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.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Choose life -- even when it means choosing death
Sermon delivered September 4, 2016 (The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 18, Year C)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Luke 14:25-33
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor.
After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish. Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.
Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.
Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism: to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.
Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.
But as Jesus reminds us in our Gospel passage, these choices are not always easy. He reminds the crowds that the cost of following him is high, that sometimes it feels more like choosing death than choosing life: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says to the large crowds that begin to follow him. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
In all the hypothetical examples I just gave of ways we might break our baptismal covenant, the things I spoke about as “choosing death” instead of “choosing life” are all essentially ways in which we “choose self” instead of “choosing others.” So, even though Jesus’s words about carrying our cross might at first glance seem to be in conflict with God’s exhortation in Deuteronomy to “choose life” rather than “choose death,” in the paradoxical way of the Gospel, sometimes it is through choosing death that we choose life. As the prayer of St. Francis that we’ve been using at the end of the Prayers of the People says, “It is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”
That “dying” is not primarily referring to our actual physical death, but a spiritual death of ego that allows us to become more authentically ourselves, to flourish as we become truly awake and alive as we are connected on a spiritual level with everything around us.
There’s a scene in the film “Peaceful Warrior” (2006) where Dan Millman, a college student at UC Berkeley who is struggling to recover from an injury that has taken him out of competitive gymnastics, a sport that had been his whole life, goes to the top of the clock tower in Berekely and crawls over the railing onto the ledge.
As he stands there contemplating suicide, he is confronted by a second person, also on the ledge, who begins taunting him, encouraging him to jump. When he sees this person’s face, he realizes it looks exactly like his own. He’s come face to face with himself – a self-absorbed jerk who sees value only in winning, in amassing more trophies, medals, and accolades, who can’t find a reason to live if he can’t be the best in the world, whose self-worth comes from beating everyone else.
Suddenly, it clicks, and he realizes that in order for him to truly live, “ego Dan” must die – this force, this voice that tells him he is worthless if he can’t succeed or produce.
As he tries to pull away from “ego Dan,” who has a strong hold on him and is pulling him toward the edge, ego Dan suddenly looks fearful.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Dan’s ego asks.
“No,” the real Dan responds.
“DO YOU KNOW… WHO YOU ARE… WITHOUT….. ME?!?!?!” Ego Dan screams, his face angry and contorted, in an expression that can only be described as demonic and evil.
“No,” the real Dan says again, shaking his head and trembling. But despite his utter terror about the uncertainty of what will happen if he lets go of “ego Dan,” he pulls away from him anyway, taking a leap of faith as he sends everything he’s built his self-understanding on falling backward over the edge of the tower, screaming as he falls to his doom stories below.
To choose life for oneself and for the world means choosing death for one’s ego. It means dying to self in order to be raised in the new life of Christ. It means actively seeking to destroy the parts of ourselves that seek self-interest so that the light of Christ within us can shine unabated. It means allowing our egos to be replaced by the “mind of Christ,” as the apostle Paul encourages us in his letter to the Philippians:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)
Jesus is constantly telling his followers that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). The choice is always before us, although it may not be as clear-cut as we might think at first glance. Will we choose the way that leads to true and abundant life, even if that comes through death? Or will we choose the preservation of self at the expense of all else, the way that leads to destruction even if it seems to be leading us to life?
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Luke 14:25-33
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor.
After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish. Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.
Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.
Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism: to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.
Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.
But as Jesus reminds us in our Gospel passage, these choices are not always easy. He reminds the crowds that the cost of following him is high, that sometimes it feels more like choosing death than choosing life: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says to the large crowds that begin to follow him. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
In all the hypothetical examples I just gave of ways we might break our baptismal covenant, the things I spoke about as “choosing death” instead of “choosing life” are all essentially ways in which we “choose self” instead of “choosing others.” So, even though Jesus’s words about carrying our cross might at first glance seem to be in conflict with God’s exhortation in Deuteronomy to “choose life” rather than “choose death,” in the paradoxical way of the Gospel, sometimes it is through choosing death that we choose life. As the prayer of St. Francis that we’ve been using at the end of the Prayers of the People says, “It is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”
That “dying” is not primarily referring to our actual physical death, but a spiritual death of ego that allows us to become more authentically ourselves, to flourish as we become truly awake and alive as we are connected on a spiritual level with everything around us.
There’s a scene in the film “Peaceful Warrior” (2006) where Dan Millman, a college student at UC Berkeley who is struggling to recover from an injury that has taken him out of competitive gymnastics, a sport that had been his whole life, goes to the top of the clock tower in Berekely and crawls over the railing onto the ledge.
As he stands there contemplating suicide, he is confronted by a second person, also on the ledge, who begins taunting him, encouraging him to jump. When he sees this person’s face, he realizes it looks exactly like his own. He’s come face to face with himself – a self-absorbed jerk who sees value only in winning, in amassing more trophies, medals, and accolades, who can’t find a reason to live if he can’t be the best in the world, whose self-worth comes from beating everyone else.
Suddenly, it clicks, and he realizes that in order for him to truly live, “ego Dan” must die – this force, this voice that tells him he is worthless if he can’t succeed or produce.
As he tries to pull away from “ego Dan,” who has a strong hold on him and is pulling him toward the edge, ego Dan suddenly looks fearful.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Dan’s ego asks.
“No,” the real Dan responds.
“DO YOU KNOW… WHO YOU ARE… WITHOUT….. ME?!?!?!” Ego Dan screams, his face angry and contorted, in an expression that can only be described as demonic and evil.
“No,” the real Dan says again, shaking his head and trembling. But despite his utter terror about the uncertainty of what will happen if he lets go of “ego Dan,” he pulls away from him anyway, taking a leap of faith as he sends everything he’s built his self-understanding on falling backward over the edge of the tower, screaming as he falls to his doom stories below.
To choose life for oneself and for the world means choosing death for one’s ego. It means dying to self in order to be raised in the new life of Christ. It means actively seeking to destroy the parts of ourselves that seek self-interest so that the light of Christ within us can shine unabated. It means allowing our egos to be replaced by the “mind of Christ,” as the apostle Paul encourages us in his letter to the Philippians:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)
Jesus is constantly telling his followers that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). The choice is always before us, although it may not be as clear-cut as we might think at first glance. Will we choose the way that leads to true and abundant life, even if that comes through death? Or will we choose the preservation of self at the expense of all else, the way that leads to destruction even if it seems to be leading us to life?
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Gun Violence Awareness Sunday: Our faith calls us to more than just words
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 5, 2016 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 5, Year C), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
The women in the first reading and in the Gospel today are both grieving over lost sons. This is not an uncommon theme in the Bible; we could turn to any number of books in the Bible and find stories of grief over lost loved ones. In both passages today, the cause of death was illness or natural causes, but in many other parts of the Bible we have graphic stories of violent death and the mourning that follows when life is cut too short -- not because of natural causes, but because of the sinfulness of people.
This past Thursday, June 2, was National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This is a relatively new observance; only the second annual. And it came into existence not because of some government decree or some organization pronouncing it would be so, but through the grassroots organizing of a group of high school students in Chicago.
