Category: Sermons

3/8/20

(Genesis 12:1-4a; Ps. 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)

Our two older children had the same kindergarten teacher. Her name was Blanche Reid, and if you saw the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”, that was her.  English, in her 60’s, shortish and roundish, hair in a bun, print dress, granny glasses; kind, gentle, and soft-spoken – that was Mrs. Reid. I had many opportunities to see her in a classroom; and I’ve never known any other teacher who so consistently got the kind of instant rapt attention from her students that she did.  Whenever Mrs. Reid had something to say kids stopped what they were doing, turned to her, and listened.

And it was easy to see why: they knew that she loved them. They knew that she knew them, each one of them, and valued each for who they were, and was speaking to each of them where they were, in the course of their education and their growth.  And because of all of that, they knew that whatever she had to say was going to be something they’d want to hear, something that would be good for them:   something new about this world they were growing up in that would be worth knowing, even if they didn’t fully understand it at first. So they listened to her, and tried their best to follow her, and do what she said.

That’s faith.  And it’s no different for us in our lives of faith, in our relationship with God, each one of us.  Gods meets each of us where we are, God values each of us for who we are.  The hard times are when we don’t feel God’s presence; or when we don’t understand what God seems to be asking of us; or don’t understand why.  Those are the times God calls on our faith: calls us to remember to trust God, remember that God keeps God’s promises.

That’s the position Abraham is in, in today’s Old Testament reading.  And in this very brief passage we see why St. Paul holds up Abraham as the supreme example of a person of faith.  These verses are at the very beginning of the story of Abraham, which takes up about a third of the book of Genesis.  We know almost nothing about him at this point.  But evidently God knows something about his faith, because God calls on it right off the bat: asks Abraham to do something most people would reject instantly, or not hear it as the word of God.  As we heard, the first words God says to Abraham are, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” 

So he lets Abraham know how much is being asked of him all at once, right up front: Go from your country: your country that you know: where you are comfortable; where everyone speaks the same language you do, looks and dresses as you do, and behaves according to the same rules.  Go from your country and your kindred – your blood relations, the people to whom you have the strongest kinds of ties, that you’ve always lived among, a group that includes several generations, and cousins and in-laws, who help define who you are, whose births and weddings and funerals have been the milestones of your life.  Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father’s house: the only home you’ve ever known, the one place you’ve always been guaranteed food and shelter; as the poet Robert Frost put it, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.  Say goodbye to all of that, God says; and go to the land that I will show you.

And God doesn’t say anything at all about this new land: nothing to recommend it, nothing that might make Abraham at all enthusiastic about going there.  God puts it purely on the level of faith: Do this – go to the land that I will show you – and, God says: “I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you,..and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

That’s five times that the language of blessing occurs in this passage.    God’s blessing is a gift of God in this world: something through which God creates goodness and well-being.  God says, If you put your trust in me, good things will happen.  And if you put all your trust in me, things will happen that are good beyond your wildest dreams.  We see this in the concluding blessing, which is the most farthest-reaching: “…in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”  So in the very beginning of the story of Abraham, God commissions him as the first and most important step in God’s work of salvation: the redemption of all creation to the peace and joy that were God’s original intent.  

God cannot accomplish God’s purposes in this world without us.  Very few of us have Abraham’s faith.  But we do each have our own.  And God comes to each of us where we are. 

We have an excellent example of this in the story of Nicodemus, in the gospel of John.  And I’m not talking about the famous story from chapter 3 that we heard today.  Nicodemus shows up two more times in this gospel; and taken together, these three appearances fit the classic definition of a story: something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

            In this first appearance, John tells us that Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews – so we know he’s got power – and that he comes to Jesus by night.  So something about Jesus has hooked him – he can feel that God is up to something in this man – but he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there, he can’t afford being seen consorting with this renegade.   And he shows only befuddlement at what Jesus has to say to him: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”   “How can these things be?”  Jesus has more to say, but Nicodemus disappears from the story.

            But we know something’s sunk in, and something’s happened in the man, because of the second time we see him near the middle of the gospel.  By this time the chief priests and Pharisees are really fed up with Jesus and want to arrest him; and up pops Nicodemus, who sticks up for Jesus to a point: he says, Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?   So by this point he has come to a place where he feels moved openly to defend Jesus to his class, his peers, all of whom just want to throw Jesus in jail and who have no suspicion that Nicodemus feels any differently.  And we hear that it does cost Nicodemus something to speak as he does, because they answer him, You’re not from Galilee too, are you? They start to turn on him.  We see that Nicodemus has changed: his faith has grown.

            And the third and final appearance of Nicodemus is at the foot of the cross, right after Jesus’ death.  Joseph of Arimathea has taken Jesus’ body down, and it is Nicodemus who appears with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, for embalming and fragrance: this was what was proper at the time of death.  It was also a load which, according to John, weighed about a hundred pounds, which takes some physical effort.  So by this third appearance Nicodemus is treating Jesus like a  member of his family.    And let us not fail to note that, in so doing, Nicodemus plays a pivotal role in the story of the resurrection.  This is how far – through faith – God’s original blessing to Abraham extends: on down to us here, now, and infinitely into the future.

