did at his birth, and proclaimed him as the one chosen and anointed by God.

Many people in mainline churches today tend to think that baptism is primarily about washing away sin. That understanding is a product of the emphasis the church placed on original sin beginning in the 5th century. The doctrine of original sin stated that all human beings are inheritors of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and we are therefore born in a state of sinfulness, even before we have a chance to actually do anything that might be categorized as sinful. That belief combined with the high infant mortality rate at that time meant that baptizing babies was seen as a matter of life and death. If a child were to die without having been baptized, they believed that child would be condemned to hell based on that original sin with which they were born. But in the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, baptism wasn’t primarily about saving babies from hell. It was about a conversion of life, a commitment, a choice to follow God’s will.

When John the Baptist began baptizing people in the River Jordan, he called them to come and be baptized “for the forgiveness of sins,” so certainly forgiveness of sin is an important part of baptism. But neither John the Baptist nor the disciples of Jesus who later baptized people in Jesus’s name understood sin as a “thing,” a physical stain that could literally be washed off like a coating of dirt. Sin was a state of being, a way of life. It was about your actions, and forgiveness required repentance and amendment of life. John scoffs at some who come to him seeking baptism as a kind of quick fix, like a “get out of jail free” card. He tells them that it is not enough to go through the motions of a ritual; to truly connect with God, to participate in the life he is offering them, they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Their lives must bear witness to their faith in their actions. Besides, if baptism was ONLY about washing away original sin, why did Jesus, whom the church teaches was “without sin,” come to be baptized?

When Jesus is baptized, he’s orienting the human part of himself completely toward God. He’s affirming all the things that have been said about him since his birth. He’s saying “yes” to God’s call. The baptism Jesus underwent wasn’t a kind of Clorox for the soul, a heavenly stain-remover. It was an expression of commitment, of pledging his life to God, of accepting God’s will for his life.

And ideally, we do this when we are baptized as well. When our Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1979, the theologians who worked on that project intentionally moved us away from the theology of baptism as washing away original sin and back to the much earlier theology of baptism as a sacrament of commitment, a sacrament of conversion. This is why the liturgy itself, the order of the service, sets out adult baptism as the “liturgical norm” for the rite – adult candidates are presented for baptism first, and the entire service is framed as one of commitment, one in which those being baptized take vows to act in a certain way, to live out the faith into which they are baptized in deed as well as in word.

Infant baptism is still the “statistical norm” in the Episcopal Church – meaning that there are more people baptized as infants than as adults in the Episcopal Church – but we do not require that infants be baptized, and the theology of our prayer book emphasizes that baptism is a sacrament of conversion, of commitment, of a public declaration of faith. This is why if we do baptize babies or younger children, we require and take very seriously the vows on the part of the parents and godparents: those people must be wholly committed to the faith themselves and raise the child to know Jesus, so that one day that child might come to affirm the faith that was chosen for them as an infant.

When we are baptized, we say “yes” to God’s call on our lives. We pledge to follow Jesus, to live the way he taught us to live. At Jesus’s baptism, he heard words from heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” At our baptism, we hear words from the priest that say to us: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

We don’t hear the words “This is my Son or Daughter, the Beloved,” because we are not THE Son in the way Jesus was the Son, but at baptism we become part of the Son. While some of our theology says baptism is the means through which we become “children of God,” I see all people, regardless of whether they are baptized or not, or even whether they are Christians or not, as “children of God.” When someone is baptized in a Christian church, they don’t just become a “child of God,” they become part of Christ, joined to his very life, death, and Resurrection. When Jesus used the term “baptism” in his own teaching, he didn’t refer to when he was washed in the river Jordan, but to his impending death. “Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” he asks James and John when they are arguing over who will get to sit at his right and at his left when he comes into his glory. Jesus understands his baptism to be a baptism of suffering, which is perhaps why John the Baptist says that the one who will come after John will baptize “with fire.”

At our baptism, we are joined with Christ’s resurrected life, but we are also joined with the suffering he underwent at the Crucifixion. The commitment we make is one that may very well bring suffering into our lives, for if we live in the way Jesus lived, we will likely meet the same kind of resistance he did from the forces of this world that, as our Baptismal liturgy puts it, “rebel against God” and “destroy the creatures of God” (BCP 302).

But while we face uncertainty and danger in this life, through our baptism we are given a bond with God in Christ that is indissoluble (BCP 298). We are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Those are powerful words! “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The Apostle Paul wrote that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” and nothing reminds us of that truth like our baptism.

Baptism is about commitment, but it’s also about being given an identity. We choose to follow Christ, and we are marked as “Christ’s own forever.” We become part of that wonderful “paschal mystery;” we are joined to the mystical reality of the living, risen Christ that takes us over, indwelling us, inhabiting our very souls so that we begin to transform more and more into the likeness of him who made us.

We belong to Christ. That is the truth of who we are. And our lifelong task is to claim that identity, to keep reaffirming that identity, to say “yes” to God’s call on our lives by striving to live into the vows we made in our Baptismal Covenant.