After losing their friend Hadiya Pendleton to a random shooting in January of 2013, Hadiya’s friends started a movement to raise awareness about gun violence. They encouraged their classmates to wear orange – the color hunters wear to protect themselves in the woods, the color of gun safety, the color that indicates that someone is not a target or something is not a weapon – they encouraged their classmates to wear orange on June 2, which was Hadiya’s birthday. The movement has gained momentum, and now people all over the country are wearing orange on June 2 to raise awareness about the toll gun violence is taking on our nation and to advocate for gun safety. And today, clergy all over the Episcopal Church are wearing orange stoles to stand in solidarity with this movement.
So as I looked at our lessons today, I noticed these grieving mothers. In these stories, both mothers get their sons back – God restores them to life, through the prayer of Elijah and the command of Jesus. These resurrection narratives remind us that death does not have the last word. We are given a promise that life will overcome death, that death cannot defeat us.
But what about Hadiya's parents? What about those mothers and fathers in Newtown, who will never see their children master reading, or get braces, or take the SATs? What about the mothers and fathers in Columbine, whose children never got to graduate from high school, who would have been my age now, had they lived, with careers and families and who knows what else? What about those children at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, whose parents were gunned down while they worshipped, whose parents will not be there to see them graduate, get married, have children? God hasn’t brought back their sons, their daughters, their mothers, their fathers, from the dead. What does resurrection mean for them? What does resurrection look like for them?
As a priest, I have a duty to remind the church of the power of the resurrection, to remind us that death does not have the last word. But sometimes that is difficult to do when all evidence around us seems to point to the contrary. Sometimes mere words don’t feel like enough. It’s not enough to say that death triumphs over life, it’s not enough to read the stories of Jesus raising someone’s son from the dead and hope against hope that this can happen for our loved ones, too. The purpose of our faith is not only to give comfort in times of despair, but to stir us to action, to work to prevent the preventable tragedies of this life. To demand that action be taken, to say “not one more!” Not one more life lost to preventable, unnecessary violence, to gun-related accidents, or to suicide.
Some tragedies in this life are beyond our control, like natural disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes – or many kinds of illnesses. For those things there will always be a theological question around why God allows these things to happen. But some things we can control. Some tragedies are due to human behavior, human sin, things that could be different if we were to be intentional about the choices we make and the actions we take. Gun violence is one of those tragedies. We CAN change it. It is within our power. We can’t blame God for it. We have to take responsibility for the ways we, as a species, have endlessly invented ways to harm each other and ourselves. We created the gun, and we are responsible for its misuse. We must, as our confession in the liturgy says, “repent of the evil that enslaves us – the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” And to repent means to CHANGE. To change direction. To turn around completely. To do something different. Not to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, which as we all know, is the definition of insanity. We must raise our voices and say, “enough is enough.”
In 2013, I led a Lenten series called “Christian Responses to Gun Violence.” It was right after 2012, a particularly bloody year in terms of mass shootings: the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July, the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. We took the traditional Anglican “three-legged stool” approach and looked at what scripture, tradition, and reason had to say about the use of weapons and violent force. We realized that faithful Christians can and do disagree on the best way to protect innocent life, and that Christian ethics has historically had two different “positions” on the use of weapons and violent force: the pacifist perspective, which says that violence is never justified, and the just war theory, which says that violent force is justified in some circumstances, if the scenario meets a certain set of criteria, including that the violence is used as a last resort, that violence is done in service of the common good, and that only the minimal amount of violence necessary to bring about the desired result is used.
After considering all this, we got to the “so what” question – the question I want to hold up for you today. What does our faith call us to do in response to the tragic loss of life in our cities and towns due to gun violence? Surely our location on the edge of East Oakland, one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the country for gun violence -- makes this issue relevant and important to us as we seek to bring God’s justice and mercy to the communities around us.
In my research on how Christians of all sorts have responded to gun violence, I noticed three basic ways they have done so:
• political advocacy
• prayer and witness
• community development and empowerment.
The Episcopal Church has a public policy network that focuses exclusively on activism through political advocacy. They lobby Congress and advocate for certain courses of action that they believe are most congruous with the values of our faith. A group of bishops that formed after Newtown, led by the bishops of Connecticut, called Bishops United Against Gun Violence, and another group of lay people called Episcopalians Against Gun Violence, fall into this category. There are many ways to get involved in their work if political advocacy is where you are feeling called.
In the prayer and witness category, a church in New Orleans stands out. St. Anna’s Episcopal Church on the outskirts of the French Quarter has become known for their “murder board,” (click the word "murder board" for a link to a video about this ministry) a wall on the outside of the church where they record the name, age, and method of death for all local murder victims each week. In a city that has one of the highest murder rates in the country, this church is bearing public witness to the very human toll of urban violence, reminding the community that each one of the statistics is a human being with a name and a face and a family. They pray for each week’s victims by name in the Prayers of the People on Sundays as part of their liturgy.
Another example in this category would be this new icon (pictured at right). This is “Our Lady Mother of Ferguson and All Killed By Guns.” It was commissioned by Mark Bozzuti-Jones, a priest at Trinity Wall Street, and was written by Mark Dukes, the iconographer who wrote the dancing saints icons at St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco. This image powerfully speaks to how sacred and valuable every life lost to gun violence is, and gives voice, through visual representation, to the grief of those who remain to mourn their loss.
Finally, community development and empowerment. When I led the Lenten series in Nashville in 2013, I highlighted the work of a trauma surgeon who had started a violence prevention program in the public schools after seeing too many young people come through the ER as gunshot victims. He wanted to address the root causes of violence – poverty, lack of education, lack of positive mentors and role models, and so on – to try to help prevent these kids from winding up on his operating table in the ER.
One organization I’ve discovered here in Oakland that’s doing a similar kind of work is a program called Oakland Unite, part of the Department of Human Services for the City of Oakland, that leads violence prevention and intervention programs in the most at-risk parts of Oakland – but I turn to you all, the experts on this area, to let each other know about other initiatives you are familiar with that are doing good work to address the root causes of violence.
So, whether it’s political advocacy, prayer and witness, community development and empowerment, or all three, there is bound to be some way in which your gifts can be used to address this issue. And who knows? Some of you may be called to go even deeper and take a leadership role in this area. Or maybe St. Cuthbert’s as a community might be called to be God’s hands and feet in addressing violence in the neighborhoods that surround our church. That could be a critical part of our way forward. Again, we must listen for God’s call to us – taking the time for discernment is key. Where is the Holy Spirit calling you, calling us, on this issue, if anywhere? The psalmist reminds us today that “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.” How can you, how can we, turn weeping into dancing for our brothers and sisters who live in constant fear of gun violence, especially our neighbors in East Oakland? Because our faith calls us to more than just words.
The women in the first reading and in the Gospel today are both grieving over lost sons. This is not an uncommon theme in the Bible; we could turn to any number of books in the Bible and find stories of grief over lost loved ones. In both passages today, the cause of death was illness or natural causes, but in many other parts of the Bible we have graphic stories of violent death and the mourning that follows when life is cut too short -- not because of natural causes, but because of the sinfulness of people.
This past Thursday, June 2, was National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This is a relatively new observance; only the second annual. And it came into existence not because of some government decree or some organization pronouncing it would be so, but through the grassroots organizing of a group of high school students in Chicago.
