Sermon delivered Sunday, July 20, 2014 (6th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 11), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43).
“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
This question from the parable in today’s Gospel reading gives voice to one of the oldest questions known to humanity. If God is good and intends good for the world, why do bad things happen? It is the classic “problem of evil,” the problem of why evil exists if there is an all-powerful and all-good God in control of the world.
There are two aspects to the problem of evil: one is the question of why people do bad things, and the other is the question of why bad things happen outside of human initiative: natural disasters and the like, things that no person or people caused to happen and so they are called “acts of God” by the insurance companies because there is no one else to blame. Today’s parable deals with the first aspect of the problem of evil: why people do bad things, or why there are “bad people,” so to speak, in our world.
The answer we get from the parable is that the bad people, the “weeds” in our world, to follow the parable’s analogy, are put there by the “evil one,” or the devil. According to the parable, God only planted the good seeds; the weeds were planted by an enemy trying to sabotage God’s harvest. This explanation gets God off the hook in that it attributes responsibility for the existence of the “bad people,” the “weeds,” to someone other than God, but the question still remains as to why God allows these weeds to continue to grow in his field – why not go out and pull them up? In fact, that’s exactly what the slaves in the parable suggest – “Do you want us to go and gather them?” they ask about the weeds. But the master says “no, because in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” He instructs them to let the two grow together until the harvest, at which time they will separate the wheat and the weeds.
In the original Greek, the word translated as “weed” in this parable does not mean just any weed in general, but a specific plant, most likely a plant called bearded darnel [1]. The darnel plant is a weed that is bitter and mildly toxic, but in its early stages it looks almost identical to wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart [2]. This is why the master says that in gathering the weeds the slaves would uproot the wheat along with them – they wouldn’t be able to tell what was wheat and what was weeds. It is only after the plant has reached maturity that the darnel turns a slightly different color and is distinguishable from the wheat. But by then, the roots of the two plants have become intertwined and it would be impossible to uproot one without uprooting the other: so the master’s solution is a wise one: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest,” and at the harvest the two can be separated. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to coexist together for the good of the wheat – so that the wheat is not destroyed accidentally in the attempt to destroy the weeds.
Thus, the parable’s answer as to why bad people are allowed to coexist along with good people is twofold: first, it is often impossible to distinguish the two. We can’t always tell which people are the “wheat” and which are the “weeds” in the fields of our lives. Only God truly knows, the God who, as our psalm says, knows us intimately, all our thoughts and motivations and desires.
Secondly, it would be impossible to get rid of the “bad people” without also harming the good – a truth that we see illustrated in the way most of our armed conflicts play out in this world. Every time we as human beings try to “kill the bad people,” we usually wind up killing a lot of innocent people along with them, the so-called “collateral damage” of war. But the master in the parable is not willing to take the risk of “collateral damage.” He knows that every grain of wheat in that field is precious to him and wants to bring them all to the harvest.
And so, we are asked to have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust. Paul says in our reading from Romans that “we hope for what we do not see,” and we “wait for it with patience.” Sometimes when we look around us and we see the weeds growing along with the wheat, we can feel like there is no justice, there is no order or purpose, there is no God. But we are asked to trust that although the wicked seem to prosper and we do not yet see justice in this world, that ultimately God will straighten things out in the end. It is easy to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and try to pull up what we think are the “weeds” in the world around us, but in doing so we may actually do more harm than good. This parable is as much a warning against being judgmental as it is an answer to the problem of evil. We cannot distinguish the wheat from the weeds, so we have to trust the one who knows us the most intimately to make that call.
And even though Jesus explains the parable by saying that the “good seed” are “the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds” are the “children of the evil one,” I’m not so sure that there isn’t a bit of “good seed” and a bit of “weeds” inside each one of us. Our myths, both religious and secular, tend to split the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” but I think a more accurate word would be that there is a bit of “good guy” and “bad guy” in each one of us. Although the moralisms of the Bible always assume there are two clear-cut categories of people, “the righteous” and “the wicked,” the actual people in the Bible are hardly ever so cut and dried. Take Jacob, for example. In our passages from the Hebrew scriptures over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading along in the history of the people of Israel, starting with Abraham and Sarah and moving along through their descendants, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Just last week we saw Jacob, the man after whom the entire people of Israel comes to be named, cheating his brother out of his birthright. Not exactly hero behavior, is it? Two chapters after that story, Jacob also steals his father’s blessing from his brother Esau. While his father is on his deathbed, Jacob can think of nothing but tricking him into doing something for his own personal gain. And then this week we have a nice story about Jacob encountering the Lord at Bethel, where God tells him that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you,” this man who was a such a liar and a cheater! Although Jacob had a lot of unsavory personality traits, God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together in Jacob until the harvest. (We can only hope that God straightened Jacob out for all his dishonest dealings when the time came for him to meet his maker!)
