Month: January 2020

12/19/20

(Isaiah 49:1-7; Ps. 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42)

            In each season of our church caleendar we give our attention to particular things which we Christians say are the truth. In the season of Epiphany, it’s the truth that the Spirit of God shows up in our lives in ways that we experience: that we see, that we hear, alive and at work in this world that we live in. That’s the definition of an epiphany, and it’s a very broad definition, because God can and does show up anywhere. The classic examples from the New Testament that our lectionary gives us in this season are: the star which guided the wise men to the infant Jesus, in Bethlehem; and the dove, the form in which the Spirit of God descends on Jesus at his baptism by John, in the Jordan River.

            But in our lives, epiphanies are usually a little less dramatic than that.  Something that our bishops like to do at the conclusion of diocesan gatherings, as a way of wrapping up, is ask people to say where they might have seen the presence of God that day.  I love this exercise, for one thing because the more you look for them, the more you find them.  As I said last week, there are epiphanies – appearances of the Spirit of God – around us all the time; but we miss most of them because they occur in ways we don’t expect, in places we’re sure God couldn’t possibly be.

            Well, today I’m going to talk briefly about two of what I consider to be epiphanies – showings of the Spirit of God – one from an avowedly Christian source, and one that happened in an at least outwardly secular context; and then I’m going to try to relate them to our lives by means of something in today’s gospel story.

            The first of the two is in the work, and the story, of something called L’Arche.  L’Arche is an organization (you could also call it a movement) which was founded in 1964, in France, by a man named Jean Vanier.  Through his friendship with a Roman Catholic priest, Vanier had become aware of the situation of the thousands of people who had been “institutionalized” because of intellectual and learning disabilities of one kind or another (like Down syndrome.)  These were the people we used to call “retarded”, a term whose catchall nature directly reflected the lack of care and attention society gave people with such conditions, lack of care and attention which produced the inhumane circumstances they had to live in, at the institutions to which they were sent, usually soon after their birth, usually for the rest of their lives; just parked there and forgotten.

            Having seen this, Vanier – a faithful Christian – felt led by God to invite two such men to leave the institution they inhabited and come to live with him: live together, work together, eat together, pray together; live together as children of God.  He named that home “L’Arche”, which in French means “The Ark”, as in Noah’s Ark: a place for the preservation and sustenance of life.  Over time, people saw the new life that was happening at L’Arche, word spread, other L’Arche communities started to appear.  As their website puts it, “No longer were people with disabilities seen as something shameful that needed to be quarantined, but as full human beings inherently deserving of respect.”  And over the last 50-plus years, L’Arche has grown into an international organization, operating over 150 communities in 38 countries, on five continents.

            This is wonderful, of course, and surely a manifestation of the presence of God.  But for me, the true epiphany is witnessed by countless stories from the so-called “abled” people in these communities, that it is the so-called “disabled” folks who breathe the Spirit of God into their lives, who open to them, the “caregivers”, a new dimension of the love of God, real, alive and active, in their world.

            The second epiphany that occurs to me – the one in an apparently secular context – happened almost 80 years ago, and involved two great figures from the performing arts – the world of dance.   One was the legendary Martha Graham, the great dancer and teacher who developed the technique that’s the basis of modern dance.  The other was Agnes de Mille, a dancer who eventually became one of Broadway’s most successful choreographers.  But she had just begun that part of her career when, in 1943, she was offered a job choreographing a new musical, which was called “Oklahoma”.  Instantly a huge hit, rave reviews, and de Mille was suddenly the new star in the world of choreography.  But she felt in her heart that her work in “Oklahoma” had not been that great – she thought, fair at best – and all the acclaim she was getting only increased the despair she felt, that she would ever be any good as a choreographer.

            So she called up Martha Graham, whom she knew (the world of dance is a small one), and they went to a little lunch counter and over a soda, as de Mille put it, “I confessed to her that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.”  (This feeling is of course common to people in any human pursuit.)  And this is what Martha Graham said to her, in response: 

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.  You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep yourself open….Keep the channel open….No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest, that keeps us marching and makes us more alive….”

            Now, as I said, this happened in a secular context. And that’s one reason why, to me, it’s an epiphany: the Spirit of God showing up in a way we don’t expect, in a place we don’t think God could possibly be.  Because it’s clear to me, as I hope it is to you, that what Martha Graham was talking about is what we Christians call the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God that is alive and at work uniquely in each of us: the Spirit for whom it is our call to keep the channel open.