After losing their friend Hadiya Pendleton to a random shooting in January of 2013, Hadiya’s friends started a movement to raise awareness about gun violence. They encouraged their classmates to wear orange – the color hunters wear to protect themselves in the woods, the color of gun safety, the color that indicates that someone is not a target or something is not a weapon – they encouraged their classmates to wear orange on June 2, which was Hadiya’s birthday. The movement has gained momentum, and now people all over the country are wearing orange on June 2 to raise awareness about the toll gun violence is taking on our nation and to advocate for gun safety. And today, clergy all over the Episcopal Church are wearing orange stoles to stand in solidarity with this movement.
So as I looked at our lessons today, I noticed these grieving mothers. In these stories, both mothers get their sons back – God restores them to life, through the prayer of Elijah and the command of Jesus. These resurrection narratives remind us that death does not have the last word. We are given a promise that life will overcome death, that death cannot defeat us.
But what about Hadiya's parents? What about those mothers and fathers in Newtown, who will never see their children master reading, or get braces, or take the SATs? What about the mothers and fathers in Columbine, whose children never got to graduate from high school, who would have been my age now, had they lived, with careers and families and who knows what else? What about those children at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, whose parents were gunned down while they worshipped, whose parents will not be there to see them graduate, get married, have children? God hasn’t brought back their sons, their daughters, their mothers, their fathers, from the dead. What does resurrection mean for them? What does resurrection look like for them?
As a priest, I have a duty to remind the church of the power of the resurrection, to remind us that death does not have the last word. But sometimes that is difficult to do when all evidence around us seems to point to the contrary. Sometimes mere words don’t feel like enough. It’s not enough to say that death triumphs over life, it’s not enough to read the stories of Jesus raising someone’s son from the dead and hope against hope that this can happen for our loved ones, too. The purpose of our faith is not only to give comfort in times of despair, but to stir us to action, to work to prevent the preventable tragedies of this life. To demand that action be taken, to say “not one more!” Not one more life lost to preventable, unnecessary violence, to gun-related accidents, or to suicide.
Some tragedies in this life are beyond our control, like natural disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes – or many kinds of illnesses. For those things there will always be a theological question around why God allows these things to happen. But some things we can control. Some tragedies are due to human behavior, human sin, things that could be different if we were to be intentional about the choices we make and the actions we take. Gun violence is one of those tragedies. We CAN change it. It is within our power. We can’t blame God for it. We have to take responsibility for the ways we, as a species, have endlessly invented ways to harm each other and ourselves. We created the gun, and we are responsible for its misuse. We must, as our confession in the liturgy says, “repent of the evil that enslaves us – the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” And to repent means to CHANGE. To change direction. To turn around completely. To do something different. Not to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, which as we all know, is the definition of insanity. We must raise our voices and say, “enough is enough.”
In 2013, I led a Lenten series called “Christian Responses to Gun Violence.” It was right after 2012, a particularly bloody year in terms of mass shootings: the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July, the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. We took the traditional Anglican “three-legged stool” approach and looked at what scripture, tradition, and reason had to say about the use of weapons and violent force. We realized that faithful Christians can and do disagree on the best way to protect innocent life, and that Christian ethics has historically had two different “positions” on the use of weapons and violent force: the pacifist perspective, which says that violence is never justified, and the just war theory, which says that violent force is justified in some circumstances, if the scenario meets a certain set of criteria, including that the violence is used as a last resort, that violence is done in service of the common good, and that only the minimal amount of violence necessary to bring about the desired result is used.
After considering all this, we got to the “so what” question – the question I want to hold up for you today. What does our faith call us to do in response to the tragic loss of life in our cities and towns due to gun violence? Surely our location on the edge of East Oakland, one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the country for gun violence -- makes this issue relevant and important to us as we seek to bring God’s justice and mercy to the communities around us.
In my research on how Christians of all sorts have responded to gun violence, I noticed three basic ways they have done so:
• political advocacy
• prayer and witness
• community development and empowerment.
The Episcopal Church has a public policy network that focuses exclusively on activism through political advocacy. They lobby Congress and advocate for certain courses of action that they believe are most congruous with the values of our faith. A group of bishops that formed after Newtown, led by the bishops of Connecticut, called Bishops United Against Gun Violence, and another group of lay people called Episcopalians Against Gun Violence, fall into this category. There are many ways to get involved in their work if political advocacy is where you are feeling called.
In the prayer and witness category, a church in New Orleans stands out. St. Anna’s Episcopal Church on the outskirts of the French Quarter has become known for their “murder board,” (click the word "murder board" for a link to a video about this ministry) a wall on the outside of the church where they record the name, age, and method of death for all local murder victims each week. In a city that has one of the highest murder rates in the country, this church is bearing public witness to the very human toll of urban violence, reminding the community that each one of the statistics is a human being with a name and a face and a family. They pray for each week’s victims by name in the Prayers of the People on Sundays as part of their liturgy.
Finally, community development and empowerment. When I led the Lenten series in Nashville in 2013, I highlighted the work of a trauma surgeon who had started a violence prevention program in the public schools after seeing too many young people come through the ER as gunshot victims. He wanted to address the root causes of violence – poverty, lack of education, lack of positive mentors and role models, and so on – to try to help prevent these kids from winding up on his operating table in the ER.
One organization I’ve discovered here in Oakland that’s doing a similar kind of work is a program called Oakland Unite, part of the Department of Human Services for the City of Oakland, that leads violence prevention and intervention programs in the most at-risk parts of Oakland – but I turn to you all, the experts on this area, to let each other know about other initiatives you are familiar with that are doing good work to address the root causes of violence.
So, whether it’s political advocacy, prayer and witness, community development and empowerment, or all three, there is bound to be some way in which your gifts can be used to address this issue. And who knows? Some of you may be called to go even deeper and take a leadership role in this area. Or maybe St. Cuthbert’s as a community might be called to be God’s hands and feet in addressing violence in the neighborhoods that surround our church. That could be a critical part of our way forward. Again, we must listen for God’s call to us – taking the time for discernment is key. Where is the Holy Spirit calling you, calling us, on this issue, if anywhere? The psalmist reminds us today that “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.” How can you, how can we, turn weeping into dancing for our brothers and sisters who live in constant fear of gun violence, especially our neighbors in East Oakland? Because our faith calls us to more than just words.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
"You will not always have me" -- a call to cherish the times God shows up in our lives
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 13, 2016 (Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C), at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA (where I am serving as long-term supply priest).
(John 12:1-8)
As we close down the season of Lent and prepare to move into Holy Week next week, our Gospel passage today gets us ready for that transition. The story we hear today is set six days before the Passover, and so we’re hearing it approximately the same amount of time ahead of Holy Week as it took place before the events of the actual Holy Week. Jesus is having dinner at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany, and Mary pours a jar of expensive oil on Jesus’s feet and wipes them with her hair. Judas protests that this use of the oil was wasteful and that Mary was not being a good steward of her wealth; “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” he asks?