The Jewish tradition teaches that inside each one of us is the yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, and the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil, and both those inclinations compete for our attention. Our spiritual task is to choose to follow our yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, rather than the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil. If we apply this understanding to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, perhaps it tells us that the reason God does not do away with what we think are the bad parts of ourselves is that in uprooting those parts of us, he would also uproot and destroy the good parts of us. And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts and actions that we think are “weeds” might just be wheat. Perhaps we’re not any better at telling apart the good from the bad inside ourselves than we are at telling it apart in others. And so, we leave it to God to do the judging – about what is “good” and “evil” in other people and about what is “good” and “evil” in ourselves, trusting that at the final harvest, the One who knows all of our innermost thoughts will separate the weeds from the wheat.
---
[1] Nolland, John. The Gospel of
Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 545.
Accessed online via Google Books, 15 Jul 2014.
[2] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer, July 20, 2014 (Proper 11A).
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Incarnational theology: everything is holy
Sermon delivered Sunday, July 6, 2014 (Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Year A, Proper 9)) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Always be ready to make your defense for the hope that is in you...
Sermon delivered Sunday, May 25, 2014 (at the 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. services; bishop's annual visitation at 8:45 and 11:00 meant the bishop was preaching) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21)
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
This line from our reading from 1 Peter today is one of my favorite scriptures on the topic of evangelism.
Now, I know that the subject of evangelism can make some of us in the Episcopal Church uncomfortable – we tend to associate evangelism with the street corner preacher telling everyone to “repent or perish,” with people who bring a message of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We tend to think that evangelism is synonymous with that triumphalist message that Ann was talking about in her sermon last week – a message that says Christians have the market cornered on knowledge of God and everyone else is damned.
Many of us who are not cradle Episcopalians chose this church because we liked the fact that it is not about using the Bible as a weapon and shoving our faith down other people’s throats, so whenever the topic of evangelism comes up, we get a little squirmy. Maybe we thought we left that behind with those “other” churches. But evangelism doesn’t have to be synonymous with those negative images. Evangelism simply means sharing the good news – the good news of Jesus’s resurrection and the content of his teachings. Evangelism is about bringing a positive message, a liberating message, a message of love and reconciliation. Evangelism is about sharing with others the reason for the hope that is in us, as 1 Peter says.
Many Episcopalians think about sharing their faith through their actions rather than through words. We certainly don’t want to be the street corner preacher, and we don’t want to push our faith on anyone else, so we figure we’ll just share our faith by example through the good deeds we do in the world. I’ve heard many people within the Episcopal Church – myself included! – reference St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement on evangelism to describe their approach: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” While there is deep wisdom in that statement about allowing our lives to be our testimonies, sometimes we hear that statement as an excuse never to use words. Instead of “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words,” we hear it as, “Preach the Gospel at all times; it’s not necessary to use words.” But that’s not what St. Francis was saying. It is necessary to use words sometimes. We lose something when, in our desire to not be like those overbearing street preachers, we go to the opposite extreme of never talking about our faith to others. For one thing, we cede the market to the street corner preachers because theirs are the only voices being heard. Our voices are silenced because we’re so focused on feeding the hungry and working for justice that we forget to talk about why we’re feeing the hungry and working for justice – what the faith is that motivates us to do this work.
If we don’t talk about why we’re living our lives the way we are, we really are not distinguishable from any number of other people who may be doing similar things. People of many other faiths and none can and do feed the hungry and work for justice – so those things do not make us unique as Christians, nor are they the definition of what it means to be Christian. What defines us as Christians is our faith in Jesus, and our commitment to follow him as our Lord. Yes, that commitment is fleshed out by the way we live our lives, but our actions in and of themselves cannot express the specific words of our faith. Our actions, by themselves, cannot literally say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We must use words to do that. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP 305) – notice that it says “by word and example” – not just “by example.”