            God comes to each of us where we are. God in Christ says to each of us, Who do you say that I am?  And what are you going to do about that?   May God always increase our faith, that we always be ready to answer.

3/1/20

(Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Ps. 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

            Welcome to Lent.   I mean that.  It’s my favorite season of the church year: it feels harsh sometimes, but the light is very bright, and very clear.

            This year at St. John’s we’re not doing a mid-week Lenten program as we have done in the past.  Instead, as a congregation we will be directing our attention in a particular way this season: to the issue of social justice.  We have a social justice committee which has been hard at work on this – in the hallway they’ve put up a whole new bulletin board full of information that’s extremely illuminating, both in general and in specific; and you’ll be hearing more, on a regular basis, as the weeks of Lent go by.

            Starting now.  When the biblical writers talk about justice (plain and simple), they’re talking about God’s justice, which is social justice: people, in community, trying to live with each other in the kingdom of God.  This is at the core of what it means to be Christian, following the way of Jesus.  And it’s particularly appropriate to talk about it today, on the first Sunday of Lent. 

            In Lent, we face our sinfulness.  The reality of sin is fundamental to the Christian understanding of how the world works.  We are all sinners, and we live in a world permeated by sin: a broken world. Please, as we think about these things, let us try to put aside the baggage that these words – sin and sinner – have acquired over the centuries; often, it has to be said, from being used by religious authorities to beat people over the head with in order to maintain themselves in power; and in so doing, betraying the truth those words express.

            That we are sinners does not mean we’re terrible human beings.  It means we’re human beings, who can’t help being sinners.  Jesus understood this: when his disciples asked him, Teach us how to pray, he gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer, to be used all their lives long: a simple, concise prayer, which covers the essentials; and which includes the words, “forgive us our trespasses”.  Which means Jesus knows we make mistakes, and knows we’re going to keep making mistakes, all our lives.

            The readings today all have to do with this universality of sin among the human race.  The Genesis story is the description from thousands of years ago of how we got this way in the first place, and as far as I’m concerned it’s as good an explanation as any.  The gospel story is of how Jesus, being human, is tempted to sin, and conquers the temptation only through the power of God.

            And Paul, in the passage from his letter to the Romans, writes that we cannot escape sin in this life; but, through God in Christ, we are freed from sin’s terrible power over us.  This is spiritual, psychological, and emotional power so extreme he calls it slavery (Rom. 7:14: “…but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.”) But  (Gal. 5:1): “…Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”)  Jesus uses this same language in the gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin….[But] if the Son makes you free, you will be free forever.”  

By the grace of God in Christ, we have freedom from the bondage of sin.  This is the good news, the news that liberates us all.  But in the Christian life there’s an important condition involved – a truth expressed by the great German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “There is no freedom from, without freedom for.”  You’re not truly free of something unless you’re living and acting out of that freedom.   And Bonhoeffer says further (it’s gendered language), “Freedom is not something man has for himself, but something he has for others.”  Our life as Christians is inevitably, and always, lived in service to the rest of the human family.  Jesus says this over and over.  And here’s where we see it’s a matter of social justice.

Last fall I became aware of an edition of the Bible, first published about ten years ago, called the Poverty and Justice Bible.  It’s in a translation called the Contemporary English Version, which is slightly different than the one we use in the Episcopal Church; but the main feature of this Bible is that it highlights – in orange – passages that have to do with poverty and justice.  And there’s orange everywhere, many times in places even if you know the Bible you don’t expect it.  I was flipping through and stopped, randomly, at the story of the feeding of the five thousand in Mark chapter 6, a story we don’t normally think of as having anything to do with justice.  But this is what was in orange:  “Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish.  He looked up toward heaven and blessed the food.  Then he broke the bread and handed it to his disciples to give to the people.  He also divided the two fish, so that everyone could have some.”  This is God’s justice at work.  Jesus makes no distinctions about who is to receive food. There’s no question of qualifications, of relative deserving: everyone should have some.

Our attention to God’s justice – our awareness of injustice, and our responsibility as Christians to do something about that – is vital to the life of faith.  The foreword to the Poverty and Justice Bible was written by the Rev. Dr. James Howard Lawson, a major figure in the struggle for civil rights in this country.  In this foreword he talks about the two greatest figures in the Bible, Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New, and says: “In their…encounters with God, they are compelled to take on God’s will for their times which is both extremely personal and therefore social….The God who meets them hears the cries of hurt and pain, sees the sufferings and oppressions of [God’s] people, grieves over the human plight and ‘comes down’ to deliver.”

            When Moses first meets God in Exodus chapter 3, at the burning bush, the first thing God tells him is, “I am the God who was worshiped by your ancestors….I have seen how my people are suffering  as slaves in Egypt, and I have heard them beg for my help because of the way they are being mistreated….I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians….Now go to the king!  I am sending you to lead my people out of his country.”