Interestingly enough, the story of the anointing of Jesus is one of the few stories that appears in all four of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have slightly different accounts of the story; the woman is not always the same, nor is the person who objects, but the core elements of the story – that it took place at a dinner in someone’s home, that a woman poured expensive oil over Jesus and someone protested that that was an extravagant and wasteful act – are consistent across all four accounts. In all of the Gospels except for Luke, Jesus’s response to those who criticize the woman is some variation of:
“Leave her alone. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
This famous one-liner is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted sayings of Jesus. Throughout the centuries, Christians who wanted to justify neglect of the poor and extravagant, lavish displays of wealth in the church would turn to this passage as a biblical basis for the use of solid silver chalices and vestments adorned with rare and precious jewels, and enormous marble churches with gold-gilded ornamentation. To anyone who would protest that perhaps this spending was a bit excessive and maybe more good could have been done with that money in the community to help those in need, well, you know, Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you,” and that woman in the Bible poured out that jar of oil on Jesus that would have been worth an average laborer’s entire yearly salary, so as long as you’re spending lavish amounts of money to express your love for Jesus, it’s all ok.
Sometimes I think Jesus looks down on us and just shakes his head, going, “Seriously?” Like, “that’s where you went with that?” And I’m probably not too far off in my imagination, since Jesus did a lot of shaking his head at the disciples while he was with them on earth, expressing in many ways some version of this sentiment: “You’ve been spending time with me for HOW LONG and you STILL don’t get it??”
Somehow I don’t think Jesus was making known his desire for lavish, expensive gifts in his defense of the woman’s actions in this story. I personally think Jesus could care about less where we worship him and what we wear when we worship him and what kind of objects we use to worship of him. His defense of the woman was not about condoning extravagant displays of wealth. It was about encouraging us to cherish the sacred moments in our lives.
Jesus tells the woman’s critics that she has anointed his body for burial. That’s the key aspect of this story – Jesus’s death is near. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial,” he says in John’s version of the story that we heard today. This woman, despite her seemingly wasteful use of money, “gets it.” While the disciples are quibbling about finances and expenses, not really aware of the gravity of the situation and the preciousness of every last moment they have with Jesus, this woman realizes her time with him is limited. She realizes that Jesus’s days are numbered and she wants to give him the best send-off she can. So instead of waiting until he is dead to anoint his body with oil, as was the custom, she chooses to do this for him while he is still alive. How many times have you sat at a funeral reception and wished the deceased could have heard all the wonderful things that are being said about him or her? So often we wait to honor people until they are dead, but this woman wants to honor Jesus while he is still with her. She wants to express her love for him before it’s too late.
I am reminded of a TED Talk I watched recently by Janine di Giovanni, a journalist who reports from war zones around the world. In her talk, she mentions that in 2004, after the birth of her son, her foreign editor sent her back to Iraq to continue her coverage of the war there when her son was just four months old. She says she was crying on the plane because of how difficult it was to leave her son, and an Iraqi politician who knew she had recently had a child said to her, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you home with [your son]?" And she said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004, which was the beginning of an incredibly bloody time in Iraq, and she felt a sense of responsibility to bear witness to the atrocities and bring the stories of those people who were suffering to the world, as she had done in places like Sarajevo and Rwanda years before. "I have to see, I have to see what is happening here. I have to report it," she said. And the politician said to her, "Go home. Because if you miss his first tooth, if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself. But there will always be another war."
There will always be another war. This is what I think Jesus meant when he said “the poor you will always have with you.” He meant what the politician meant when he encouraged the reporter to go spend time with her son. By saying that, he didn’t mean that the suffering and death in his country wasn’t important, or that the stories of his people didn’t need to be told. He didn’t mean that on a cosmic level it would be ok to neglect their stories and the stories of countless others who suffer. What he meant was, there is an endless amount of suffering in the world. You can’t capture it all and see it all and fix it all. You can only do your part, and right now your part is to focus on this beautiful miracle that has been given to you, this new life which, in a few blinks of an eye, will be a full-grown, independent man.
When Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you,” he didn’t mean that helping the poor was unimportant, or that it was ok to spend lavish amounts of money on worship instead of giving to those in need. Jesus was one of a long line of prophets in the Jewish tradition who called the people to care people in poverty, who taught that you can judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable members. But this particular saying of Jesus actually has very little to do with people in poverty and has everything to do with recognizing the preciousness of each moment you have with the important people in your lives, whether that be God himself in the form of Jesus for the disciples in the first century, or whoever mediates God’s presence to you in your life today.
For me, this Lent has brought news of the deaths of several beloved parishioners from former parishes I have served. From Atlanta to Nashville, the stories of their deaths have come to me across the miles, and I am reminded of the most basic truth behind Jesus’s comment in today’s Gospel reading: “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
You will not always have me. Our days with our loved ones are limited, so spend time with the ones you love before they are gone. Don’t miss a precious, irreplaceable moment focusing on something that will still be there for you to take care of later.
This truth is perhaps hardest to hear when the limitations of our time and money force us to make impossible choices – to choose between visiting a sick child of a parishioner in the hospital or going to our own child’s soccer game – to choose between paying the hospital bill for our parents’ stay or to make that annual donation to our favorite nonprofit, a donation we know provides the bulk of their operating expenses – to choose between spending time with our dearest friend in a time of crisis or giving an educational presentation about the very topic our friend is struggling with, to a large audience where we have the potential of touching thousands of lives. Whatever your deepest calling is, the thing that gives your life meaning and which you feel God has uniquely gifted you to address, whatever work you do that has the potential to bring hope and healing to many people – put that in the place of “the poor” in Jesus’s statement:
“__________ you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
There will always be another ________. What is that for you? What is that thing that you do, even if noble and important and sacred and holy, that threatens to blind you to the times God chooses to show up right in front of you?
Jesus’s point, I think, is that even if you are doing good work, like caring for the poor, if you are doing it in such a way that you miss the precious, beautiful moments life has to offer you – the incarnational moments, the times when God is in your midst – and do not stop and celebrate or acknowledge them appropriately, then you miss the point just as much as if all you do is praise God and neglect to care for the poor. We must do both – acknowledge and marvel in God’s presence and go out to do the hard work he calls us to do. Each of us has a tendency to err toward one extreme or the other. The key is finding a balance, that Anglican via media, the middle way, between the two extremes.
“You will not always have me.”
Our time with those we love is precious. Our experience of God’s presence in our midst is often fleeting and temporary. Don’t let anything keep you from reveling in those moments and soaking them up. Like Mary anointing Jesus before his burial, pour out lavish amounts of thanksgiving and praise whenever you encounter God in your life. Remind yourself: “There will always be another war. There will always be another societal ill to address. There will always be poor among us. But there will not always be this.” – and cherish it while you can.
(John 12:1-8)
As we close down the season of Lent and prepare to move into Holy Week next week, our Gospel passage today gets us ready for that transition. The story we hear today is set six days before the Passover, and so we’re hearing it approximately the same amount of time ahead of Holy Week as it took place before the events of the actual Holy Week. Jesus is having dinner at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany, and Mary pours a jar of expensive oil on Jesus’s feet and wipes them with her hair. Judas protests that this use of the oil was wasteful and that Mary was not being a good steward of her wealth; “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” he asks?