We are reminded of this call to use words to share the content of our faith especially during this Easter season when we recall how the church spread throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century – all through people speaking to others about their faith, sharing the news of Jesus’s resurrection. The tradition of reading through the book of Acts during Easter season reminds us of the evangelism of the early church and how they spread the faith throughout their entire known world.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians, persuading them of the truth of the Christian message and inviting them to join the church. This speech has long been considered a model evangelism speech, because Paul meets the people where they are, acknowledging the truth in their own tradition, quoting some of their own poets, and working to rationally persuade them of the truth of his faith. While Paul certainly had his share of arrogance and triumphalism, tending to think his way was the only right way – whether he was persecuting the church or advocating for it – in this passage we see Paul at least willing to concede that others might have had some glimpse of the truth before Paul came on the scene, and presenting his argument in a way that is framed as good news – “I come to bring you more full knowledge of something that you yourselves have said you do not fully know.”
But even though Paul’s speech has been held up as a model for evangelism, I still prefer the approach in 1 Peter. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) The assumption behind this statement is that we are always ready to explain our faith to others, but in general, we wait for them to ask. And, it also assumes that they’re asking because of the way we’re living, because of something about us that is different, because of something they see in us that they wish they had. The impetus behind us sharing our faith comes not from our desire to “fix” others, but from others’ curiosity at how we can live our lives with such hope and faith.
Although Paul was a wonderful wordsmith, even he recognized that all the words in the world are worthless if they are not backed up by actions. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he says in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1). And Jesus says in our Gospel today that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). In another passage, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Words by themselves are not enough, just as actions by themselves are not enough. The way I read this statement from 1 Peter, we have to be truly “walking the walk” in order to earn the privilege of speaking about our faith. To me, this seems like a good recipe for ensuring a healthy balance between evangelism by word and evangelism by example. If we want to speak about our faith to others, our lives have to be saying something loudly enough that someone asks for us to translate.
But it also requires that we have done the intentional work of thinking about why we have faith, why we have hope – so that when someone asks us, we have an answer ready. Just because our usual modus operandi is to share our faith through our actions rather than through our words doesn’t mean that we therefore have no words to explain why we do what we do. When someone asks us about our faith, we should be ready to explain it to them. And we should be living in such a way that compels people to ask.
So what is the hope that is in you? What would you say if someone asked you how you can believe in God, about why Jesus is so important to you, about how you can live with faith and hope? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that is in you?
If you feel like you’re not sure what you’d say, or worry that you aren’t the most eloquent speaker in the world, remember that many of our biblical leaders felt the same way. Jesus reassures the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be with them, to lead them into all truth and to give them the words to say. So when someone asks, take a deep breath, ask for guidance from the Spirit, and tell them about your faith.
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21)
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
This line from our reading from 1 Peter today is one of my favorite scriptures on the topic of evangelism.
Now, I know that the subject of evangelism can make some of us in the Episcopal Church uncomfortable – we tend to associate evangelism with the street corner preacher telling everyone to “repent or perish,” with people who bring a message of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We tend to think that evangelism is synonymous with that triumphalist message that Ann was talking about in her sermon last week – a message that says Christians have the market cornered on knowledge of God and everyone else is damned.
Many of us who are not cradle Episcopalians chose this church because we liked the fact that it is not about using the Bible as a weapon and shoving our faith down other people’s throats, so whenever the topic of evangelism comes up, we get a little squirmy. Maybe we thought we left that behind with those “other” churches. But evangelism doesn’t have to be synonymous with those negative images. Evangelism simply means sharing the good news – the good news of Jesus’s resurrection and the content of his teachings. Evangelism is about bringing a positive message, a liberating message, a message of love and reconciliation. Evangelism is about sharing with others the reason for the hope that is in us, as 1 Peter says.
Many Episcopalians think about sharing their faith through their actions rather than through words. We certainly don’t want to be the street corner preacher, and we don’t want to push our faith on anyone else, so we figure we’ll just share our faith by example through the good deeds we do in the world. I’ve heard many people within the Episcopal Church – myself included! – reference St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement on evangelism to describe their approach: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” While there is deep wisdom in that statement about allowing our lives to be our testimonies, sometimes we hear that statement as an excuse never to use words. Instead of “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words,” we hear it as, “Preach the Gospel at all times; it’s not necessary to use words.” But that’s not what St. Francis was saying. It is necessary to use words sometimes. We lose something when, in our desire to not be like those overbearing street preachers, we go to the opposite extreme of never talking about our faith to others. For one thing, we cede the market to the street corner preachers because theirs are the only voices being heard. Our voices are silenced because we’re so focused on feeding the hungry and working for justice that we forget to talk about why we’re feeing the hungry and working for justice – what the faith is that motivates us to do this work.