Today, in place of the Nicene Creed, we will reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed and the five vows that we took at our baptism. If you haven’t been baptized, you are still welcome to join us in reciting these words if they reflect your true belief and commitment, and we can talk later about baptism if you are interested in making that public commitment. If you have been baptized but you don’t remember making these vows and would like to make them again in an intentional, public way, there are several opportunities throughout the year when you can make a reaffirmation of faith. You can talk with me about that after the service as well.

Now, if you would turn to page 6 of your bulletin for the Renewal of the Baptismal Covenant, and please stand as you are able...

Why can't every day be like Christmas?

Sermon delivered Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016 and Sunday, Dec. 25, 2016 (The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Luke 2:1-20, Titus 2:11-14, Isaiah 9:2-7

"Do not be afraid; for see -- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10)

“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (Titus 2:11)

“For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.” (Isaiah 9:6-7)

Good news. Joy. Salvation for all. Justice. Righteousness. Endless peace.

These are the promises of Christmas, the promises that make this “the most wonderful time of the year,” the promises that lead us all to be a little more thoughtful, a little more giving, a little more caring this time of year. As we remember the story of our Savior’s birth, of how God was willing to take human form to be with us, to fully experience our suffering and offer us a way to transform it, our gratitude for this amazing gift flows out to others around us.

People are willing to do extraordinary things at Christmas – even stop a war to sing Christmas carols across enemy lines, as the British and Germans did in 1914, during World War I. Something about this day, this magical moment, this miracle, brings out the best in us, and for a few short hours or days, we can truly see the possibility of “peace on earth.”

But it doesn’t last, of course. The soldiers went back to killing each other during World War I, some of the same organizations who offer gifts for poor children during Christmas then undermine programs that serve the poor during other parts of the year, and whatever “Christmas truce” we might have had with our own families for five minutes dissolves back into the same conflicts that were there before Christmas.

The stark contrast between the best behavior that can come out of us at Christmastime and the way we behave most of the rest of the year prompted Elvis Presley to ask in his 1966 song,

“Oh, why can’t every day be like Christmas?
Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly?
For if every day could be just like Christmas,
what a wonderful world this would be.”

Because even if we can see joy, salvation, justice, righteousness and peace for a few moments at Christmas, overall when we look at the course of human history, it can feel like the overwhelming message is bad news, very little joy, salvation only for a limited few, injustice, wickedness, and endless war.

This year has felt like that to many people. Consider all the things that 2016 has brought to us:

• More terrorist attacks across the globe,
• the Zika virus outbreak,
• the Syrian refugee crisis,
• Britain’s vote to leave the European Union,
• And, of course, our wonderful Presidential election here in the United States,
• Hurricane Matthew killing over 800 people in Haiti,
• wildfires ravaging the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee,
• continued police shootings of unarmed black men and subsequent riots and attacks on police officers,
• the massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando,
• and closest to home for us, the Ghost Ship fire here in Oakland a few weeks ago that killed 36 people who were struggling to make our community a better place through their artistic expression.

Social media has exploded with complaints that 2016 is the “worst year ever,” saying the best thing about celebrating New Year’s this year will be that 2016 is finally over.

But an astute author at Slate magazine published an article earlier this year in which she, somewhat depressingly, catalogues all the horrific tragedies that have befallen the world across human history, suggesting that perhaps this year is no worse than others. 2016, the worst year ever? she asks. Worse than 1348, the year of the Black Plague in Europe? Worse than 1492, the year Europeans “discovered” America and devastated the Native American population through war, genocide and disease? Worse than 1837, a year of economic depression and racial violence throughout the United States? Worse than 1966, the year President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, all while the war in Vietnam continued to rage?

The article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it reminds us of that all-important thing: perspective. Awful things may be happening, yes, but awful things have always happened. Every generation seems to think they are living in the worst of times, but if we look back on history, we can always find other terrible eras that rival the present day.

And then there’s “perspective” from another angle: lots of positive things are still happening as well. Last month, a list of all the good things that happened in 2016 was circulating on social media to counter the message that this has been “the worst year ever.” The author of that post pointed out that in 2016,

• new chemotherapy breakthroughs have increased life expectancy for pancreatic cancer,
• a new genetic contributor to ALS has been identified thanks to the funds raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge in 2014,
• Michael Jordan donated 2 million dollars to organizations working to bridge the divide between the African-American community and the police,
• Pakistan passed a new law to strengthen punishment for “honor killings” of women and rape,

and the list goes on and on. (Read the whole list here...)

So, both of these things are true. A lot of horrible things are happening in the world and a lot of wonderful things are happening in the world. Neither cancels out the existence of the other. One reality affirms that Christmas promise of good news, joy, salvation for all, righteousness, justice, and endless peace, and one of them stands in direct contrast to it.

The challenge of faith is acknowledging those two things simultaneously, avoiding the extreme of emphasizing the joy and comfort of our faith so much that we deny the reality of suffering in this world, while also avoiding the other extreme of focusing so much on the suffering that we deny the reality of God’s blessing and God’s saving power.