             And there’s a big lesson for us in Moses’ response: he says, “Who am I to go to the king and lead your people out of Egypt?”   This is what most of the Old Testament prophets say, when they first hear God’s call: some variation on, Are you kidding?  You want somebody else, I don’t have that kind of faith.  And isn’t that often our response, when we see something of God’s work that needs to be done?  That’s too much for me.  It’ll take a bigger person than I am.

            Well, when Moses says Who am I, Lord, to go to the king, God answers simply, I will be with you.  God does not say, Oh, pshaw.  There’s no need for false humility.  Of course you can do this.  God simply says, I will be with you.  That answers that.  And God says the same thing to each of us.

            And at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, immediately after his temptation by the devil as Luke tells the story in chapter 4, Jesus kicks things off by going to the synagogue, standing up and quoting from Isaiah chapter 58, which says (pertinently, to us in Lent):

Do you think the Lord

      wants you to give up eating

and to act as humble

     as a bent-over bush?

Or to dress in sackcloth

    and sit in ashes?

Is this really what he wants

    On a day of worship?

I’ll tell you

what it really means

      to worship the Lord.

Remove the chains of prisoners

     who are chained unjustly.

Free those who are abused!

Share your food with everyone

     who is hungry;

share your home

     with the poor and homeless.

Give clothes to those in need:

don’t turn away the homeless. 

            We are free from sin, as we are free for God’s justice.  The first step for each of us, as people of faith, is to keep our eyes open to God’s justice that wants to happen, is begging to be done, all around us, in little and big ways.  And the second is, when we see that, prayerfully to consider, What is God calling me to do about this?  We don’t see burning bushes; but we do feel nudges.  So we take one step.  Then another. And we remember that God says to us, as to Moses: I will be with you.   That’s all we need.  Let us keep this in our hearts in this season of Lent; and see what happens.  Thanks be to God.

2/23/20

(Exodus 24:12-18; Ps. 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9)

            The confirmation class that I’m teaching this year at St. John’s is organized into eight sessions, each of which focuses on a major area in the Christian life: the Bible; church; prayer; that kind of thing. I do it this way, for one thing, because in a confirmation class there’s a certain amount of factual information that confirmands need to know.

            But I also do it this way because confirmands are almost always adolescents – these guys are in their mid-teens.  And that means, among other things, that they’ve at an age at which learned enough about the world to start making their own decisions about what’s important in life, and not just accept at face value what their parents and their culture have presented to them about that.  So in each of these classes I try to give them something about Christian faith which they can feel is real, is meaningful, has to do with life as we live it; and is not just the product of a closed system, which any church, unfortunately, can be.

            The subject of last Sunday’s class was Jesus; and in the course of preparing for it I came across a quote from a man named Dwight L. Moody, who was one of the great evangelists of the 19^thcentury in America.  This is what he said: “A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend.  He is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but He Himself that we have.”

            Now, this is probably not an unfamiliar idea, many of us know the famous hymn, “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”; but I doubt that very many people are actually in the habit of thinking of Jesus in that way.  The truth of God’s presence among us – that God not only cares about us,, but loves us, all the time – is the basis of our faith, it’s what gives us life. And in thinking of Jesus Christ as our personal friend, we open ourselves to that truth in a uniquely immediate, and joyful, way. 

            But the idea has to be handled with care. It’s not right to think of Jesus as a friend, in the sense of someone we goof around with; or as a casual friend. Rather, Jesus is the kind of friend we seek out in those times in life when we need a friend, high times and low times: when we celebrate, when we mourn; when we’re uncertain about the future, whether that uncertainty makes us anxious and fearful, or excited and eager to explore.  At such times we want, and need, a friend whom we know knows us, and who we know will be our friend no matter what; a friend with whom we can be – and must be – completely honest; and a friend whom we know we can trust to tell us the truth, whether we’ll like it or not.

            Dwight Moody says he “has it as a rule” to treat Jesus Christ as a personal friend.  It’s good to think of it that way; because it is through regular, intentional behavior that we live in the truth, that Christ is alive.  Jesus Christ – in our Christian understanding, the second Person of the Trinity – God, the eternal God, beyond time – that God, in Jesus Christ, is alive, now, with us, here on earth.  Impossible.  But true. That’s what we Christians say.  And I think the gospel story we heard today – the story of the Transfiguration – is both an illustration of this truth, and a lesson about how we are to live with our friend, the Lord Jesus Christ.

            There’s something about why we’re hearing this story today that I think helps us understand all this.  In our church calendar, today is the Last Sunday After the Epiphany.  The lectionary readings for this particular Sunday are on a rotating three-year cycle, like almost all of the lectionary; the selections from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament are all different each of those three years. But the gospel reading for this day is always the story of the Transfiguration; but told in one of the three different versions we find in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  So our church wants us to hear this story on this particular day.  And I think that’s because, as we stand here on this day of the church year, on the threshold of Lent, we look ahead of us, across a valley – the hard, gritty, this-world reality of Lent – to a pinnacle – the eternal life of the Resurrection, at Easter.  We stand here and see, in Christian faith, that both are part of God’s creation; and understand that Jesus Christ stands with us in both places: in this broken world, and in eternal life.  On one level, that’s the story of the Transfiguration.  And the story it tells is how Jesus Christ is our friend.