            And here’s how this all relates to today’s story from the gospel of John, which tells of the first things Jesus says to the first people who would become his disciples.

            John the Baptist had disciples; he is with two of them, Jesus walks by, and John says, There goes the Lamb of God.  So these disciples walk after Jesus; he turns back to them and says, What are you looking for?  They seem a little stunned (how would you react if the Lamb of God spoke to you?), and all they can think of to say at that point is, Where are you staying?  Which basically tells Jesus, they want to take the next step – whatever that is. But he doesn’t actually tell them where he’s staying.   What he says is, Come and see.

            “What are you looking for?”; and, “Come and see.” In these first words to his first disciples, Jesus doesn’t say anything about what he has to teach them (and we know he’s got a lot to teach them.)  What he says is, It’s your move.  He calls first to the Spirit of God which he knows is alive uniquely in each of them.  He knows that Spirit wants to draw them closer to God, and knows that Spirit’s going to find its own way.  

In Martha Graham’s terminology, he’s telling them to keep the channel open.  Because Jesus knows it’s God that does the work.  It’s our work to keep the channel open: one little step at a time.  Jean Vanier said, “We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.” That’s the Spirit of God at work in our world.  It is our Lord Jesus Christ who shows us this.  It is Jesus who is the true epiphany – the light shining out of darkness – for these disciples, as he is for us.   God grant that we always know to keep that channel open.  Thanks be to God.

1/12/20

(Isaiah 42:1-9; Ps. 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17)

            Some years ago, I was at a wedding at a Roman Catholic church, and just before the eucharist, the officiating priest announced to the congregation that all baptized Catholics could come forward and receive Holy Communion.  Not long after that, I was at a funeral at another Roman Catholic churh, and at the same point in the service, the priest said to the people, We believe this bread and wine are the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If you feel drawn to that understanding, you are welcome to join us at God’s Table.

            Now, I’m not saying that one is wrong and the other is right.  But which do you think better represents the Spirit of Christ? 

            And I don’t mean to beat up on Roman Catholics. Christian exclusivism can be found in every corner of the church. When I was in the ordination process, I was at a work session with a number of other candidates for the priesthood,  and  we were going over the baptismal covenant.   And at one point, one of the candidates started talking about that covenant as a means by which we distinguish ourselves from other people.  He was talking in a way that I thought smacked of a kind of exclusiveness, so, being a loudmouth, I said something about that.  And jabbing a finger toward the open prayer book in front of him, he answered, “We are exclusive!  We say, This is what we believe!”

             I didn’t go further with it – we weren’t there to argue – but I’ve thought many times since about what I might have said to him.  Probably it would have been something like, I think you’re confusing being exclusive with being specific.  Because what we say in the baptismal covenant – like a lot of what we do as members of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement – is specific. But there’s a difference between saying, This is what we believe: if you don’t like it, take a hike; and saying, This is what we believe: if you have questions or confusions or disagreements, let’s talk: because we here have found this stuff to be life-giving.  And in that engagement with other people’s lives, there’s a very good chance as well that we can deepen our own understanding of just what it is that we believe: of the reality of God’s presence among us.  

            In fact, as people of faith, that’s part of our call: that’s what we are to spend our lives doing. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, and great Christian writer, once described a theological discussion he was having with a Buddhist, and said he realized midway through the conversation, this man is being more catholic than I am.   

All of this is a function of the basic fact  that God is alive and at work in this world that we live in, and is doing new things, all the time.  And you could say that a lot of the work we do here in church on Sunday morning is for the purpose of opening our eyes to that truth. Exclusivism – insisting on our way – is one of the ways we shut our eyes, that we ignore God’s presence.     

We have a wonderful example of someone recognizing this problem and, by the grace of God, working through it, in today’s reading from the book of Acts.  The passage that we heard today is the conclusion of one of the greatest stories in the New Testament.  This story, which takes up a whole chapter in Acts, describes the turning point of the great debate in the early church, which was: is the good news of God in Christ intended solely for the Jewish people, or is it for Gentiles – the rest of the world – as well?   Peter was the leader of the first group, Paul was the leader of the second.  They, and their respective factions, had fought long and hard about this – and in the speech we heard today, Peter acknowledges that he’s been wrong, that – because of what’s just happened in his life – he’s come to understand things differently now.   