As Christians, we see and acknowledge the suffering of the world with eyes wide open, but we do so with the knowledge that death and suffering do not have the last word. We can bear witness to the world’s suffering without losing hope because we know it is not the only story. For that child who was born to us this night in Bethlehem went on to defeat death itself. Through his Resurrection, he has “liberated us from sin, …brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life,” in the words of our Eucharistic prayer. That is the truth that grounds us through all the ups and downs of history, the truth that the church continues to proclaim throughout the centuries, regardless of outward circumstances.

The “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” has come! And he didn’t come to give us just one brief moment of peace once a year at Christmas. He came to transform our entire lives.

“Why can’t every day be like Christmas?
Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly?”

If we let Christ guide our minds and our hearts, there’s no reason why it can’t.

What was Joseph's influence on Jesus as a father?

Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016 (Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 1:18-25

Much of our focus during the season of Advent is on Mary. She is, after all, the one who carried Jesus in her womb, the one who waited for his birth like no one else ever has, like only an expectant mother can do.

Earlier this season I mentioned that using blue during Advent instead of purple emphasizes that Advent is not simply a mini-Lent, that the season of Advent is about waiting, watching, hoping, longing, not just about repentance. But for some, using blue during Advent also is about drawing our attention to Mary, since blue is the color traditionally associated with her in art and iconography. The Virgin Mary, “great with child,” is our icon of the season of Advent, the personification of what it means to wait and watch expectantly.

But today’s Gospel reading invites us to focus on Joseph rather than Mary as we consider the story of Jesus’s birth.

We don’t actually know a whole lot about Joseph, Mary’s husband, who was Jesus’s earthly father in a practical sense if not biologically. The scriptures mention him only a few times, mostly in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Perhaps as the official theology of the church about the Virgin Birth began to form, Joseph’s presence in the narrative made some people uncomfortable. If it’s a Virgin Birth, why is there a man in the story at all?

Well, uh… because in that culture a woman couldn’t be pregnant and single without being at risk for her life, so maybe Joseph was more like a guardian for Mary. And since it was probably an arranged marriage, and Joseph was probably a lot older than Mary (some traditions say he was as old as 90 when he became engaged to a teenaged Mary!), maybe they never slept together at all and she was a “perpetual virgin” – as the Catholic Church later came to hold as official doctrine.

Let’s face it, the story’s really all about Mary, the Holy Spirit, and the miraculous birth. Joseph’s kind of a third wheel, an inconvenient interloper, an awkward stepfather to God’s son. Christian tradition has tended to let him fade into the background as the spotlight shines on Mary and the Christ Child. Joseph becomes just a placeholder in a society where a woman couldn’t exist without a man’s protection.

But what if there was more to Joseph’s role than that? While we’ll never know specific details of what his day-to-day relationship with Mary or Jesus was like (unless an archeologist discovers Joseph’s diary in a cave in the Middle East somewhere!), we do know that in a society in which he would have had every right to reject Mary when she shows up pregnant with a child he knows is not his, he not only accepts her as his wife, but raises the child as his own. He chooses mercy over strict obedience of the law; if he’d been a stickler for the law he would have called for Mary to be stoned to death when he discovered her pregnancy.

He goes to great lengths to protect Jesus; as the story continues in Matthew, Joseph moves the entire family to Egypt to escape King Herod’s attempt to kill the child that he feared might be a threat to his throne.

When he and Mary take Jesus to the Temple to dedicate him to God, Joseph offers the sacrifice prescribed for the poor: two turtle doves, rather than a year-old lamb, which was the sacrifice expected of all who could afford it. This tells us he was likely a man of humble means, but even so, according to Luke, he took the family to Jerusalem every year for the Passover. The fact that he made this long, expensive trip every year despite the fact that it would have stretched his budget shows that he prioritized the practice of his faith over other things in life.

Matthew calls him a “righteous man.” But his way of being righteous, his way of practicing his faith, seems to have been a way that always focused on what matters most, a way that never allowed rituals to get in the way of relationships, a way that emphasized mercy over sacrifice, a way that focused on compassion and protecting the vulnerable. Maybe Jesus learned those things not only from his Father in heaven, but from his father on earth.

Last Sunday, Father John talked about how devotion to and veneration of Mary has given the church a counterbalance to the traditionally masculine imagery attributed to God. It’s given us a way to remember that the more traditionally feminine qualities – “nurturing, supporting, protecting, healing, loving” – are also part of God, however much human nature has tended to focus on the “masculine” qualities of “aggressiveness, anger, judgment, decisions, and action” when thinking about God.

This is certainly true, but in reflecting on Joseph this week, I’ve been noticing how much Joseph emphasizes those nurturing, supporting, protective, healing, loving parts of God.

John told us a joke last week to illustrate his point: a man dies and is greeted at the pearly gates with judgment, with an accounting of everything he did wrong in his life. The man pauses, thinks for a moment and replies, “Um, excuse me, could I please speak to Mary?” Behind this joke, John says, is “a sense that the male judgment may happen, but Mary will soothe and calm and ease the situation and will be forgiving.” But based on our Gospel reading for today and what we know about Joseph from the rest of the scriptural witness, I think I’d be just as likely to ask for Joseph at the pearly gates as I would Mary if I were looking for compassion and forgiveness.