If we don’t talk about why we’re living our lives the way we are, we really are not distinguishable from any number of other people who may be doing similar things. People of many other faiths and none can and do feed the hungry and work for justice – so those things do not make us unique as Christians, nor are they the definition of what it means to be Christian. What defines us as Christians is our faith in Jesus, and our commitment to follow him as our Lord. Yes, that commitment is fleshed out by the way we live our lives, but our actions in and of themselves cannot express the specific words of our faith. Our actions, by themselves, cannot literally say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We must use words to do that. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP 305) – notice that it says “by word and example” – not just “by example.”
We are reminded of this call to use words to share the content of our faith especially during this Easter season when we recall how the church spread throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century – all through people speaking to others about their faith, sharing the news of Jesus’s resurrection. The tradition of reading through the book of Acts during Easter season reminds us of the evangelism of the early church and how they spread the faith throughout their entire known world.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians, persuading them of the truth of the Christian message and inviting them to join the church. This speech has long been considered a model evangelism speech, because Paul meets the people where they are, acknowledging the truth in their own tradition, quoting some of their own poets, and working to rationally persuade them of the truth of his faith. While Paul certainly had his share of arrogance and triumphalism, tending to think his way was the only right way – whether he was persecuting the church or advocating for it – in this passage we see Paul at least willing to concede that others might have had some glimpse of the truth before Paul came on the scene, and presenting his argument in a way that is framed as good news – “I come to bring you more full knowledge of something that you yourselves have said you do not fully know.”
But even though Paul’s speech has been held up as a model for evangelism, I still prefer the approach in 1 Peter. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) The assumption behind this statement is that we are always ready to explain our faith to others, but in general, we wait for them to ask. And, it also assumes that they’re asking because of the way we’re living, because of something about us that is different, because of something they see in us that they wish they had. The impetus behind us sharing our faith comes not from our desire to “fix” others, but from others’ curiosity at how we can live our lives with such hope and faith.
Although Paul was a wonderful wordsmith, even he recognized that all the words in the world are worthless if they are not backed up by actions. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he says in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1). And Jesus says in our Gospel today that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). In another passage, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Words by themselves are not enough, just as actions by themselves are not enough. The way I read this statement from 1 Peter, we have to be truly “walking the walk” in order to earn the privilege of speaking about our faith. To me, this seems like a good recipe for ensuring a healthy balance between evangelism by word and evangelism by example. If we want to speak about our faith to others, our lives have to be saying something loudly enough that someone asks for us to translate.
But it also requires that we have done the intentional work of thinking about why we have faith, why we have hope – so that when someone asks us, we have an answer ready. Just because our usual modus operandi is to share our faith through our actions rather than through our words doesn’t mean that we therefore have no words to explain why we do what we do. When someone asks us about our faith, we should be ready to explain it to them. And we should be living in such a way that compels people to ask.
So what is the hope that is in you? What would you say if someone asked you how you can believe in God, about why Jesus is so important to you, about how you can live with faith and hope? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that is in you?
If you feel like you’re not sure what you’d say, or worry that you aren’t the most eloquent speaker in the world, remember that many of our biblical leaders felt the same way. Jesus reassures the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be with them, to lead them into all truth and to give them the words to say. So when someone asks, take a deep breath, ask for guidance from the Spirit, and tell them about your faith.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Easter Message: God goes beyond what would have been "enough" to lavish abundant blessings on us
Sermon delivered Saturday, April 19, 2014 (The Great Vigil of Easter, Year A) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Participating in Resurrection
Sermon delivered Sunday, April 6, 2014 (Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45)
Our readings for today seem to be getting a little ahead of themselves. They’re all about resurrection! God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones to bring them back to life, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and Paul tells us that “he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Romans 8:11).
Resurrection, bringing life from death, is everywhere in these readings. With the exception of the psalm, there’s hardly a word anywhere about our Lenten themes of sin and repentance. What’s going on here? If Easter is still two weeks away, why all this talk about resurrection in the middle of Lent?
Perhaps it is because we most need to remember the promise of resurrection during times of repentance. Whenever we stop to take a cold, hard look at the ways we are dead in our sins, we need to simultaneously remember the promise that we can and will be made alive through the Spirit of God working in us. The 40 days of Lent metaphorically recall Jesus’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and it is during our own wilderness periods that we are most aware of our need for resurrection. When we come face to face with our shortcomings and our mortality, we are most open to the gift of grace and new life that God offers to us. By anticipating the resurrection two weeks before we make it to Easter, our readings today remind us that God’s offer of new life is available even in the midst of the wilderness.