Interestingly enough, the story of the anointing of Jesus is one of the few stories that appears in all four of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have slightly different accounts of the story; the woman is not always the same, nor is the person who objects, but the core elements of the story – that it took place at a dinner in someone’s home, that a woman poured expensive oil over Jesus and someone protested that that was an extravagant and wasteful act – are consistent across all four accounts. In all of the Gospels except for Luke, Jesus’s response to those who criticize the woman is some variation of:
“Leave her alone. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
This famous one-liner is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted sayings of Jesus. Throughout the centuries, Christians who wanted to justify neglect of the poor and extravagant, lavish displays of wealth in the church would turn to this passage as a biblical basis for the use of solid silver chalices and vestments adorned with rare and precious jewels, and enormous marble churches with gold-gilded ornamentation. To anyone who would protest that perhaps this spending was a bit excessive and maybe more good could have been done with that money in the community to help those in need, well, you know, Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you,” and that woman in the Bible poured out that jar of oil on Jesus that would have been worth an average laborer’s entire yearly salary, so as long as you’re spending lavish amounts of money to express your love for Jesus, it’s all ok.
Sometimes I think Jesus looks down on us and just shakes his head, going, “Seriously?” Like, “that’s where you went with that?” And I’m probably not too far off in my imagination, since Jesus did a lot of shaking his head at the disciples while he was with them on earth, expressing in many ways some version of this sentiment: “You’ve been spending time with me for HOW LONG and you STILL don’t get it??”
Somehow I don’t think Jesus was making known his desire for lavish, expensive gifts in his defense of the woman’s actions in this story. I personally think Jesus could care about less where we worship him and what we wear when we worship him and what kind of objects we use to worship of him. His defense of the woman was not about condoning extravagant displays of wealth. It was about encouraging us to cherish the sacred moments in our lives.
Jesus tells the woman’s critics that she has anointed his body for burial. That’s the key aspect of this story – Jesus’s death is near. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial,” he says in John’s version of the story that we heard today. This woman, despite her seemingly wasteful use of money, “gets it.” While the disciples are quibbling about finances and expenses, not really aware of the gravity of the situation and the preciousness of every last moment they have with Jesus, this woman realizes her time with him is limited. She realizes that Jesus’s days are numbered and she wants to give him the best send-off she can. So instead of waiting until he is dead to anoint his body with oil, as was the custom, she chooses to do this for him while he is still alive. How many times have you sat at a funeral reception and wished the deceased could have heard all the wonderful things that are being said about him or her? So often we wait to honor people until they are dead, but this woman wants to honor Jesus while he is still with her. She wants to express her love for him before it’s too late.
I am reminded of a TED Talk I watched recently by Janine di Giovanni, a journalist who reports from war zones around the world. In her talk, she mentions that in 2004, after the birth of her son, her foreign editor sent her back to Iraq to continue her coverage of the war there when her son was just four months old. She says she was crying on the plane because of how difficult it was to leave her son, and an Iraqi politician who knew she had recently had a child said to her, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you home with [your son]?" And she said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004, which was the beginning of an incredibly bloody time in Iraq, and she felt a sense of responsibility to bear witness to the atrocities and bring the stories of those people who were suffering to the world, as she had done in places like Sarajevo and Rwanda years before. "I have to see, I have to see what is happening here. I have to report it," she said. And the politician said to her, "Go home. Because if you miss his first tooth, if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself. But there will always be another war."
There will always be another war. This is what I think Jesus meant when he said “the poor you will always have with you.” He meant what the politician meant when he encouraged the reporter to go spend time with her son. By saying that, he didn’t mean that the suffering and death in his country wasn’t important, or that the stories of his people didn’t need to be told. He didn’t mean that on a cosmic level it would be ok to neglect their stories and the stories of countless others who suffer. What he meant was, there is an endless amount of suffering in the world. You can’t capture it all and see it all and fix it all. You can only do your part, and right now your part is to focus on this beautiful miracle that has been given to you, this new life which, in a few blinks of an eye, will be a full-grown, independent man.
When Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you,” he didn’t mean that helping the poor was unimportant, or that it was ok to spend lavish amounts of money on worship instead of giving to those in need. Jesus was one of a long line of prophets in the Jewish tradition who called the people to care people in poverty, who taught that you can judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable members. But this particular saying of Jesus actually has very little to do with people in poverty and has everything to do with recognizing the preciousness of each moment you have with the important people in your lives, whether that be God himself in the form of Jesus for the disciples in the first century, or whoever mediates God’s presence to you in your life today.
For me, this Lent has brought news of the deaths of several beloved parishioners from former parishes I have served. From Atlanta to Nashville, the stories of their deaths have come to me across the miles, and I am reminded of the most basic truth behind Jesus’s comment in today’s Gospel reading: “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
You will not always have me. Our days with our loved ones are limited, so spend time with the ones you love before they are gone. Don’t miss a precious, irreplaceable moment focusing on something that will still be there for you to take care of later.
This truth is perhaps hardest to hear when the limitations of our time and money force us to make impossible choices – to choose between visiting a sick child of a parishioner in the hospital or going to our own child’s soccer game – to choose between paying the hospital bill for our parents’ stay or to make that annual donation to our favorite nonprofit, a donation we know provides the bulk of their operating expenses – to choose between spending time with our dearest friend in a time of crisis or giving an educational presentation about the very topic our friend is struggling with, to a large audience where we have the potential of touching thousands of lives. Whatever your deepest calling is, the thing that gives your life meaning and which you feel God has uniquely gifted you to address, whatever work you do that has the potential to bring hope and healing to many people – put that in the place of “the poor” in Jesus’s statement:
“__________ you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
There will always be another ________. What is that for you? What is that thing that you do, even if noble and important and sacred and holy, that threatens to blind you to the times God chooses to show up right in front of you?
Jesus’s point, I think, is that even if you are doing good work, like caring for the poor, if you are doing it in such a way that you miss the precious, beautiful moments life has to offer you – the incarnational moments, the times when God is in your midst – and do not stop and celebrate or acknowledge them appropriately, then you miss the point just as much as if all you do is praise God and neglect to care for the poor. We must do both – acknowledge and marvel in God’s presence and go out to do the hard work he calls us to do. Each of us has a tendency to err toward one extreme or the other. The key is finding a balance, that Anglican via media, the middle way, between the two extremes.
“You will not always have me.”
Our time with those we love is precious. Our experience of God’s presence in our midst is often fleeting and temporary. Don’t let anything keep you from reveling in those moments and soaking them up. Like Mary anointing Jesus before his burial, pour out lavish amounts of thanksgiving and praise whenever you encounter God in your life. Remind yourself: “There will always be another war. There will always be another societal ill to address. There will always be poor among us. But there will not always be this.” – and cherish it while you can.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Overcoming Adversity
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 21, 2015, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN at The Gathering Eucharist (alternative service), 10 a.m., held outside the side courtyard (usually in Otey Hall). 4 Pentecost, Proper 7, Year B (1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49, 2 Cor. 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41)
The loose offering from this service was designated for the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, to provide support to the families of the victims of the shootings in Charleston, SC.
Afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger.
Paul’s list in today’s passage from 2 Corinthians of all he has endured for the sake of the Gospel is not exactly a great selling point for following Jesus. “Come join us, and you too can experience afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger!” Oh goodie, where do I sign up?
Many of us often think that if we are following God and doing all the right things, no harm will come to us, and perhaps it’s not surprising we think this way, since there are many parts of the scriptures that affirm this correlation between good behavior or righteousness and prosperity and safety. Countless times throughout the “wisdom literature” of the Bible, which includes the books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the psalms, we hear some version of the idea that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will perish, that those who follow God will be rewarded and those who do not will be punished. That certainly sounds like an appealing system, one where our experiences are predictable and directly related to our actions, where people “get what they deserve,” so to speak, where the world is just.