It’s always bothered me that our society characterizes qualities as “masculine” and “feminine” the way that it does, in a way that stereotypes men as aggressive and judgmental and women as nurturing and compassionate. Because, of course, it’s not that simple. I’m sure we’ve all known women who are aggressive and judgmental and men who are nurturing and compassionate. No human quality is exclusively the purview of any one sex or gender. And Joseph is a particular illustration of that case in point.

Critique of the image of God as “Father” has rested on the assumption that a “Father” is a stern, emotionally distant figure associated with rules and punishment. We need a female image of God to balance this stern male Father figure, feminist biblical scholars have argued. But from what we know of him, Jesus’s earthly father didn’t fit that stereotype. So to the extent that as a human being, Jesus’s concept of what a “father” was came from his own earthly father, it seems that what he meant when he talked about God as a father was someone who was kind, loving, compassionate, forgiving – someone who would put his life at risk to protect his son’s, someone who chooses mercy over judgment. Joseph is a reminder to us that those qualities are just as essential to what it means to be a man and a father as they are to what it means to be a woman and a mother.

"Let every heart prepare him room" through repentance during Advent

Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016 (Second Sunday of Advent, Year A), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 3:1-12, Isaiah 11:1-10

Repentance and joy. They may sound like opposites, but the season of Advent pushes them together in close proximity, making a connection between the serious soul-searching of repentance and the ability to celebrate with abandon, to be free enough to experience true joy.

As we wait expectantly for the coming of Christ – both for our annual celebration of his birth at Christmas and for his Second Coming which is yet to come, we take time to prepare our hearts to receive him. Part of that preparation involves repentance. It involves conducting a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of our lives, in order that we might make amends where amends are necessary and be at peace with ourselves, with others, and with God, so that, as the preface for Advent in our Eucharistic prayer says, when he “come[s] again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.”

In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist, that great prophet who prepared the way for Jesus to begin his preaching and teaching ministry, reminds us that we all need to repent, even those who are sure they are already part of God’s people and have found favor with God.

“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor;’” John tells the Jewish leaders of his day, “for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

John reminds any who might have felt that their lineage as sons and daughters of Abraham entitled them to a sort of “free pass” at the last judgment, who might have thought that they were worthy just by virtue of the fact that they were part of God’s “chosen people,” that they must also live an authentic life of faith that bears visible fruit in their actions. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” he tells them. Being a son or daughter of Abraham means nothing, he says, if your life does not bear witness to God’s justice and love.

According to John, bearing fruit is the standard by which we will be judged, not our membership within a particular religious community. We will be judged not by what we’ve said we believed, but by the testimony of our hearts and our lives.

I’m sure that at some point in your life you’ve heard someone comment on the good deeds and sound life of someone who professes no faith at all. The statement usually goes something like this: “I know some atheists who are better Christians than some Christians I know!” What they are pointing to is the issue of bearing fruit. They see many people who say they believe in Christ judging others, saying one thing and doing another, going to church on Sunday but engaging in corrupt business practices or questionable moral behavior during the week – while they see many people who say they have no religious faith feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick, working for justice – the very things Christians are called to do. And so, they sigh and say, “Some atheists are better Christians than some Christians I know!”

That’s actually a very biblical statement. It’s essentially what John the Baptist was saying to the first-century Jewish community, and what Jesus would wind up saying to them as well. “Tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you,” Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 21:31). In other words, the supposedly “unfaithful” can actually be more faithful than the faithful at times. This is why the prophets continually call us to repentance, and remind us that bearing fruit is of utmost importance.

But lest we think that “bearing fruit” is simply a matter of doing the right things, the prophets also remind us that doing the right things without the right intentions is equally as empty as trusting in the fact that you were born into the “right” religious community. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John the Baptist says. Repentance is a matter of the heart, of the inner orientation and intentions underlying our actions. Not only is it not enough to be children of Abraham, but it is also not enough to observe the right rituals if our hearts are not in the right place.

“For you have no delight in sacrifice,” writes the psalmist, “if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17). The prophet Amos brings this word of God to the people: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-22, 24). The prophet Hosea said God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and Jesus quoted this in his teachings.

In all these passages, the issue is not that the rituals themselves were bad – the people believed God had commanded them to do them – but that the people were doing them without the proper intentions in their hearts, and their lives were not bearing the proper fruit. The apostle Paul echoed this theme in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he insisted that without love – without one’s heart being in the right place – all the most praiseworthy actions on behalf of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ were utterly worthless. “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,” he wrote (1 Corinthians 13:2). This is a common theme, from the earliest of the Hebrew prophets all the way through the New Testament. Although our faith engages our heads – in our assent to certain beliefs or doctrines – and our hands and feet – in our actions in the world – at the end of the day, the life of faith is ultimately a matter of the heart.