And these readings also remind us of something about resurrection that we don’t hear as clearly in the Easter passages – they remind us that God invites us to participate in the process of resurrection. In today’s passages, the people are not passive bystanders to God’s miraculous power to bring life from death; they actually join with God in bringing about resurrection.
Ezekiel joins with God in bringing new life to the dry bones by speaking the words God has given him to speak, and the bystanders in the Gospel join with Jesus in restoring Lazarus to life by moving away the stone from the grave and removing Lazarus’s burial clothes. [1] Clearly, the power to bring life from death is entirely God’s, but at least in these stories, God does not do so without involving others in the process. God could have showed Ezekiel a vision of the dry bones coming back to life without any required words or actions on Ezekiel’s part, and God could have moved the stone away from Lazarus’s tomb miraculously, without human involvement, and Lazarus could have walked out already free from his burial shroud. But for whatever reason, God didn’t do it that way. God chose to leave parts of the process for us to do.
It has become somewhat of a catch-phrase in modern theology to talk about people as being “co-creators with God.” This idea proposes that human beings partner with God in the maintenance of the created world and in bringing about God’s purposes in it. In contrast to a view that sees human beings as entirely passive because “God’s in control,” this theology insists that human beings are active partners with God in God’s activity in the world.
Although a common critique of this theology is that it ascribes too much power to humans, coming close to saying human beings are equal to God, the theologian who first coined the term, Phillip Hefner, actually used the phrase “created co-creator.” We are not just co-creators – as if we were fellow gods in the heavenly court – we are created co-creators. We are, in fact, creatures, and the creature is not greater than the creator.
But, because we are created in the image of God who is a creator, we are made to be creators as well. Our creative abilities – in the arts, in science and technology, in problem-solving – are seen as a stamp of the divine nature in us. This theology also emphasizes human freedom, because it says that God does not direct every little action that happens on earth, but gives us the freedom of self-determination. No, God does not need us to do anything, but rather than exert total and utter control over us, God chooses to leave parts of the process for us to do. To the extent that we do those things, we become a partner with God in the great work of the divine redemption of the world. It is an unequal partnership, to be sure, but it is a partnership all the same.
The people in our readings for today are examples of the created co-creator. They are partners – however unequal – with God in making resurrection happen. Ezekiel delivers the words, the bystanders in the Gospel roll away the stone and remove Lazarus’s burial clothes. They remind us that although God is fully capable of bringing about transformation without us, God often asks for our help in doing so. God gives us a role to play. God invites us to participate in the work of resurrection.
The actions that Jesus tells the people to perform in today’s Gospel reading are rather symbolic. His specific instructions to them are, “Take away the stone,” and “Unbind him and let him go.” Although we can assume the people were invited to do these things in a literal sense for very practical reasons, the stories in John’s Gospel always have a deeper symbolic meaning.
Jesus invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by taking away the stones – the obstacles in our lives and in the lives of others that prevent the power of God from reaching us. I’m sure we’ve all known people who have constructed such emotional walls around themselves that they shut out everyone around them, and even shut out God. We might have even done this in our own lives at some point. There is a saying of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Bahá’à Faith, who relates that God said to him, “O Son of Being! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.” We must give love in order to be open to receiving love. If we do not take away the stones from the entrance to our hearts, the power of resurrection can in no way reach us.
Jesus also invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by doing the difficult work of unbinding the shroud of death – the painful memories, the negative self-talk, the grudges and resentments – whatever it is that keeps us bound to the ways of sin and death – he invites us to cut loose those cords so that we can experience and appreciate the full power of the liberation given to us in the resurrection. Even though he had been restored to life, Lazarus’s freedom was still restricted until the people unbound him and let him go. Likewise, even if we have received the gift of new life through the resurrection in our baptism, we too can remain bound by our old burial shroud of sin and death, unless we do our part in the resurrection process and work to loosen those bonds.