            This year we hear Matthew’s version.  He tells us, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.”  There are a couple of things to note about this. One is that Jesus had his own personal friends among the twelve apostles.  Peter – and the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee –  are these friends.  He takes these three apart with him one other time: in the garden of Gethsemane, at a time of deep anguish in his life, when he’s facing death – a time when – like anybody – he needs a friend, to just be there with him.  On this occasion he takes them “by themselves” – just the friends – “up on a high mountain” – a place presented throughout the Bible as the setting for a close encounter with God.  Jesus takes them up there because he wants them to experience something – something big, and important – and, as their friend, he wants to be there to live through it with them.

            And suddenly, “before them” (Matthew tells us) – right before their eyes – something happens to Jesus: “…he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  Mathew’s description is as hard for us to understand as we hear it as it must have been hard for the disciples to understand as they saw it, because it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before: their friend Jesus was still recognizably himself, but also somehow – plainly -an entirely different kind of being. They are seeing Jesus Christ.

            And then: “Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”  The language suggests that this is a conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah which has already been going on, and of which the disciples have all of a sudden become aware.  So out of the blue, they find themselves in a completely different world.

            And Peter – good old Peter – tries to show that he’s not thrown by this, tries to show that he’s on top of the situation, by pronouncing that it’s good they’re all there, and he’ll make three dwellings, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah; and it feels like he could keep on babbling until someone stops hm.. 

            And someone does.  Suddenly they all hear the voice of God, coming from a cloud; and Matthew tells us that this happens before Peter has finished speaking.  God is saying: Peter: stop.  Just stop.  There’s something completely new going on here, and don’t try to pretend that you’ve seen it before.  Just behold. This is my Son; listen to him!

            This is the lesson in this story. There are plenty of things about God that, in this life, we don’t understand. But Jesus Christ does; and Jesus Christ is our friend – and we listen to him.  We can trust him.  Because we can trust God.  

All this is too much for the disciples – as it’s too much for us, the reality of God’s presence in our lives is way too much for most of us most of the time – and the disciples fall to the ground, paralyzed with fear.  (Think about how much of the time we shut God out.)  And Jesus comes over, and touches them – reminding them, I’m still me; and I’m still your friend – and says, Get up and do not be afraid.

            Get up: do not be afraid: trust God.  Live life as the unique human being God created you to be.   As we listen to Jesus Christ – who is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but he himself, that we have, our personal friend – we live in the truth; to the glory of God. Thanks be to God.

2/16/20

(Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ps. 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

            I have a friend who’s a long-time parishioner at a local church; she’s in her 70’s, and not long ago her two grown children, and their families, were visiting her for the weekend; and on Sunday morning, as she was getting ready to go to church – by herself, the others weren’t in the habit – one of her kids said, Mom, why do you go to church?

             Knowing her, and the kind of children she would have brought up, I’m sure it was a sincere question.  And I think she was probably glad of the chance to answer it; and not just because it was her kids and she wants them to understand her; but because it’s part of our life as Christians, to ask ourselves that question.  It’s healthy, and it’s necessary, because life is always new, and the answer is always evolving.  Why do I go to church?  Why am I here?

            There are two ways to answer that question. One is short-range, and specific: what am I doing here today?  What’s going on in my life that I want to work on here, now, in this worship service; rather than just sit here and watch it happen?  What’s on my mind, and my heart?  Who do I need to pray for?  What am I anxious, or angry, or fearful, about, that I need to offer up to God? What am I thankful for today?  Is there something I need to confess, to face the truth about?  Am I really present here today?  Lord, help me to be present today.

And there’s the question in its larger context: Why do I come to church in the first place?  Why do I come here for all of that?  Of course, there are many ways to answer that question.  But for me, one of them would be: we come to church, on a regular basis, because we want to live truthful, honest lives, in a world that’s noisy and confusing, and in which we are pulled, powerfully, in many directions. And here, in church, we’re not going to allow ourselves to be pulled: there is one God, one source of truth, who governs our lives, and whom we strive to recognize; and we’re going to be intentional about that.   We want to see, speak, and do the truth.  And we come here to learn about that because we can feel that the truth is here, uniquely, in this Christian story that we soak ourselves in; that we explore together, that we celebrate together, that we work on together, week in and week out.  That’s why we come to church. 

I’m thinking about this because the lectionary readings for today, the sixth Sunday in Epiphany, all seem to point toward an answer to this question. 

            On first hearing, these three readings don’t appear to have anything in common, other than the fact that all of the people we hear from in them – Moses, Paul, and Jesus – all sound just a bit like they got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.  Because – each in his own way – they’re all three responding to the same truth about us humans (about all of us together, and each one of us individually), which is: how easy it is for us to go wrong; and, at the same time, how simple it is to go right.  (Notice that “easy” and “simple” are not the same thing: something may be simple, and still be very hard to do.)