The story from Acts that precedes this speech is about the encounter between Peter and a Roman centurion named Cornelius.  Cornelius is a Gentile, but nonetheless, the Bible tells us that he, together with all his household (his family and servants), fears God. In the language of the Bible, the fear of God does not mean being scared of God, afraid of what God might do to you if you do something wrong.  It means rather to have a true sense of the unimaginable greatness and power of God: to live in the knowledge that God shows up in our lives not only in ways that we don’t expect, but in places we’re positive God could not possibly be. By means of this fear of God, Cornelius has a vision from an angel – a messenger from God – who tells him, God has heard your prayers; there’s a man called Peter, staying in a nearby town; send for him.  

Meanwhile, staying in this other town, Peter has himself had a vision: a vision of certain animals which Jews were forbidden to eat, under their dietary laws.  These are in the book of Leviticus: part of the Torah, according to Jewish tradition the laws given to Moses by God.  But during this vision Peter hears a voice saying, What God has made clean, you must not call profane.  So the vision is about God doing something new: breaking down boundaries which God had Godself created.  And if anyone could claim to have irrefutable evidence that God does new things, it was the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

            So Cornelius and Peter meet at Cornelius’ home: Peter and his people, all Jews, and Cornelius and a crowd of his relatives and friends, all Gentiles.  It’s quite a scene: the first thing Peter does is remind the people everyone there that they all know it’s unlawful for a Jew to visit or associate with a Gentile.   

            But Peter’s standing there nonetheless. Because his vision has shown him that God may be leading him in a new direction, as a disciple of Christ: and – because he fears God – he’s going to trust God, and take the next step, not knowing what’s going to happen.  He asks Cornelius, Why have you sent for me?  It’s not hard to imagine the trembling energy that must have been in that room, the sense among all of them that they were on the threshold of a new world.

            Peter asks, Why have you sent for me; and Cornelius tells him of his vision of the angel, and what the angel told him; and then he  says, Now all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.

            And when Peter hears this, he sees the connection to his own vision of the animals, and the voice saying what God has made clean, you must not call profane.  Peter’s own faith is deepening, he is receiving a teaching from God, right there, as we heard him say in the first verse of today’s reading: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  

            And once Peter has absorbed this teaching – which he does right away, because he’s ready – he opens the door to Cornelius and his household, opens to them the door of the household of faith, because he now sees that God has already included them.  And we should not fail to note that Peter does this, opens this door, not by laying out a system of beliefs, or a code of behavior, that they now have to abide by; as we heard in the reading, he does it simply by telling them the story.  The story of Jesus Christ is the seed of the Holy Spirit, which grows in each of us in its own way: it’s between each of us and God.

            Today is the first Sunday in the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is a word that means a showing, a manifestation (the literal meaning is “light shining out of”.)   In Christian usage, the word “epiphany” is taken to mean an appearance of the presence of God, some way or other.  

            I think epiphanies happen all the time, in all our lives.  I think we probably miss almost all of them; because they occur in ways we don’t expect, or in places we’re sure God could not possibly be.  We miss them, in other words, because – in the biblical phrase – we don’t truly fear God.  We deny God’s unimaginable greatness.  We limit God – the very idea of which is absurd, of course; and I hope God at least gets a good laugh out of it.

This Epiphany season, let us pray that God open our eyes to all thse place, right in front of us, where love is being spread around, where peace is being made, where justice is being done; that we see God’s presence there, we see the light shining out of darkness; in order that we might the more truly spread God’s word, not only with our lips, but in our lives.  Thanks be to God.  

1/5/20

(Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ps. 84; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23)

            The sports fans among you will probably recognize the name Pat Riley, from the world of professional basketball.  Riley was a very successful coach and general manager for many years in the NBA, and I once read something he said which was apparently a guiding principle of his, which has stayed with me.  He put it like this: “What’s the main thing?  Because the main thing has to be the main thing.”

            Which is to say: in any endeavor, once you’ve decided on what’s important about it, what you want to get done – you have to keep that firmly in front of you, firmly in mind, all the time.  Because it’s easy to lose sight of the main thing -any main thing: through inattention, or laziness, or fatigue, or getting lost in the details.  And just saying what the main thing is isn’t enough: if it’s the main thing, it has to be the main thing that you actually and consistently do.  

Like a lot of sayings from sports figures, what this one may lack in elegance it makes up for in directness, and accuracy.  And clearly it applies to a lot more than just sports. These words of Pat Riley are in my mind today for a couple of reasons.  One is that, we’re still early in our church calendar, and we’re at the very beginning of the calendar year; and in something of the spirit of this time that encourages us to make resolutions, it feels natural to think about what the main thing is for us here in church.