This partnering with God in the process of resurrection is not easy business. And we can’t do it alone. Just as Lazarus could not untie himself, and certainly could not have moved the stone away from his grave while he was still dead, so we too sometimes must rely on others to help us move the stones and unbind the shrouds in our lives. This is not to say that others can do it all for us, but that we need companions and guides as we do this work. And while others have a part to play in our liberation, we also have a part to play in theirs – in fact, the two are inextricably linked. As we strive to do this difficult work, this spiritual work of opening ourselves to God and others, of rolling away the stones and unbinding the shroud of death, we find that our best guides and companions on the way are those people who know something about rolling away stones and unbinding shrouds – those people who have been there and have found a way through.
So maybe it’s not so out of character to think about resurrection during Lent after all. For it is only when we have experienced resurrection in the midst of our own wilderness that we are able to joyfully claim our role as created co-creators in God’s great work of redemption in the world.
[1] Insight into the participatory nature of the Gospel passage came from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011): 101. I must give him credit for the inspiration behind the direction of and theme of this sermon.
Our readings for today seem to be getting a little ahead of themselves. They’re all about resurrection! God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones to bring them back to life, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and Paul tells us that “he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Romans 8:11).
Resurrection, bringing life from death, is everywhere in these readings. With the exception of the psalm, there’s hardly a word anywhere about our Lenten themes of sin and repentance. What’s going on here? If Easter is still two weeks away, why all this talk about resurrection in the middle of Lent?
Perhaps it is because we most need to remember the promise of resurrection during times of repentance. Whenever we stop to take a cold, hard look at the ways we are dead in our sins, we need to simultaneously remember the promise that we can and will be made alive through the Spirit of God working in us. The 40 days of Lent metaphorically recall Jesus’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and it is during our own wilderness periods that we are most aware of our need for resurrection. When we come face to face with our shortcomings and our mortality, we are most open to the gift of grace and new life that God offers to us. By anticipating the resurrection two weeks before we make it to Easter, our readings today remind us that God’s offer of new life is available even in the midst of the wilderness.
And these readings also remind us of something about resurrection that we don’t hear as clearly in the Easter passages – they remind us that God invites us to participate in the process of resurrection. In today’s passages, the people are not passive bystanders to God’s miraculous power to bring life from death; they actually join with God in bringing about resurrection.
Ezekiel joins with God in bringing new life to the dry bones by speaking the words God has given him to speak, and the bystanders in the Gospel join with Jesus in restoring Lazarus to life by moving away the stone from the grave and removing Lazarus’s burial clothes. [1] Clearly, the power to bring life from death is entirely God’s, but at least in these stories, God does not do so without involving others in the process. God could have showed Ezekiel a vision of the dry bones coming back to life without any required words or actions on Ezekiel’s part, and God could have moved the stone away from Lazarus’s tomb miraculously, without human involvement, and Lazarus could have walked out already free from his burial shroud. But for whatever reason, God didn’t do it that way. God chose to leave parts of the process for us to do.
It has become somewhat of a catch-phrase in modern theology to talk about people as being “co-creators with God.” This idea proposes that human beings partner with God in the maintenance of the created world and in bringing about God’s purposes in it. In contrast to a view that sees human beings as entirely passive because “God’s in control,” this theology insists that human beings are active partners with God in God’s activity in the world.
Although a common critique of this theology is that it ascribes too much power to humans, coming close to saying human beings are equal to God, the theologian who first coined the term, Phillip Hefner, actually used the phrase “created co-creator.” We are not just co-creators – as if we were fellow gods in the heavenly court – we are created co-creators. We are, in fact, creatures, and the creature is not greater than the creator.
But, because we are created in the image of God who is a creator, we are made to be creators as well. Our creative abilities – in the arts, in science and technology, in problem-solving – are seen as a stamp of the divine nature in us. This theology also emphasizes human freedom, because it says that God does not direct every little action that happens on earth, but gives us the freedom of self-determination. No, God does not need us to do anything, but rather than exert total and utter control over us, God chooses to leave parts of the process for us to do. To the extent that we do those things, we become a partner with God in the great work of the divine redemption of the world. It is an unequal partnership, to be sure, but it is a partnership all the same.
The people in our readings for today are examples of the created co-creator. They are partners – however unequal – with God in making resurrection happen. Ezekiel delivers the words, the bystanders in the Gospel roll away the stone and remove Lazarus’s burial clothes. They remind us that although God is fully capable of bringing about transformation without us, God often asks for our help in doing so. God gives us a role to play. God invites us to participate in the work of resurrection.
The actions that Jesus tells the people to perform in today’s Gospel reading are rather symbolic. His specific instructions to them are, “Take away the stone,” and “Unbind him and let him go.” Although we can assume the people were invited to do these things in a literal sense for very practical reasons, the stories in John’s Gospel always have a deeper symbolic meaning.