            The sayings of Jesus in the gospel passage sound like a grab-bag of judgments on various points of the Law, which seem unrelated, except to say that we’re not nearly as hard on ourselves as we should be, and shame on us.  But if we look at them a little more closely, a common theme emerges.  Jesus mentions a bunch of things that the Law prohibits: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely; you shall divorce only in the proper manner as prescribed by law.  But Jesus goes further: he says, forget murder: if you’re angry with someone, if you call someone a fool, you’re just as liable to judgment.  Forget adultery: if you look at someone with lust in your heart, you’re just as liable to judgment; forget swearing falsely: if you swear at all – if you use an oath of any kind – you’re just as liable to judgment; and so on.  Sounds crabby, doesn’t it?

            But it’s not that.  In each of these comparisons– as different as they appear to be: murder and casual insult, the act of adultery and a lustful glance, swearing falsely and swearing at all – what we’re actually doing, in both cases, Jesus sees, is putting ourselves in place of God.  We’re shoving God out of the way, ignoring God’s presence in our lives. The degree of the offense may be different, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves, Jesus says: in both, the movement of the spirit is in essentially the same direction.  Even when the offense seems small – is small – we’re bypassing God, shutting God out; and we need to be aware of that; because when we do that, we cut ourselves off from the one true source of love and peace and joy.  That’s why Jesus cares about this. It’s not about punishment: not about making sure the guilty get their just deserts.  It’s about staying awake to the life of God that is right there waiting for us: God in Christ, who tells us, I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.  How easy it is to forget that; how easy it is to go wrong.

            And in today’s reading from First Corinthians, Paul points us toward how simple it is to go right.  As in most of his letters, Paul is here writing back to a church he founded and has moved on from, but with whom he stays in touch, to make sure they stay on track.  And the message has gotten to Paul that there’s a problem: the church in Corinth has split into rival factions.  One of the leaders there is a man named Apollos, and some church members have been saying, we need to follow what this guy is teaching; and others saying, no, Paul’s the man; and that’s what they’re squabbling about.

            Now, Paul writes nothing here about the substance of what Apollos is saying; nor, whatever that might be, does Paul say, he’s wrong.  In fact, he actually endorses Apollos, on a level with himself: Paul writes, I planted, Apollos watered; but this is what’s important: God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.  And this is not an idea, for Paul, it’s not a theory he’s proposing, or something which he hopes is true: it’s a description of reality, of the way things actually work, in life.   And that’s what we need to focus on.  The way to go right is simple: turn to God: keep our eyes on God: only God gives the growth.

            Only God gives the growth. That same truth is expressed beautifully, and powerfully, in words of Moses that we heard in the first lesson today.  This reading is from very near the end of the book of Deuteronomy, very near the end of the long, long story of Moses (four whole books of the Bible.)  He’s led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, over many miles, many years; and they’re now at the very edge of the Promised Land, finally, on the bank of the River Jordan.  Moses also led them through the wilderness of the spirit, to a relationship with God; and now he gives them the Law (that’s the book of Deuteronomy), to guide them forward, after he’s gone, which is going to happen very soon (Moses dies four chapters later.).  And at the very end, as we heard today, Moses says, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity“ (that is, according to the Law, things to do, and things to avoid.)  And having put those two before them, his final word to his people is this: “Choose life…, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you….”

            Choose life.  It’s no different for us.  I think that’s a pretty darn good capsule description of what we do here: of why we come to church: we are here to choose life.  However imperfectly, however messily we do it, we choose to open our eyes to God’s new creation that is going on around us all the time.  We choose continually to face in that direction, to join in that work: we plant, and we water, knowing that God will give the growth.  So we give thanks to God.  We give thanks for this life that we have here together, and for the new life that we see is forever springing up around us.  Thanks be to God.

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.

12/24, 25/19

            Right after I got out of college in the mid-1970’s I moved to New York City, to study acting at a place called the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre.   The main acting teacher there, and really the guiding genius of the whole place, was a man named Sanford Meisner.  Mr. Meisner was a legendary figure in American theatre and had been since the 1940’s, one of the greatest acting teachers of the 20^thcentury in this country, with many famous actors among his former students, and there are countless teachers now who use his technique and the exercises he developed.  

            So he was a genius.  He was also a crabby, vain, sometimes detestable old man – old by the time I got to him: I’m sure he’d been a crabby, vain, sometimes detestable young man as well; but if you wanted to learn from him – and there was a lot to learn from him – you just had to put up with who he was.

            Near the end of his career, around the time I was at the school, one of his graduates came back for a visit, bringing with him his first child, a six-month-old boy.  He came to Mr. Meisner’s office to pay his respects, they talked for a while; then the young man said he wanted to poke his head into the school’s theatre for a minute and just look around.  And Meisner told him, You can leave your son with me if you want, I’ll look after him.  So he did, and when he returned a few minutes later, he found his son sitting placidly on Meisner’s lap, looking up at him; and Meisner was looking back at the boy, and quietly weeping.

