29 August 2010 - Proper 17 * Jeremiah 2:4-13, Hebrews 13: 1-8,15-16, Luke 14: 1, 7-14
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter's at Ellicott Mills, MD
Shabbat Shalom
It is again, the Sabbath Day. We would do well to note the severe edit in our selection for today: verses 2-6 detail another healing on the Sabbath. This time Jesus throws down the gauntlet challenging the Pharisees, "Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or is it not?" But they were silent.
Then comes his observations, and let's face it, rather severe critique, of their social practices. And we may as well admit, who among us does not try to get the best seat in the house? In the stadium? At the restaurant? Who among us does not invite our closest friends for a meal? Or, those to whom we feel indebted due to their hospitality toward us?
Put in today's terms, who would ever want to invite Jesus to dinner? Or, who would invite Jesus to join us for our Sabbath observance? Beginning in chapter 4 of Luke's gospel we have one Sabbath episode after another in which Jesus takes the initiative to stir things up - beginning with his harsh words in his hometown synagogue (Lk 4:23-30), and now all these healings and radical critique of good table manners and Sabbath observance!
There are at least two things at stake in this enigmatic little episode - one to do with meals or banquets, the second to do with Sabbath, Shabbat, and the essence of the command to "remember the Sabbath."
Nearly half the words of the Ten Commandments (55 of 108) concern remembering the Sabbath. And they stand nearly in the middle as a bridge between the first three concerning our relationship with God, and the final six concerning our relationships with one another. There it is again, Love of God and Love of Neighbor, defined in 108 words delivered by God to Moses and the people of God at Mt. Sinai.
In addition to being a day of rest, set apart from the rest of the week when we are hard at work, Shabbat is to be a holy day set apart to build up the spiritual element within us - a renewal of our spiritual life in God! Today we are hard pressed to even remember that we have a spiritual life in God, let alone devote an entire day to contemplate what that means. It evolved as a day of study, a day to remember where we come from, a day to remember God as the creator of the universe, that all we are and all we have is a gift, a day to separate ourselves from the misery and slavery that for so many centuries were the lot of Israel - a day, once a week when the home of the humblest Jew was flooded with light! Shabbat banishes care and toil, grief and sorrow. On Shabbat, the most despised and rejected of men and women are emancipated from oppression and tribulation and degradation of this world, feeling themselves to be a prince or princess, king or queen, a member of a great, eternal and holy family!
A look inside the Jewish Sabbath reveals not a day of strict and dreary adherence to demanding rules, but rather households filled with Joy, Gratitude, Sunshine, Light and Love. Recalling the Exodus and Passover, recalling the Return from Exile, Sabbath represents a day to Return to God from the worries, claims and demands of the other six days of the week.
So the healings Jesus performs on the Sabbath seem to emulate the very essence of what it means "to remember the Sabbath" - to remember God's desire to liberate and unbind us from all that keeps us enslaved to that which is not of God.
Then there is the meal itself - the Sabbath meal or banquet. Meals eaten at table in the Jewish world of Jesus were not simply times to nourish oneself with vast quantities of food, but rather meals eaten at table are eaten as if the table is the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. Consider that by the time Luke's gospel was committed to writing, the Temple and its altar were in ashes, and remain so to this day. Consider then just what sitting at table on Shabbat signifies right down to our own day.
The traditional greeting on Shabbat is "Shabbat Shalom!" Shalom means more than just peace. Shalom means whole, complete, full, welfare, justice. It is the essence of our Baptismal promise, "to strive for justice and peace for all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being." BCP 305 We have all seen the bumper sticker, "No Justice, No Peace/Know Justice, Know Peace."
So the greeting, "Shabbat Shalom," suggests that we remember that at very heart of this most central of the Ten Commandments is remembering that God wants and seeks the liberation and release of all those whose lives are bound by misery, slavery, worry, rejection, injustice and indignity.
For our Sabbath observance we gather as a community at a common table. Among other things, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood on this table represent the essence of Shabbat Shalom - a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, a foretaste of life for all persons in God's Kingdom.
Today's story serves up several challenges for Christians in all times and in all places. One is to dissuade Christians from all presumptions of privilege, noting that one day we will all be seated according to our Host's will, not our own. Presumption of privilege - whether based on things like race, class, gender, nationality, native tongue or even religion - not only do not distinguish us, but if we allow them to define us at all will ultimately, says Jesus, disgrace us.
We do not determine who is worthy to sit at God's table. The counterintuitive message in here, of course, tells us that our table ought to be surrounded by strangers - strangers who are poor, crippled, lame, blind, widows, orphans and resident aliens. That is, and the Pharisees are not alone in this whatsoever, "birds of a feather flock together" is not what the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus has in mind when commanding us to "remember the Sabbath."
Shabbat Shalom - two words we would do well to hold together. Shabbat Shalom - two words that in essence sum up what God means when commanding us that to Love God and Love Neighbor means to participate in God's reign today, here and now. Who we invite to sit at God's table defines who we are and whose we are.
Perhaps inviting Jesus to dinner and to our Sabbath Worship is just what we need to do - on a more regular basis! Shabbat Shalom!
Amen.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
A Dog In The Manger!
15 August 2010/Proper 15 - Isaiah 5:1-7/Hebrews 11:(1-28),29-12:2/Luke 12:49-56
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter's at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
The Dog In The Manger
The Bible can be said to be a record of God's creation and how God intends for this creation to be tended, cared for, kept in some sort of conformity with God's dream. Which, as Howard Thurman has observed, is a dream of "a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky." The great surprise in the Biblical record is that God's primary strategy for carrying out this dream of his is us - that's right, we are created male and female in the image of God (imago Dei) to take care of creation the way God wants it to be.