This is why we pray the Collect for Purity at the beginning of every Eucharist: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord.” Today’s passage from Isaiah tells us that that “branch from the root of Jesse” that Christians understand to be referring to Jesus will “not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear,” but will judge “with righteousness,” the kind of righteousness that comes from knowing what is in one’s heart. So when we come to church, we might appear to be doing all the “right” things by being here, participating in a ritual that we believe Jesus commanded his followers to continue in his name, but if our hearts are not in the right place, our actions will not please God. And so we pray in the Collect for Purity for God’s assistance in orienting ourselves toward God and cleansing our hearts of any sin within them so that our worship of God may be an authentic expression of love and praise.

The word “Advent” means “coming,” and the early church fathers spoke of three “advents” in the Christian religion: the first coming of Christ, in his birth at Bethlehem in the first century, the second coming of Christ to judge the world at the end of time, and the daily coming of Christ into the hearts of individual believers. Without that third advent, the first and second advents won’t have much meaning to us. In the season of Advent, we do not only remember what has already been and wait for what is to come, but celebrate what currently is: the presence of Christ with us every day in our hearts -- and in the hearts of believers around the world.

“Let every heart prepare him room,” says the Christmas hymn “Joy to the World,” and that is indeed the work of Advent, the work of examining our hearts and opening them to receive the coming of Christ that is available to us every day. It is through the heart-cleansing work of repentance that we might be able to experience the joy of Christ’s presence among us.

And He shall reign for ever and ever: Hallelujah!

Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016 (Last Sunday After Pentecost: Christ the King Sunday) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46, Luke 23:33-43

The day after the election, I woke up with the “Hallelujah Chorus” running through my head.

That familiar tune, with its joyful proclamation, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” is widely associated with celebration and joy. We often hear it performed around Christmas or Easter, and commercials and films have used it to accompany everything from scenes of sports teams winning games to toddlers successfully learning to use the toilet.

But despite the ways in which this tune has been trivialized or parodied in popular culture, the message of this piece of sacred music is deeply serious – and the sentiment behind it one of hope to a beleaguered community, not one of triumphalism.

The text of the Hallelujah chorus comes straight from the Book of Revelation, one of those apocalyptic texts we were talking about last week that often scare us modern readers, but were meant to give hope to the church in the midst of difficult times. Listen to the words of this piece:

Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!
The kingdom of this world is become
the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ
and he shall reign forever and ever!
King of Kings, and Lord of Lords!
And he shall reign forever and ever!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

The joy we hear in the Hallelujah chorus is not a joy of “Yay, my sports team won,” or any of the other silly and self-centered victories it is often used to celebrate. It is a joy of knowing that “the kingdom of this world” will ultimately become the kingdom of God. And that message was particularly comforting to me in the aftermath of the election: God is in control. God will ultimately reign for ever and ever.

On this last Sunday in the season after Pentecost, this last Sunday of the church year, we observe “Christ the King Sunday.” As we affirm one of the earliest statements of belief expressed by the Christian community, that Jesus is “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords,” it’s worth exploring just how “political” of a statement that was in the early church.

“Jesus is Lord” was a subversive message! It was considered treasonous by some in the Roman Empire, because for the early church, saying “Jesus is Lord” carried with it the unspoken but equally loud message that “Ceasar is not.” If Jesus is Lord, Ceasar is not.

“Jesus is the authority we turn to,” said the earliest Christians, “not the king who currently rules over the Roman Empire.”

Translated into modern language, today we might say, “Jesus is President,” rather than “Jesus is Lord.” And if “Jesus is President,” then “Trump is not” – and neither is Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, or any of the 40 other men who have served as “rulers” of this country.

“Jesus is the authority we turn to,” our country’s Christians should be saying today, “not the President who currently rules over the United States.”

And what kind of authority, what kind of king, what kind of President, what kind of ruler do we have, as Christians? Why is this ruler’s coming reign a cause for joy and celebration? Why do we shout, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” at the thought of him “reigning for ever and ever?”

Because when authority is given to Jesus, we will be governed by love, not fear or unbridled power. Instead of governments that wound and blind, authority will be given to Jesus, who heals and restores sight. Instead of governments that exploit the poor, authority will be given to Jesus, who cares for the poor. Instead of governments that kill, authority will be given to Jesus, who is raised from the dead and has triumphed over death!

But this is not just a matter of a cosmic, end-of-the-world scenario, not just about Christ's Second Coming. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is among us, here and now (Luke 17:21). When we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we are not simply awaiting some future event; we are calling ourselves and each other to act in the world to work toward making that vision a reality.

Despite all the majestic imagery the church has attributed to Jesus over the centuries, all the language about him being “crowned with many crowns,” it’s important to remember who Jesus actually was: a poor peasant, a fierce prophet with a revolutionary social message of solidarity with the poor and outcast. When God came to be with us, he did not wear a crown of gold, but a fragile crown of thorns. He did not sit in palaces or places of privilege and honor, but among the despised and rejected of his society. Though his detractors mocked him, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”, he did not resist his executioners, he did not fight back. Instead, he bestows forgiveness on those who kill him even as he is dying on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

In the weeks prior to the election, I heard a piece on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about evangelical Christian leaders’ opinions of Donald Trump. Host Michel Martin was interviewing Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, about why he supported Trump.