            I heard this story from another graduate of the school, and that’s where the story ended; because anyone who knew Meisner wouldn’t really need an explanation of why he was weeping.  It was because the sudden and unexpected appearance of this baby had shoved in front of him what he knew was missing in his own life: that is, the sense of any very young child that the world is a good place, hospitable place, that’s going to be joyful to live in, and explore; the sense of any very young child that the love we naturally give, all the time, others will just as naturally return; the sense of anticipation, and hopefulness, that, as young children, we go to sleep with on Christmas Eve, and wake up with on Christmas morning.  This state of mind, which is Square One for a child, was what Meisner knew in his heart is the truth, but which life in this world had always seemed to be snatching away from him, knocking out of his grasp; as, for any and all of us, life in this world sometimes so abruptly and inexplicably does. 

            Well, tomorrow/today is Christmas Day, the day when we get a gift: the gift of God which addresses just this problem, which we all have.

            This gift that we get, as we bring alive, in our celebration of Christmas, the birth of this one child, two thousand years ago, this gift is really twofold.  First, the gift is a promise: God’s promise: that it’s all going to be all right; that when life suddenly snatches peace away from us, when we feel overwhelmed by fear, or anxiety, or despair, or anger, or hopelessness, God’s promise is that none of that is the last word: that God’s love for all of us, the current of God’s love that runs through life, that fuels our life, that we are living here now – that love is infinite, and eternal, and will finally make all things well.

            So first, this gift is a promise.  Second – it’s the flip side of the same coin – this gift is an invitation: God’s invitation.  God offers the power of God’s love to each of us: a power which, working through us, makes joy; heals; brings light into darkness.  All of which is to say that, with this gift, God invites us to join in the creation of the kingdom of God, here where we are now; which creation God is engaged in, all the time, all around us.

            This twofold gift – the promise, and the invitation – is the one that all the gifts we exchange on Christmas morning represent. Those gifts are all little tokens of that love.  It’s what they all come from; one way or another, it’s where they originate.  And the better we understand that, the more strongly we make that connection, the closer we draw to the true holiness, and the true joy, of Christmastide.  And I love to use that old English term “Christmastide”, because it brings to mind the unfathomable power, and the constancy, of God’s love.

             A few years ago a parishioner here introduced me to a Christmas prayer he’d discovered that was written by Robert Louis Stevenson (appropriately enough, a writer whose works have always spoken most powerfully to young people.).  I think it exemplifies all this that I’m talking about, and I’m going to close with it.  

            Let us pray.

Loving God, Help us remember the birth of Jesus,

that we may share in the song of the angels,

the gladness of the shepherds,

and the worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate

and open the door of love all over the world.

Let kindness come with every good gift, and good desires with every greeting.

Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,

and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.

May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children,

and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts

forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen. 

Advent IV, December 22, 2019                                                                          St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Milford, CT Matthew 1: 18-25                                                                                                                                         Robert W. Woodroofe

What about Joseph?

I have a joke that at least at its beginning seems to fit the darkness of this – the shortest daylight day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  An extended family has gathered in the ICU visitors’ room when the doctor emerges looking somber.  “I’m sorry,” he says.  “There just doesn’t seem to be anything we can do unless you were to agree to a brain transplant, but it’s highly experimental, risky and costly.”  In the stunned silence that follows, a person asks, “How much would a new brain cost?”  “Well,” he says, “for a female brain it would run somewhere around $20,000.  For a male brain, it would come in at the neighborhood of $50,000.”  A child asks, “How come they’re priced differently?”  To which the doctor replies, “Well, it’s a standard pricing procedure.  The males’ brains are generally factory fresh, but we mark the female brains down because they’re used.” 

I’m not one hundred percent in agreement with the worldview reflected in that joke, but I did find it funny.  It pokes fun at this male dominated, patriarchal world we live in. I thought of the joke because today, perhaps more than any other day in the Christian calendar just prior to Christmas, Advent IV generally brings to the forefront an extremely important woman, Mary, the mother of our Lord, as saint and a hero well deserving of our praise and gratitude.  

The theme of the gospel on this final Sunday of Advent, after all, is generally dominated the Virgin Mary and her delivery of Immanuel, God with us.  Orthodox Christians have given Mary the nickname of “Theotokos – the God bearer.” Such is Mary’s courage, her willingness to obey the Holy Spirit and her trust in God’s goodness that she submits her body and her very being to the purposes of God in a way that has moved and witnessed to Christians ever since.  If anyone can qualify for owning a well-usedbrain and heart in Christian lore, that would be Mary.  

Nevertheless, in the Gospel of Matthew, the account we follow this year, and every third year, the disclosure of the coming birth of Jesus is made not to Mary but rather to Joseph, her intended husband.  It happens in a dream.  And the result delivers a different tone to this day.  

You will recall that Mary, upon hearing from the Angel Gabriel of her unique calling and task, replies, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  In St. Matthew’s Gospel account, rather than hearing of heroic witness and submission, we encounter the story of Joseph’s confused and troubled conscience, his lonely test of faithful trust, and an angel’s call to action so as to further God’s purposes.  All of this is prompted by a dream experienced by Joseph; it’s a message which Dr. Freud might be convinced came from Joseph’s own unconscious self, but which he, Joseph, takes straight-forwardly to be an angel’s urgent message to him from God.  