Jesus invites us to participate in the work of resurrection by taking away the stones – the obstacles in our lives and in the lives of others that prevent the power of God from reaching us. I’m sure we’ve all known people who have constructed such emotional walls around themselves that they shut out everyone around them, and even shut out God. We might have even done this in our own lives at some point. There is a saying of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Bahá’à Faith, who relates that God said to him, “O Son of Being! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.” We must give love in order to be open to receiving love. If we do not take away the stones from the entrance to our hearts, the power of resurrection can in no way reach us.
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| Unbinding Lazarus |
This partnering with God in the process of resurrection is not easy business. And we can’t do it alone. Just as Lazarus could not untie himself, and certainly could not have moved the stone away from his grave while he was still dead, so we too sometimes must rely on others to help us move the stones and unbind the shrouds in our lives. This is not to say that others can do it all for us, but that we need companions and guides as we do this work. And while others have a part to play in our liberation, we also have a part to play in theirs – in fact, the two are inextricably linked. As we strive to do this difficult work, this spiritual work of opening ourselves to God and others, of rolling away the stones and unbinding the shroud of death, we find that our best guides and companions on the way are those people who know something about rolling away stones and unbinding shrouds – those people who have been there and have found a way through.
So maybe it’s not so out of character to think about resurrection during Lent after all. For it is only when we have experienced resurrection in the midst of our own wilderness that we are able to joyfully claim our role as created co-creators in God’s great work of redemption in the world.
[1] Insight into the participatory nature of the Gospel passage came from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011): 101. I must give him credit for the inspiration behind the direction of and theme of this sermon.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Reflections on "Ashes to Go" - an answer to the critics
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| Our rector, Bob Cowperthwaite, and parishioner Gerald Hancock offering Ashes to Go at our first shift from 8:30-9:30 a.m. |
Ashes to Go has become a nation-wide movement. It started with several Episcopal churches in the St. Louis and Chicago areas in 2007 and 2010, and it “went viral” in 2012, with more than 80 churches in 21 states participating. In 2013, it went international, with participants in Canada, the UK, and South Africa, in addition to the U.S. (Statistics from the Ashes to Go website at www.ashestogo.org.)
As Ashes to Go has become more known amongst “church people,” especially amongst professional church people like clergy and church staff, there has been a lot of discussion about it. It has its share of critics, who assert that this “quickie” liturgy cheapens what should be a somber call to repentance. The critics say that people should make time to attend the full-length liturgy on Ash Wednesday, and if they can’t attend church, that shows that their priorities are in the wrong place. They worry about people taking Ash Wednesday too lightly, or going to an Ashes to Go site just to “get their ashes” as some kind of a token or rote ritual rather than out of a true sense of repentance and desire for connection with God.
I must admit that despite the fact that my call to the priesthood emerged out of my involvement with a street church for homeless people in Cambridge, Mass., and the fact that I was naturally drawn to Ashes to Go when I first heard about it because of the "street church" element of it, my training in seminary conditioned me to always take a step back and listen to the other side of the story, to another perspective. The critics' arguments against Ashes to Go were well-crafted enough that they gave me pause. Maybe this was an inappropriate cheapening of the dignity of the liturgy. Maybe we shouldn't do it.
But after serving two one-hour “shifts” out on the street corner on Ash Wednesday, I can say that not a single person we encountered in those two shifts seemed to be taking this encounter lightly. Some people had driven from the other side of town just to participate in this brief encounter on the sidewalk. They’d seen an article that the local paper had run about the fact that we were going to do this, and they made time in their day, they went out of their way to come to downtown Franklin just to get their ashes. Their schedule may not have allowed them to attend services at the traditional times of noon or later in the evening, but for whatever reason they were able to get away mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and they were so appreciative because otherwise they really would not have gotten to have an Ash Wednesday experience today, however brief our encounter was. Several people even got tears in their eyes as they thanked us, clearly moved that we were taking the time to bring church to them.
There was a depth of gratitude in their voices as they thanked us that echoed the deeply grateful sincerity I’ve heard in people’s voices when I’ve taken communion to people who are in the hospital or homebound. “Thank you so much for doing this!” they say, with a depth of gratitude that goes beyond the cursory “thanks” we give the cashier at the grocery store or a friend or family member who passes us the salt at dinner. This is a different kind of thanks, a thanks born out of touching a place of need and vulnerability, of mediating a brief moment of grace from one human being to another – whether an Ashes to Go recipient or a parishioner recovering at home from surgery.