“When I'm looking for a leader who's going to fight ISIS and keep this nation secure, I don't want some meek and mild leader or somebody who's going to turn the other cheek,” he said. “[I've said] I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”

With all due respect to a fellow brother in Christ, from my perspective this comment sounded like a complete disconnect with the Christian faith. “Somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek” is exactly the kind of leader we follow as Christians. Someone who knows that violence will never end violence, but only increase and inflame a never-ending cycle: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus’s death was an attempt to stop the cycle of violence, but we human beings still haven’t gotten the message, two thousand years later. Many of us still think that fear and violence are the ways to power. Many of us still think force is stronger than love.

That’s why, on this Christ the King Sunday, we must recommit ourselves to working for the kingdom of God, not the kingdoms of this world. We must commit to bringing about that kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven,” a kingdom where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, a kingdom where “the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, [will] be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule,” a rule that is grounded in peace, justice and compassion.

And he shall reign for ever and ever. Hallelujah! And it starts with us.

Hope in the midst of the apocalypse

Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016 (23rd Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 28, Year C, Track 2)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church in Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Malachi 4:1-2a, Luke 21:5-19, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

What a lovely bunch of passages our lectionary has served up for us today.

“See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up… so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi 4)

"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” (Luke 21)

Welcome to the apocalypse! It might feel like the lectionary is playing a cruel joke on us, after the week we’ve had: with the extremely emotional Presidential election on Tuesday and subsequent outbreak of protests and violence after the results came in. Maybe we came to church today to find comfort, to find solace, to find some message of hope – but instead, we got words of judgment, death, and destruction. Gee thanks, God.

But the apocalyptic literature in the Bible – that is, the passages dealing with the “end times” – actually was intended to give hope to people in the midst of despair. We modern readers often experience these passages as threatening, scary, or at the very least, confusing (tell me someone who hasn’t scratched their heads in bewilderment trying to understand the Book of Revelation), but if we take the time to understand them in the context in which they were written, they were actually about giving hope to those who heard them, not scaring them to death.

The people of Malachi’s time were living in the midst of disillusionment and despair. Some of the Israelites had returned to Jerusalem from the exile in Babylon and rebuilt the temple, only to find that all the promises of the prophets didn’t seem to be coming true. There wasn’t peace. There wasn’t justice. Israel was not restored to its former glory. Yes, they had the temple, yes, they had a new king, but he was essentially a puppet of the Persian Empire; in many ways, they were still under the control of their oppressors.

“So where is God in all this?” people wanted to know. “You told us God was going to do all these great and wonderful things for us, but look what’s happened! Why should we worship God and worry so much about pleasing him when he hasn’t exactly delivered on his promises?” They became lax in worship, disillusioned in their faith. And although the prophet Malachi offers a stern word for those who fall away from their faith, he offers a message of hope for the faithful: “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” He speaks out against the corruption of the religious leadership and promises those who hold on to the faith, who keep the flame alive even in the midst of despair, that their efforts will not be in vain: “For you the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple, the very temple that the people of Israel had returned from exile to build during the time of Malachi in the 6th century BC. The second temple was indeed destroyed, in the first century AD, about 40 years after Jesus’s death. When the Gospel of Luke was written, the temple had already been destroyed, and the people were in the midst of another period of dark despair, a period when the worst thing they could have imagined had happened. And they were remembering Jesus’s words from years before: “Yes, it will be difficult. Yes, you will undergo all kinds of struggles and turmoil. Yes, the institutions you put so much trust in will crumble and fall. Yes, you will be betrayed by family members and friends. Yes, it will feel like the end of the world is coming. But it won’t be the end of the world, not yet. Hang in there. Remember that I am with you. I will give you words, I will give you strength, I will sustain you through these most difficult of times. Not a hair on your head will perish.” A message of hope in the midst of despair.

And finally, although the reading from 2 Thessalonians doesn’t say anything directly about the end times, the letter was written when the Christian community was experiencing persecution that they interpreted to be a sign that the end was near. In that context, some people were losing hope. “Why bother doing anything, if we’re just going to die tomorrow anyway?” was the prevailing sentiment among some. “If the end is coming soon, why should we care about anybody but ourselves? Let’s just ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’” These folks were giving up – on life, on the fight for their faith, on the community they were part of.

Paul’s warning against “idleness” in this context, when he tells the community to “keep away from believers who are living in idleness,” is a warning against checking out of the community, of losing one’s sense of responsibility to others. The meaning of the Greek word translated as “idleness” is actually closer to the meaning of the word “subordination.” It doesn’t mean simply laziness or apathy, but actively going against the community, undermining the very things the community is grounded in, refusing to participate in contributing to the greater good.

It’s unfortunate that this warning against “idleness” and the line – “anyone unwilling to work should not eat” – has been used by some to denigrate the poor, because that’s a gross misunderstanding of this passage and its context. It’s not saying we shouldn’t feed the homeless or jobless. It’s not even really talking about poverty. It’s talking about people who have given up, who by their “checking out” from the system are undermining and destroying the greater good of the community.