            The other reason is that, on this first Sunday of the new year, our lectionary has given us a reading from the letter to the Ephesians, which is preeminently, among the New Testament writings, the letter of the church: this letter celebrates the church, it’s something of a manual for the church, and it’s a call to the church.  And the word “church” here, as it does throughout the New Testament, does not a building, or an organization.  It means you and me: the people: the ekklesia: that’s the Greek word in the New Testament we translate into English as “church”, the literal meaning of which is “those who have been called out”.  That’s the church: those who have heard, some way or other, and responded to, some way or other, the Word of God in Jesus Christ.  Us: all of us: this impossibly motley crew, all over the world, coming from such different places, different lives, who all have this one thing in common, that we’ve heard this Word, each in our own way; and having heard it, are drawn together here.  And whatever follows from that, that’s the church.

            The passage from Ephesians which we heard today is from the very beginning of the letter, and the writer includes in it a prayer for the church: for us who are called out.  He prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation” in order that we may know three things: “what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”  I’m going to talk very briefly about these three things, because they have to do with what we should be doing here: with letting the main thing being the main thing.

            First, “the hope to which [God] has called [us].” This lifting up of hope is consistent with the famous verse in 1 Corinthians in which Paul puts hope in the same class as faith and love as fundamental to Christian faith (“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three…”).  Most people tend to think of hope as not particularly worth much attention: wishful thinking; passive at best.  In the Christian understanding, this is wrong.  For a Christian, hope is active.  Hope is a stance – a proactive bearing on life: a mindset, that as Christians we are to live out of all day, every day.  Christian hope is rooted in the knowledge that God is good; that God loves us and is with us, now and always; and that God can and does work in all things for good.  There’s a verse in Paul’s letter to the Romans that, in a translation I like, puts this well.  From Romans 8:28: “…every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” Worked into something good: as we live in our love for God, things in this world change, for the better.  Living in that knowledge – that expectation – is what we call hope.  And this has entirely to do with why, for us Christians, the main thing has to be the main thing.  That’s our mission

            Second, the verse from Ephesians prays that we may know “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints….” It’s necessary for us to understand here that when the New Testament writers talk about “the saints” they’re not talking about what we usually mean by that word: that is, people who’ve died and been canonized by the church because of all the holy things they did in their lives.  In the New Testament, the word “saint” simply means a member of the Christian church. That’s it.  It’s anyone and everyone who is trying to follow the way of Jesus Christ, to whatever degree of success: so that means folks with no more spiritual merit badges than you and me.  And – as that people, as saints in that sense – we unquestionably have an inheritance: something that has been passed on to us by our forebears in the Spirit, and something that as people of the church we work to preserve, and to nurture and grow, for all those to whom we pass that inheritance along.  And the substance of this inheritance is the gospel: the good news of God in Christ: the saving power of God’s love, present among us.

            The writer of Ephesians prays that we may know the “riches” of this inheritance: because they are the richest riches there can possibly be.  Jesus talks about that in a number of ways: lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, which moth and rust cannot consume nor thieves break in and steal;: we who drink of this water will never be thirsty.  And truly to know the riches of this inheritance is to share them, and not just with those in church, but with anyone, and everyone.  That’s certainly part of the main thing, that has to be the main thing.

            And then the third and last thing for which the author prays, for the church – for us: that we may know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.”  Power: something that works – something that gets things done – in this life: that changes our lives, changes our world, to whatever degree: that’s power.  But this is God’s power we’re talking about; and its “immeasurable greatness” is not just in its infinite capacity, that it’s the power that created the universe. Its greatness is in what it does: because it’s the power of God’s love, it heals, it saves, it makes whole, it restores us to whom God created us to be: it establishes God’s kingdom.

            And finally: that we may know what is God’s power, in its immeasurable greatness, “for those who believe.”  To say that the immeasurable greatness of God’s power is for us who believe is not an award; it’s not the conferral of a special status. To the contrary: these words are a challenge: they are a charge, to us as a church. They are the identification of our mission: a mission of the greatest joy.  Because as we who believe truly come to know the greatness of God’s power, God calls us to become vessels of the Holy Spirit, through which God can pour God’s love out into the world.  The letter to the Ephesians – the letter to the church, to us – states exactly this in one of its best-known passages: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.”  

            That’s faith, hope, and love all rolled into one: God’s power at work within us, able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine.  To live that way, every day, is our call as Christians.  For us as a church – for us saints, stumbling and confused though we be -that’s the main thing, which has to be the main thing.  Through the immeasurable greatness of God’s power, may it be so for us in this new year, and always.  Thanks be to God.