But the reality of life is often quite different. It is easy to claim from an abstract philosophical perspective that we will be rewarded if we do good and punished if we do bad, but often our experiences don’t line up with those beliefs. A pillar of the community who has supported countless people and changed lives receives a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and is dead within six months. A tornado drops out of nowhere and destroys the home of a young, struggling family who had just managed to purchase their first house. A young man from my hometown in South Carolina walks into a church in Charleston and kills nine people while they are gathered for prayer and Bible study.
Our reaction when we encounter such tragedies is often, “Why me?” or “Why them?”– especially if we think we or they were good people who didn’t “deserve” this. We can see this reaction from the disciples in today’s Gospel passage. Despite the fact that they have done everything “right” by following Jesus and doing what he asked in getting into the boat to cross to the other side of the lake, they are indignant with him when they encounter calamity along the way. When a storm threatens to capsize their boat, they wake up Jesus with the accusing statement, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” This is often our reaction to what we see as undeserved suffering. “What did I ever do to you, God? Do you not CARE that we are suffering? Why don’t you do something to stop it?” But our passage from 2 Corinthians offers another approach.
The suffering Paul and his companions experienced is not insignificant. We’re not talking about so-called “first world problems” like getting pickles on their sandwiches when they asked for no pickles, or their houses being so big they had to get two wireless routers. We’re talking some pretty horrific things -- afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger – and yet, he nonetheless proclaims that even in the midst of such suffering, they are truly blessed. No matter how awful their circumstances may appear from the outside, they are able to continue to praise God because they know the paradoxical truth of the Gospel, that through suffering can come new life, that there can be blessings even in the most unspeakable suffering. Although they are punished, they are not killed; although they are sorrowful, they always rejoice even in the midst of it; although they are poor, they are making many rich – maybe not literally, but in the truest sense of the word, through spiritual transformation; although they have nothing by physical standards, they actually possess everything that matters by spiritual standards through their faith in Jesus Christ and the assurance of new life that they have through him. No matter what people may say about them or what suffering they might encounter, their faith is not shaken.
Our passage from the Hebrew Bible today also gives us an example of keeping the faith in the midst of adversity. In the classic story of David and Goliath, David does not cower before a seemingly unconquerable obstacle. Though he is young and small and by all external standards seems a poor match for the giant warrior Goliath, he steps forward and agrees to meet Goliath’s challenge, trusting that God is with him despite his youth and lack of experience in battle.
Paul’s inspiring proclamation of faith and David’s heroism stand in direct contrast to the disciples in the Gospel passage, who panic in the face of the storm, who expect Jesus to keep them from ever suffering, who cannot trust that they will come through the storm with God’s help.
Where are you in these stories? Are you cowering with the disciples in the boat or proclaiming faith boldly in the midst of adversity with Paul? Are you like the disciples indignant that trouble has come their way, or like David striding confidently forward with only a few stones to defend himself?
Those of us who have had the good fortune of not experiencing much pain and suffering in this life are more likely to find ourselves cowering and indignant with the disciples in the boat when trouble comes our way. But those of us who have been people of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3) are likely to know something about what it takes to muster up courage and faith in the midst of adversity.
This weekend, the world is watching and mourning with our brothers and sisters in the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, after the horrific shootings there on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, our brothers and sisters in the black church are no strangers to suffering and grief. Their list of all they have endured over the years in terms of violence and intimidation could rival Paul’s list from 2 Corinthians, especially during the years of slavery and the civil rights movement: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. This list, foreign to so many of us in predominantly white churches, is all too familiar to many of our brothers and sisters in the black churches. And yet, somehow, many of them have managed to draw upon a deep reserve of faith that has seen them through these adversities and kept their hearts from being hardened by resentment and hate. On Friday, at the court hearing of shooter Dylann Roof, family members of those killed gathered to speak to him and told him they forgave him. What kind of faith gives you the strength to look your mother or son’s killer in the eyes and say, “I forgive you, may God have mercy on your soul?” Faith that has been refined through hardship; faith that knows that hate will never drive out hate, only love can do that; faith that knows that God can make a way where there is no way, as the saying goes.
And that’s exactly the kind of faith Paul and David had in our readings for today. They put their trust in God and drew upon the resources they had to find a way when many would have said there was no way.
In the story of David and Goliath, there is one small detail I have always overlooked that I’d like to lift up as a metaphor for our own abilities to overcome adversity. After rejecting Saul’s heavy armor because he wasn’t used to it, David goes to the river and picks out five smooth stones that he carries with them as his only weapons as he goes out to meet Goliath. Rather than putting his trust in the sword and spear and javelin, as his enemies did, David put his trust in God, and walks out completely unprotected, holding only a few stones. But those seemingly ineffective weapons actually give him victory over the giant.
The question in our walk of faith is not if we will suffer, but when. It’s not, “What can we do to avoid suffering?”, but, “How will we deal with suffering when it comes?” What resources will we draw upon to enable us to be able to say with the members of Emmanuel AME and the apostle Paul, “we are punished, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything”? Those resources might be our faith, the scriptures, our friends and families, a good counselor or spiritual director, spiritual practices that ground and center us, a special place we can go that brings us peace and comfort, or any number of other things. Those resources are the “stones” in our arsenal, or in our “toolkit,” if you prefer a less violent metaphor, that we put in our shepherd’s bag to take with us as we walk boldly toward the obstacles and the adversities that come our way.
What are your five smooth stones that you take with you to confront the adversities in your life? What resources help you to defeat the giant enemies in your spiritual walk?
In your bulletins you may have noticed a yellow piece of paper labeled, “My Five Smooth Stones.” If you noticed it, you probably had no idea what that was about, but now it should all be becoming clear to you. I’d like to invite you all to take a few moments to reflect on what your five smooth stones are (it doesn’t have to be exactly five; it could be more or less) that equip you to face adversity with faith and courage. And as you do that, I’ll be passing around this bowl full of candy stones, and ask you to each take a few to remind you of those resources in your lives that keep you strong. And if you’re missing any resources or think of ones you don’t have, make a commitment to reaching out and establishing those support systems for yourselves so you will be ready for the next giant or storm that comes your way.
The loose offering from this service was designated for the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, to provide support to the families of the victims of the shootings in Charleston, SC.
Afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger.
Paul’s list in today’s passage from 2 Corinthians of all he has endured for the sake of the Gospel is not exactly a great selling point for following Jesus. “Come join us, and you too can experience afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger!” Oh goodie, where do I sign up?
Many of us often think that if we are following God and doing all the right things, no harm will come to us, and perhaps it’s not surprising we think this way, since there are many parts of the scriptures that affirm this correlation between good behavior or righteousness and prosperity and safety. Countless times throughout the “wisdom literature” of the Bible, which includes the books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the psalms, we hear some version of the idea that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will perish, that those who follow God will be rewarded and those who do not will be punished. That certainly sounds like an appealing system, one where our experiences are predictable and directly related to our actions, where people “get what they deserve,” so to speak, where the world is just.