The first-century church was a deeply communal body. The Book of Acts tells us that:

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-35, NIV)

Proceeds from work were shared. If you didn’t work and earn money, you weren’t just hurting yourself or your own family, but everyone in the community. It is in this context that Paul reminds the community at Thessaloniki:

“We were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right (emphasis added), but in order to give you an example to imitate.” (2 Thessalonians 3:8-9)

Although they could have relied on the support of the community, because that’s what the community does – support each other, they contributed their share of work to show how well it works when each person contributes to the greater good according to their ability. The weak, the sick, the vulnerable, those unable to work – those folks are not “freeloaders” because they benefit from the support of the community. But otherwise able-bodied people who could do work and had just checked out from their responsibility because of a sense of hopelessness – these are the folks Paul wants the community to chastise, to remind them of their commitment to the greater good, not just to themselves.

So the question this passage raises for us, then, is what is our responsibility to the community of faith, even in the midst of despair? Even if we are being persecuted, even if we have lost all hope, even if we think the end is near – what does a commitment to the common good look like?

The individualism of our society influences how most Americans tend to approach their participation in church or communities of faith. They might wake up Sunday morning and think to themselves, “Hmm, do I need church today?” But if we take our example from the way the early church understood itself, that would be entirely the wrong question to ask. The question is not “do I need church today,” but “who needs me in church today?”

True confession: I wouldn’t be in church every week if I wasn’t a priest, if it wasn’t my job to be here. Before I was ordained, I joined the choir at my church to help get me to church each week. I knew I felt better about myself and the world when I was active in a church community, but I’m not a morning person… and I was going to church alone… and I had a hard time motivating myself to get up in the mornings. So I figured if I HAD to go because other people were counting on me, I’d be much more likely to go than if I relied on my own willpower to get me out of bed in the morning. And it worked.

If I hadn’t taken the initiative to find myself an external motivator to get to church, a sense of commitment to the good of the greater community, perhaps I’d still be the occasional attendee slipping in and out the door and would have never discovered that my life’s calling is in this work. Without that sense of commitment to the greater good, I likely wouldn’t be sharing my gifts with the church, because I too would often rather sleep in or be outside or go to brunch rather than going to church.

This message from 2 Thessalonians reminds us that we don’t participate in the community just for ourselves. We do it for others. When we don’t participate, we’re depriving others of our gifts and talents. When we don’t show up and engage in the community, it’s not just our loss, it’s everyone’s loss. It’s only not about whether you need church today, but about the people who need you to be in church today. And this is particularly true in the difficult times.

So no matter how much despair you may feel in this emotionally-volatile, deeply divided time in our country, recommit yourselves today to showing up. To showing up not just at St. Cuthbert’s, but in the larger community of which we are a part. Because your neighbors need you. They need your gifts, they need your strengths, they need your voices. They need you to help them carry the light in the midst of the darkness. They need you to remind them that the “sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings.” And you need them. You need their gifts, you need their strengths, you need their voices. You need them to help you carry the light in the midst of the darkness and to remind you “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). When we come together, when we share ourselves with one another, when we choose to see the light of God in each other, we will find hope, even in the midst of the apocalypse.

Giving with right intentions

Sermon delivered Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016 (23rd Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 25, Year C, Track 2)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church in Oakland, CA. 

Sermon Text(s): Sirach 35:12-17, Luke 18:9-14

A few weeks ago, when we kicked off our stewardship campaign for 2017, we considered the difference between giving out of a sense of obligation, out of a sense that we “owe” someone something verses giving freely out of a sense of joy, in gratitude for the many blessings we have received from God. Our readings this week invite us to continue to explore that theme of “right intentions” with regards to our giving.

No matter what aspect of spirituality you’re looking at, intention is important. In fact, Jesus and the Old Testament prophets emphasize intention so much that one could argue that in religious practice, one’s intentions are even more important that the actions he or she performs. Despite the wisdom of the classic axiom “actions speak louder than words,” it is also true that “actions are judged by intentions.” While all the words in the world mean nothing if we don’t put them into practice, it is also true that all the wonderful actions in the world also mean nothing if they are done with the wrong intentions. Prophets always emphasize this because they know that one of the worst dangers of religious life is the possibility for internal deception, of being convinced you are “righteous” because you do all the right things when internally, your heart is rotten to the core.

Take the Pharisee in today’s Gospel reading, for instance. He is a textbook example of “a good religious man,” if one measured him by his actions only. He fasts twice a week, he tithes, he goes to the Temple to pray and make offerings. But the glimpse into his inner thoughts that we receive in the parable shows us that he’s doing these things for the wrong reasons. His prayer is all about how much better he is than others. Even as he’s thanking God, an religiously praiseworthy action, he’s continuing to feed the sin of pride: “Dear God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”

Jesus tells us that this man’s prayer is not acceptable to God. The tax collector who is aware of his own sinfulness goes home “justified,” but the Pharisee does not. Why? Because you don’t get to thank God for your arrogance or your pride or your sense of superiority. You can’t thank God for those things because God didn’t actually give you any of those things. They are of your own making. Hence the scriptures tell us that this parable was aimed at those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous,” rather than trusting in God, acknowledging that everything they had was a gift from God, and allowing that realization to humble them.