Joseph was promised to Mary in marriage, yet they had not had occasion to physically live together as a fully married couple.  Here was Mary already expecting a child.  Who might the father be?  Joseph draws some understandable conclusions that it is not he. There’s no indication that he and Mary sat down and discussed together what was going on.  Yet, he is well aware of the laws governing pre-marital sexual engagement in Judaism.  Here is a relevant passage from Deuteronomy: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife.”  Mary in her unexplained pregnancy is apparently guilty of fornication.  A capital crime may be lurking here.  Joseph, perhaps in not a little fear with a higher loyalty to the Law, initially figures that by acting quietly and discretely to withdraw from their engagement he at least might be spared.

Instead, Joseph is urged by the angel to take action. He is to stick with this mysteriously pregnant young woman.  The angel explains that God’s Spirit is the source of Mary’s expected child, and that he’s to be named Jesus, a name describing One who will save the people from their sins, their wanderings far from their Creator God.  This is only the first of three dreams for Joseph in which he is guided by a messenger of God to take action in behalf of the divine will.

In my experience, Joseph remains an otherwise fairly shadowy figure.  By the time Jesus reaches maturity and begins his ministry in Galilee, we hear no more of him.  That’s probably why Joseph is so often pictured as so much older-looking than his wife.  During Jesus’ public ministry, only Mary remains along with Jesus’s younger brothers and sisters.  

Our tradition hasseen fit to honor the Holy Family, the trio of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, and on March 19 every year we remember Joseph among the calendar of saints.  The collect for that day nicely catches the essence of Joseph gleaned from today’s gospel account when it says, “O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother; give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands…”

So the prayer stresses and imagines Joseph as a nurturing and protective father to Jesus even as he remains a faithful and loyal husband to Mary: this is a tall order in any age, and a laudable image for any man to which to aspire who is called to a life of marriage and parenting. Still, there are other qualities in him of a more general nature: qualities that can be worn comfortably and faithfully by married and unmarried, by women as well as men.  These are qualities that Jesus himself would uniquely stress and teach through his own ministry.  They are teachings and of Jesus through which he uniquely brought out and further developed the Jewish-grounded laws already revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Here they are in a nutshell: first, by not allowing himself to leap to conclusions, Joseph avoided the mistake of passing judgment on others, especially Mary.  “Judge not …” Second, in spite of this unexplained pregnancy placing him in dangerous bind, he receives her in a forgiving mode.  Whether or not there’s really anything to be forgiven, there’s the appearance of it that can so easily damage human relationships.  God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of one another is surely central to the Christian life.  A third characteristic of Joseph is his gentle steering clear of violence, something Jesus would repeatedly warn us to avoid.  And finally there’s a cloak of humility that surrounds Joseph and his actions.  He does not take the path of protective dominance supplied by his own peoples’ patriarchy, but rather quietly and supportively picks up his cross and gets himself into the line.  By accepting the pregnant Mary, the threat to them both really never goes away. Humility takes that sort of courage. So, non-judgmental, ready with forgiveness, non-violent in action and humble to the core: those are Christ-like virtues which Joseph embodies to which we all can aspire.

Thinking back to those less-expensive, used women from my initial story, I note that the term “used” as in “used car” has been superseded by the term “pre-owned.”  Now that’s a description that can fit men and women, married or single, parent or child: pre-owned.  Our previous owner, our Creator God, has brought us into being, set us free to find our way, and now promises the succor of forgiving grace along the way – guided by these Christ-taught virtues that Joseph so faithfully modeled.  May we all find in St. Joseph a person of rectitude and inspiration for us to practice non-judging forgiveness, gentleness and humility. Amen

12/15/19

            In the season of Advent we talk in church about the coming of Christ; and there are three principal ways in which we understand what that means.  One is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, that we look forward to celebrating at Christmas; another is the Second Coming of Christ, at the end of the age, the final establishment of God’s kingdom; and the third – the one which is most immediately important for us – is the coming of Christ into our own lives.  Some evangelicals talk about that as a single, overwhelming and life-changing event.  That can certainly happen, but it’s  rare, and to limit our understanding of the coming of Christ into our own lives in such a way is a big mistake: it’s usually a gradual process: Christ much more often soaks his way into our lives.

            Of course, when Jesus was alive and walking the earth, it was much less gradual, much more immediate: we see this all through the gospels.  But there’s an aspect to today’s gospel story that may be useful to us as we think about that soaking process in our own lives.  I want to talk a little about that, and then give a contemporary example.

            Last week we heard John the Baptist’s proclamation of the one who would come after him, whose sandals he wasn’t worthy to carry: the Messiah: a figure who had been the hope of the people of Israel for over 500 years.  They looked for a human being, chosen by God, to come among them and establish God’s kingdom on earth.  Most people expected some kind of political/military figure.  John has a different idea: as we heard last week, the Coming One that he sees “will baptize…with the Holy Spirit and fire.” That’s a Messiah who’s going to change people, not just the political structure.  By the time of this week’s story, John has landed in prison, but he’s heard about what Jesus has been doing, and from jail he sends his disciples to ask Jesus directly: Are you this one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

            Now: the way Jesus responds to that question is important in several ways.  In the first place, he directly involves John’s disciples in his ministry: he says, Go and tell John what you see and hear.  So they’re not just messengers.  Jesus invites the disciples to confront for themselves the meaning of what they’re seeing and hearing right in front of them.  And it’s not simply the miracles of healing: Jesus ends with, And the poor have good news preached to them: the good news of the kingdom of God: that’s what changes people’s lives.