But the reality of life is often quite different. It is easy to claim from an abstract philosophical perspective that we will be rewarded if we do good and punished if we do bad, but often our experiences don’t line up with those beliefs. A pillar of the community who has supported countless people and changed lives receives a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and is dead within six months. A tornado drops out of nowhere and destroys the home of a young, struggling family who had just managed to purchase their first house. A young man from my hometown in South Carolina walks into a church in Charleston and kills nine people while they are gathered for prayer and Bible study.
Our reaction when we encounter such tragedies is often, “Why me?” or “Why them?”– especially if we think we or they were good people who didn’t “deserve” this. We can see this reaction from the disciples in today’s Gospel passage. Despite the fact that they have done everything “right” by following Jesus and doing what he asked in getting into the boat to cross to the other side of the lake, they are indignant with him when they encounter calamity along the way. When a storm threatens to capsize their boat, they wake up Jesus with the accusing statement, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” This is often our reaction to what we see as undeserved suffering. “What did I ever do to you, God? Do you not CARE that we are suffering? Why don’t you do something to stop it?” But our passage from 2 Corinthians offers another approach.
The suffering Paul and his companions experienced is not insignificant. We’re not talking about so-called “first world problems” like getting pickles on their sandwiches when they asked for no pickles, or their houses being so big they had to get two wireless routers. We’re talking some pretty horrific things -- afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger – and yet, he nonetheless proclaims that even in the midst of such suffering, they are truly blessed. No matter how awful their circumstances may appear from the outside, they are able to continue to praise God because they know the paradoxical truth of the Gospel, that through suffering can come new life, that there can be blessings even in the most unspeakable suffering. Although they are punished, they are not killed; although they are sorrowful, they always rejoice even in the midst of it; although they are poor, they are making many rich – maybe not literally, but in the truest sense of the word, through spiritual transformation; although they have nothing by physical standards, they actually possess everything that matters by spiritual standards through their faith in Jesus Christ and the assurance of new life that they have through him. No matter what people may say about them or what suffering they might encounter, their faith is not shaken.
Our passage from the Hebrew Bible today also gives us an example of keeping the faith in the midst of adversity. In the classic story of David and Goliath, David does not cower before a seemingly unconquerable obstacle. Though he is young and small and by all external standards seems a poor match for the giant warrior Goliath, he steps forward and agrees to meet Goliath’s challenge, trusting that God is with him despite his youth and lack of experience in battle.
Paul’s inspiring proclamation of faith and David’s heroism stand in direct contrast to the disciples in the Gospel passage, who panic in the face of the storm, who expect Jesus to keep them from ever suffering, who cannot trust that they will come through the storm with God’s help.
Where are you in these stories? Are you cowering with the disciples in the boat or proclaiming faith boldly in the midst of adversity with Paul? Are you like the disciples indignant that trouble has come their way, or like David striding confidently forward with only a few stones to defend himself?
Those of us who have had the good fortune of not experiencing much pain and suffering in this life are more likely to find ourselves cowering and indignant with the disciples in the boat when trouble comes our way. But those of us who have been people of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3) are likely to know something about what it takes to muster up courage and faith in the midst of adversity.
This weekend, the world is watching and mourning with our brothers and sisters in the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, after the horrific shootings there on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, our brothers and sisters in the black church are no strangers to suffering and grief. Their list of all they have endured over the years in terms of violence and intimidation could rival Paul’s list from 2 Corinthians, especially during the years of slavery and the civil rights movement: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. This list, foreign to so many of us in predominantly white churches, is all too familiar to many of our brothers and sisters in the black churches. And yet, somehow, many of them have managed to draw upon a deep reserve of faith that has seen them through these adversities and kept their hearts from being hardened by resentment and hate. On Friday, at the court hearing of shooter Dylann Roof, family members of those killed gathered to speak to him and told him they forgave him. What kind of faith gives you the strength to look your mother or son’s killer in the eyes and say, “I forgive you, may God have mercy on your soul?” Faith that has been refined through hardship; faith that knows that hate will never drive out hate, only love can do that; faith that knows that God can make a way where there is no way, as the saying goes.
And that’s exactly the kind of faith Paul and David had in our readings for today. They put their trust in God and drew upon the resources they had to find a way when many would have said there was no way.
In the story of David and Goliath, there is one small detail I have always overlooked that I’d like to lift up as a metaphor for our own abilities to overcome adversity. After rejecting Saul’s heavy armor because he wasn’t used to it, David goes to the river and picks out five smooth stones that he carries with them as his only weapons as he goes out to meet Goliath. Rather than putting his trust in the sword and spear and javelin, as his enemies did, David put his trust in God, and walks out completely unprotected, holding only a few stones. But those seemingly ineffective weapons actually give him victory over the giant.
The question in our walk of faith is not if we will suffer, but when. It’s not, “What can we do to avoid suffering?”, but, “How will we deal with suffering when it comes?” What resources will we draw upon to enable us to be able to say with the members of Emmanuel AME and the apostle Paul, “we are punished, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything”? Those resources might be our faith, the scriptures, our friends and families, a good counselor or spiritual director, spiritual practices that ground and center us, a special place we can go that brings us peace and comfort, or any number of other things. Those resources are the “stones” in our arsenal, or in our “toolkit,” if you prefer a less violent metaphor, that we put in our shepherd’s bag to take with us as we walk boldly toward the obstacles and the adversities that come our way.
What are your five smooth stones that you take with you to confront the adversities in your life? What resources help you to defeat the giant enemies in your spiritual walk?
In your bulletins you may have noticed a yellow piece of paper labeled, “My Five Smooth Stones.” If you noticed it, you probably had no idea what that was about, but now it should all be becoming clear to you. I’d like to invite you all to take a few moments to reflect on what your five smooth stones are (it doesn’t have to be exactly five; it could be more or less) that equip you to face adversity with faith and courage. And as you do that, I’ll be passing around this bowl full of candy stones, and ask you to each take a few to remind you of those resources in your lives that keep you strong. And if you’re missing any resources or think of ones you don’t have, make a commitment to reaching out and establishing those support systems for yourselves so you will be ready for the next giant or storm that comes your way.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Our shepherd knows what it is to be a sheep
Sermon delivered Sunday, April 21, 2013 (Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Scripture: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30)
Although today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, it might also appropriately be referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” On the fourth Sunday of Easter in every year of our three-year lectionary cycle, the readings emphasize the image of God as a shepherd. There is always a reading from chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, where Jesus talks about himself as the good shepherd, and the psalm is always Psalm 23, that most beloved of psalms that proclaims, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
So why do we have a “good shepherd” Sunday in the middle of Easter? The primary image of Easter is of Jesus as a lamb, not a shepherd – Christ the Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us – the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Isn’t it mixing metaphors to talk about Jesus as the shepherd in the season when we proclaim him as the lamb?
Perhaps, but paradox has always been at the heart of the Christian faith. The ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas or images in one’s mind at the same time is a particular skill necessary for the Christian life. We proclaim that God is one, but also say there are three persons in the Trinity. We say that Christ has defeated death and sin, and yet both death and sin are still all too prevalent in the world around us. So thinking of Jesus as both the lamb and the shepherd in the same season is right in line with the paradoxical nature of many of our Christian claims. In fact, this apparent mixing of metaphors can serve as an illustration one of the central Christian paradoxes: the claim that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human.