In our first reading from the book of Sirach, we are encouraged to “give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford,” but almost in the same breath we are warned against “offering God a bribe”:

“Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it
and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice;
for the Lord is the judge,
and with him there is no partiality.” (Sirach 35:14-15)

In other words, you can’t buy God’s favor. Not only can you not “pay” God for the blessings you receive, as Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army, tried to do in our reading from 2 Kings a few weeks ago, but you also can’t get God to do what you want by passing him a wad of cash under the table. God shows no “partiality” in the sense that he doesn’t treat people who give lots of money any differently than he treats people who give very little. God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s mercy are freely available to all. They can’t be bought and they can’t be manipulated.

So yes, we should “give to the Most High as he has given to [us], and as generously as [we] can afford,” but not so we can consider ourselves better than others, or because we want to be praised by others, or because we don’t want to owe God anything or in order to try to get what we want out of God. If we are giving for any of those reasons, even though our outward actions look respectable, we’re actually not giving with the right intention. Instead, we should be giving as an act of generosity, as a means to share the blessings we have been given, as a spiritual practice to help us lessen our attachments to physical things.

In recent weeks I’ve been sharing with the folks at the 8:00 contemplative mass some writings on generosity from Sharon Salzburg, a contemplative teacher in the Buddhist tradition. She talks about how in traditional Buddhist teaching, as it came to us out of India and then through East Asia, generosity comes first in the sequence of instruction. Before you can learn about meditation, before you can learn about ethics or morality, you must learn about generosity. It is the foundation upon which all the other teachings are based. But in the U.S., when Buddhism is taught, meditation practice usually comes first, and generosity is often tacked on as an afterthought or appendix. We tend do the same thing in the church: worship, biblical studies, prayer, education about Christian history, all these things come before stewardship and giving and get much more attention in most churches. As a culture, money and financial giving is something we don’t like to talk about very much. Perhaps this is because as a culture, we Americans value “wanting, getting, and hoarding,” as Sharon Salzburg puts it, much more than generosity and sharing.

American society measures our value by how much we have, and this translates into the world of philanthropy by valuing people for how much they can give. The biggest donors are given the most attention, the most status, the most privileges. But the spiritual practice of generosity has nothing to do with comparing ourselves to others, and everything to do with cultivating an interior spiritual state that allows us to let go of our attachments. Jesus’s example of the Pharisee at the temple is a perfect illustration of this: focusing on how what we give compares to what others give takes us away from the spiritual practice of generosity and into the sins of pride, jealousy, and resentment. And Jesus was clear in other places that attachment to one’s wealth prevents us from entering the kingdom of heaven, as in the case of the rich man who cannot bring himself to obey Jesus’s command to sell all he had and give to the poor, but instead “went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19:22). Jesus uses this man as an example, telling his followers, “Truly I tell you… it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Why is that so? Because of the dangers of attachment to one’s physical possessions and the false sense of security that wealth can present.

True generosity actually has nothing to do with how much we have to give based on any objective standards. As Salzburg puts it, “Generosity allies itself with an inner feeling of abundance – the feeling that we have enough to share.” This inner feeling of abundance can be present in rich or poor people alike, just as an inner feeling of lack or scarcity can also be present in rich or poor people alike. “There are wealthy people who… find it difficult to give despite their external abundance. There are economically poor people who are very generous even though from the outside they seem to have nothing to give.” In the Christian tradition we see this truth illustrated in the story from Luke 21 about a poor widow who drops two small coins into the temple treasury and is praised for giving more than the wealthy who put in large sums (Luke 21:1-4). Salzburg writes that “[o]ne of the great joys that come from cultivating generosity is the understanding that no matter how much we have by the world’s standards, if we know that we have enough, we can always give something.”

She goes on to talk about how to develop this sense of inner abundance. She says that in her own spiritual practice, she has used this question to help her cultivate it: “What do I really need, right now, in this moment, in order to be happy?” Although the world will tell us we need a new this or a different that – maybe the latest technological gadget or a larger home or a romantic partner or a vacation – always something other than what we have right now, in reality we often need very little beyond what is right in front of us to be happy. Acknowledging that can help us to cultivate that sense of inner abundance that allows generosity to flow freely and releases us from the deadly grasp of attachment and desire. There will always be something shinier and more attractive out there luring us away from where true happiness can be found. The key is being able to recognize that as human beings we have an endless capacity for disappointment and an insatiable desire that will never be fulfilled, and not let those grasping, desperate parts of ourselves to control us. To remember that a sense of inner abundance really has no connection to how much we actually have in objective reality. Because human beings also have an endless capacity for contentment and joy in the present moment. Of being happy where we are, with what we have, and having a sense that we not only have enough, we have enough to share.