As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that I can’t imagine any of the critics of the Ashes to Go movement who are within the Episcopal Church saying that we shouldn’t take communion to people at home or in the hospital because it would “cheapen” the experience, that if they can’t get to church on Sunday for the entire celebration of the Eucharist, then their priorities must not be in the right place. We consider Eucharistic visitation to be one of the most sacred and holy things we do as priests. And yet, what we say and do when we take communion to people is a very shortened version of the full Eucharistic liturgy, just as Ashes to Go offers a shortened version of the full Ash Wednesday liturgy.
That’s when I realized that Ashes to Go is basically a series of “pastoral visits” on the street. It’s about offering a shortened version of the regular liturgy to those who can’t be with the rest of the gathered community. And just as we do when we visit people in the hospital, if there are several people present visiting with the patient, they are all invited to join in the communion, so on Ash Wednesday, when two people happened to walk up at the same time, we invited them to all join together with us in the brief liturgy. Even though none of us had ever met before, in that one brief moment, we were a community of faith praying together. “Wherever two of three are gathered,” Jesus said, “I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Not “wherever there is an officially sanctioned, full-length liturgy approved by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”
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| Praying with several people who walked up at the same time. "Wherever two or three are gathered..." |
So even the Ashes to Go recipients did get an opportunity to join with other Christians in prayer today. Yes, they could have gone home and read through the entire Ash Wednesday liturgy in their prayer books instead, to get the “full experience,” but there’s something about the encounter with another person, that incarnational experience that is really at the heart of our faith, that is sacred and powerful, however brief.
The difference between Ashes to Go and a traditional pastoral visit, of course, is that we are doing it in a public place. It is no small irony that the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday is the passage from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus warns us to “beware of practicing your piety before others, in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1), and tells us not to “stand and pray… at the street corners, so that we may be seen [by others]” (Matthew 6:5). Um, gulp. The critics of Ashes to Go point out that we appear to be doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do! When I was “plugging” Ashes to Go to one of my classes at church, encouraging lay people to sign up to help out with it, I made a joke about the irony of this passage and what we were going to do. Everyone laughed, but one of the parishioners spoke up in a serious tone and said, “But I don’t think that’s the same thing as what you’re doing. Jesus was talking about being hypocritical. I don’t think that’s what this is. I think this is different.”
I was surprised by her immediate positive view of what we were doing with Ashes to Go and the disconnect for her in associating it with Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. But after my experience on the street and my insight into the ways in which Ashes to Go is a pastoral encounter, it makes me appreciate her insight even more. If we’re doing Ashes to Go primarily “to be seen by others” in a showy kind of way, then yes, we should hear Jesus’s words of rebuke in the Sermon on the Mount for showy displays of piety. But if we’re doing Ashes to Go out of a sincere desire to serve others and to care for them, then perhaps the more appropriate words of Jesus to remember would be the ways he rebuked the religious leaders for being unwilling to break tradition in order to address human need. “What is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil?” (Mark 3:4) he said to those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath. And while I’m not saying that it’s a matter of life and death for people to get their ashes on Ash Wednesday, I do think that we are addressing a very real need and a very real and sincere desire and longing to connect with God and the liturgies of the church, not throwing tradition to the wind or dismissing the gravity and seriousness of that day.
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| An Ashes to Go recipient jumps for joy after receiving her ashes. |
I hope that the critics of Ashes to Go might be willing to just give it a try one year and see what happens. The great thing about Ashes to Go is that if you do it, you do it on your own terms. Do you think people should recite at least part of Psalm 51 for it to really be Ash Wednesday? Then include that in the brief liturgy you offer to people. Or, decide to do the whole Ash Wednesday service at a non-typical time in a location more convenient to working people in your area. Take ashes to people in the hospital and in nursing homes and do an abbreviated version of the liturgy with them. Whatever you do and however you do it, the intention is to bring the church to people where they are, to represent symbolically the truth that although it is true that we must make the choice to step toward God in faith, God also is already stepping out to meet us wherever we are. I can think of no more sacred and holy task than to serve as a symbol of that for the world.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Is faith a choice or a gift?
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 16, 2014 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In our spiritual practice, we are building ourselves a wind turbine, so that when God’s Spirit does blow in our lives, we have the mechanism ready to capture its energy and allow it to fuel us.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
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[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
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[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
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