The image of Jesus as the shepherd emphasizes his divinity, while the image of Jesus as lamb emphasizes his humanity. As the shepherd, Jesus is wise and in control, guiding the sheep who otherwise would not know where to find food and water, and protecting them from the dangers of wolves and other predators. As the lamb, Jesus is vulnerable and powerless, experiencing the full depths of human pain and the power of evil as he dies on the cross. Perhaps we could say that on Good Friday, Jesus is the lamb, but after Easter, Jesus is the shepherd. After the Resurrection, we see that Jesus is indeed wise and in control, having overcome death itself to bring new life to “those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). Having gone before us to prepare the way, the sheep-turned-shepherd now guides us through the pains of death into the well-springs of life.
You might have noticed, as you listened to the readings today, that some of them sounded familiar from their use in our burial liturgy. Psalm 23 is the most obvious one, but actually all of the passages we read from today except the one from Acts are included in our prayer book as appropriate scripture to be read at funerals. Psalm 23 talks about not fearing as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and the promise of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. The Revelation to John offers a vision of departed souls who have come out of a “great ordeal” gathered before the throne of God and praising him, with the promise that they will no longer hunger and thirst, and that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17). And in the Gospel passage, Jesus talks about his promise to give those who follow him eternal life. All of these passages speak of death and Christian understandings of the afterlife, but they also share the common thread of the image of God or Jesus as a shepherd.
Why is it that the image of the Good Shepherd speaks to us so deeply in times of death and loss? Perhaps it is because it is comforting to remind ourselves that God is in control, that God guides and directs our lives even when we, like sheep, do not have the understanding to find our own way to the nourishment we need. It is comforting to know that even when it may seem to us that we are passing through a dangerous and threatening place, the shepherd knows where we are going and will guide us safely there.
But our understanding of God as our shepherd has an additional depth of meaning beyond the concept of a strong protector and guide. The passage from Revelation brings the two metaphors together when it asserts that “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.” Because the Lord who is our shepherd has also been a sacrificial lamb, he knows intimately not only the streams of life, but also the valleys of death. The shepherd who guides us is also a sheep who has known what it is to be lost and to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
So when call upon the image of the Good Shepherd as we lay those we love to rest, we are not only invoking the protection and guidance of God, but the empathy of God. We are reminding ourselves at the same time of the omnipotence of God and the vulnerability of God. No matter what the circumstances of the death, whether it be a peaceful death at the end of a long life well lived or the shock of a life cut too short by illness or acts of violence like the bombings in Boston on Monday, the Good Shepherd we call on knows the full range of our human grief. He has been with us in the agony of the slaughtered lamb on Good Friday and he knows the way to the joy of the Resurrection. Because we have a shepherd who has traveled this path before, we can follow him confidently not just through the valley of the shadow of death, but through death itself.
This is why, even as our hearts ache with grief, we can say in the burial liturgy that “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” We say “alleluia” because we put our trust in the promise of the Resurrection, the promise that, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). To sing “alleluia” even at the grave is a fiercely defiant cry of hope rooted in the full assurance that our shepherd knows what it is to be a sheep.
Although today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, it might also appropriately be referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” On the fourth Sunday of Easter in every year of our three-year lectionary cycle, the readings emphasize the image of God as a shepherd. There is always a reading from chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, where Jesus talks about himself as the good shepherd, and the psalm is always Psalm 23, that most beloved of psalms that proclaims, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
So why do we have a “good shepherd” Sunday in the middle of Easter? The primary image of Easter is of Jesus as a lamb, not a shepherd – Christ the Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us – the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Isn’t it mixing metaphors to talk about Jesus as the shepherd in the season when we proclaim him as the lamb?
Perhaps, but paradox has always been at the heart of the Christian faith. The ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas or images in one’s mind at the same time is a particular skill necessary for the Christian life. We proclaim that God is one, but also say there are three persons in the Trinity. We say that Christ has defeated death and sin, and yet both death and sin are still all too prevalent in the world around us. So thinking of Jesus as both the lamb and the shepherd in the same season is right in line with the paradoxical nature of many of our Christian claims. In fact, this apparent mixing of metaphors can serve as an illustration one of the central Christian paradoxes: the claim that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human.
The image of Jesus as the shepherd emphasizes his divinity, while the image of Jesus as lamb emphasizes his humanity. As the shepherd, Jesus is wise and in control, guiding the sheep who otherwise would not know where to find food and water, and protecting them from the dangers of wolves and other predators. As the lamb, Jesus is vulnerable and powerless, experiencing the full depths of human pain and the power of evil as he dies on the cross. Perhaps we could say that on Good Friday, Jesus is the lamb, but after Easter, Jesus is the shepherd. After the Resurrection, we see that Jesus is indeed wise and in control, having overcome death itself to bring new life to “those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). Having gone before us to prepare the way, the sheep-turned-shepherd now guides us through the pains of death into the well-springs of life.
You might have noticed, as you listened to the readings today, that some of them sounded familiar from their use in our burial liturgy. Psalm 23 is the most obvious one, but actually all of the passages we read from today except the one from Acts are included in our prayer book as appropriate scripture to be read at funerals. Psalm 23 talks about not fearing as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and the promise of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. The Revelation to John offers a vision of departed souls who have come out of a “great ordeal” gathered before the throne of God and praising him, with the promise that they will no longer hunger and thirst, and that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17). And in the Gospel passage, Jesus talks about his promise to give those who follow him eternal life. All of these passages speak of death and Christian understandings of the afterlife, but they also share the common thread of the image of God or Jesus as a shepherd.
Why is it that the image of the Good Shepherd speaks to us so deeply in times of death and loss? Perhaps it is because it is comforting to remind ourselves that God is in control, that God guides and directs our lives even when we, like sheep, do not have the understanding to find our own way to the nourishment we need. It is comforting to know that even when it may seem to us that we are passing through a dangerous and threatening place, the shepherd knows where we are going and will guide us safely there.
But our understanding of God as our shepherd has an additional depth of meaning beyond the concept of a strong protector and guide. The passage from Revelation brings the two metaphors together when it asserts that “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.” Because the Lord who is our shepherd has also been a sacrificial lamb, he knows intimately not only the streams of life, but also the valleys of death. The shepherd who guides us is also a sheep who has known what it is to be lost and to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
So when call upon the image of the Good Shepherd as we lay those we love to rest, we are not only invoking the protection and guidance of God, but the empathy of God. We are reminding ourselves at the same time of the omnipotence of God and the vulnerability of God. No matter what the circumstances of the death, whether it be a peaceful death at the end of a long life well lived or the shock of a life cut too short by illness or acts of violence like the bombings in Boston on Monday, the Good Shepherd we call on knows the full range of our human grief. He has been with us in the agony of the slaughtered lamb on Good Friday and he knows the way to the joy of the Resurrection. Because we have a shepherd who has traveled this path before, we can follow him confidently not just through the valley of the shadow of death, but through death itself.
This is why, even as our hearts ache with grief, we can say in the burial liturgy that “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” We say “alleluia” because we put our trust in the promise of the Resurrection, the promise that, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). To sing “alleluia” even at the grave is a fiercely defiant cry of hope rooted in the full assurance that our shepherd knows what it is to be a sheep.
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