            And Jesus finishes all this with these words: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  This sounds curious, given the way we normally understand what it means to take offense at something.  Why would we “take offense” at Jesus?  What could he be talking about?  

            As it happens, it’s not a small thing: it has to do with understanding just who Jesus is: with preparing for Christ to come into our lives.  The Greek word here translated “take offense at” is skandalizo, which means literally to put an impediment in someone’s way, something they could possibly trip over.   Sometimes that’s the way it’s translated: in a famous verse in First Corinthians, Paul writes, “But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”  That’s to say, it’s a stumbling block for some in the kingdom of Israel to believe other people when they say that this guy, whose life ended in brutal execution, in a manner reserved for the lowest, most contemptible kind of criminal, this man is the one we’ve been waiting for all these centuries, the one who’s going to make everything right; the Chosen One of God.  

            It’s an important idea, and one that comes up many times in the gospels.  There’s another in which Jesus goes back to his home town to teach in the synagogue, and the people there say, Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?  This is someone we knew as a boy, we knew his father, we know his mother and brothers, his sisters are right here with us; where then did this man get all this? And the gospel tells us, “And they took offense at him….And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.”  Their familiarity with Jesus was the stumbling block; they couldn’t believe that God could be present in someone who was so much a part of their lives.

            The basic idea that governs all of this is that we insist on defining the ways that God is active in our lives; that God has to be at work in certain specific ways, certain times and places; and cannot possibly be present in others.  Getting rid of this idea is part of the work that we do here.

            Now, for the contemporary example.  You’ve probably heard the phrase, “the power of one”; which refers to the truth that individual people, beginning alone and on a very small scale, can start great movements, that affect many people.  And the phrase, the power of one, is an encouragement not to be deterred, not to be daunted, by the fact that it happens to be just you alone that feels a particular, little, spark; that sees something worth doing that hasn’t occurred to anyone else, or that no one else thinks has a chance of success.

            In the mid-1970’s I became part of a theatre group in New York that had a loosely organized membership of actors, directors, playwrights, and designers, and had a small performing space and a couple of dingy offices in a mostly abandoned warehouse way over on West 52^ndSt., in the district known (for good reason) as Hell’s Kitchen.  One of the actors in the theatre was a kid in his mid-twenties named Willie Reale (picture Harpo Marx as short, Italian, and talking: that’s Willie.)  Willie hung around the theatre, because there was a lot of good stuff going on there, and lived in an apartment not too far away; so he spent a lot of time in that part of town.

             In 1981, Willie decided to do something to improve the quality of life for the kids he saw hanging around the neighborhood, with nothing to do.  So he started a program in which he put an individual kid together with a professional playwright and director, and under their guidance each kid wrote a five-minute play; they then rehearsed the play with professional actors, at the theatre and the Police Athletic League across the street (Willie called it the 52^ndSt. Project, to acknowledge them both.)    And the plays were performed in front of an audience of family and friends and whoever else was interested.  And these were people who lived in the neighborhood, so it was the underclass: poor, Latino, African-American, a lot of broken homes, a lot of single-parent families.  And all of a sudden, these people were involved in theatre: and there was a dimension of life now open to them, that hadn’t been there before.

            There was no formal structure to any of this at the beginning; it was just done by whoever happened to be around, and available for Willie to tap; and you made it up as you went along. Well, in four years the program had grown to the point that there was an organization; it became necessary to move the performances to a bigger theatre on 42^ndSt.; several years after that their big annual performance was at Lincoln Center; and the 52^ndSt. Project today creates over 80 new plays, and serves hundreds of kids from all over the city, every year, with half a dozen different theatre and education programs; and is currently being replicated in 14 different cities around the country and around the world.

            On the Project website, their mission statement includes this sentence: “The Project is about giving a kid an opportunity to prove that he or she has something of value to offer, something that he or she alone possesses, something that cannot be taken away.” And Willie himself writes, “There’s no way to fast forward and know how the kids will look back on this but I have seen the joy in their eyes and have heard it in their voices, and I have watched them take a bow and come up taller.”

            Folks, this is the power of Christ coming into people’s lives.  That was the power of Christ that came into Willie’s life: it may not have had that label on it, but blessed are those for whom that’s not a stumbling block, because that’s what it was: opening a little door, and saying, there’s something that needs to happen here: there’s a wound that needs healing: there’s life that wants to grow, and needs room.    And it can happen this way because the truth is that what we call the power of one is really the power of God, working in us: and that’s Christ coming into our lives.  Let us never take offense at that.  Let us not stumble over it.  Let us Christians look for it, name it for what it is, welcome it, and as it works in us, do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  Thanks be to God.