Walter Rauschenbusch, in a little book titled The Social Principles of Jesus (1916) notes what he saw happening in the world of 1916, "The desire for private property has been the chief outlet for selfish impulses antagonistic to public welfare. To gain private wealth men have slaughtered the forests, contaminated the rivers, drained the fertility of the soil, monopolized the mineral wealth of the country, enslaved childhood, double-yoked motherhood, exhausted manhood, hog-tied community undertakings, and generally acted as the dog in the manger toward humanity." p. 192 This could have been written on this morning's OP-ED Page!
So does it surprise us that from time to time God is disappointed in our overall stewardship of creation? Today we get two examples of God's frustration with our care for the earth and care for one another - especially those "others" who are utterly unlike us, without resources (widows, orphans and resident aliens as the Bible describes them), and even our enemies - those who wish us harm and those whom we have injured or offended.
First, there is God in Isaiah, some eight hundred years or so before Jesus, who had chosen Israel to be a little demonstration community of how this all should work. The people of God are God's vineyard, a sort of model organic vineyard taking the most meticulous care of the vineyard as well as the people who worked it, visited it and lived around it. It takes no careful exegesis to hear the utter pathos in God's lament, "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done it? ... I looked for justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"
The last time God had heard such a cry they were slaves in Egypt. The Exodus, the Wilderness experience, the giving of the Land, the Law, and especially the law of the Sabbath, was to have resulted in a land of justice and peace among people and with the land - instead there was an increasing gap between the haves and have nots, and the Land was being wasted, and bloodshed was rampant.
Fast forward eight hundred years. God as Jesus comes to live among us once and for all to show us how to be the demonstration community he has always dreamed we would be. We should note these are hard times - life under Roman rule was a vast and harsh, culturally diverse set of societies, unrelated by languages, economics, religions and histories, all forced into political unity by a brutal military presence. The vast majority of those under Roman rule resented or hated the forced political unity, and experienced few, if any, benefits from its social and economic structures. It was a non-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, status-based world of haves and have nots - mostly have nots. Bass, Diana Butler, A People’s History of Christianity, p.27
Jesus came to change all of that - to draw to himself a community of people dedicated to living out God's dream. Suddenly he finds himself in Luke's gospel surrounded by people like his own disciples arguing over who will be the greatest when God's Kingdom supplants Rome, wanting to rain fire on their Samaritan enemies, and quibbling siblings, whom he has already labeled "fools," more interested in how much they can get out of their father's estate rather than how much they can contribute to the new community of Christ - a world which Luke displays later in the Book of Acts as a community that shares all resources so as to provide for "the least of our sisters and brothers."
So can we blame him if he appears to be out of sorts? Feeling much as he did eight hundred years earlier he must feel like saying all over again, What more can I do for you to show you how this all works? Love of God and Love of Neighbor - devotion and ethical behavior. Can I break it down any more simply than this? I am not here to validate the status quo - that is devotion and identity to family kinship groups is no longer going to work. Devotion to God and to loving others will. Does anyone hear me at all? Turns out God does care what we are or are not doing.
Tucked neatly between these two episodes of Divine Frustration is the witness of someone who evidently does hear him and does get it - the mysterious and unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews - curiously regarded these days as "not a letter" and "not to Hebrews at all," but a treatise to a group of early Christian who seem to have already lost their way prior to 70 CE.
It is by one who understands that Christianity at its outset was not a set of beliefs so much as a new way of life - a way utterly different than life in the Roman Empire. By enacting the teachings of Jesus, Christianity changed and improved the lives of people and served as a practical spiritual pathway. Why did Christianity succeed in the Roman Empire? Not because it offered “other worldly compensations for suffering in this life,” rather it was a faith that “delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now.” All grounded in a faith in which we are to Love God and Love our Neighbor. It was this faith that propelled them to do things in ways contrary to the Empire. Ibid, p.26
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen...By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." That is how this eleventh chapter of Hebrews begins - and it catalogs, beginning with Abel, Abraham, Noah, Rahab and others, just what people who have grasped God's dream have done, not knowing how things would eventually work out!
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God.Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." Hebrews 12: 1-2
Back in 1916 Rauschenbusch cites this passage from Hebrews when he writes, "The man who wrote the little treatise from which this is quoted saw the history of humanity summed up in the life spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is the quality of mind which sees things before they are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Read Hebrews 11. So he calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with [people] running a race in an amphitheatre packed with all the generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them to keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet persons of all time." ibid p.189
There are those who have gone before. There are those who see the dream now. There are those who will be greeted by Jesus at the goal. The good news is that because we look to Jesus to perfect our faith, we can be like them. The only question is, will we? Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter's at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
The Dog In The Manger
The Bible can be said to be a record of God's creation and how God intends for this creation to be tended, cared for, kept in some sort of conformity with God's dream. Which, as Howard Thurman has observed, is a dream of "a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky." The great surprise in the Biblical record is that God's primary strategy for carrying out this dream of his is us - that's right, we are created male and female in the image of God (imago Dei) to take care of creation the way God wants it to be.
Walter Rauschenbusch, in a little book titled The Social Principles of Jesus (1916) notes what he saw happening in the world of 1916, "The desire for private property has been the chief outlet for selfish impulses antagonistic to public welfare. To gain private wealth men have slaughtered the forests, contaminated the rivers, drained the fertility of the soil, monopolized the mineral wealth of the country, enslaved childhood, double-yoked motherhood, exhausted manhood, hog-tied community undertakings, and generally acted as the dog in the manger toward humanity." p. 192 This could have been written on this morning's OP-ED Page!
So does it surprise us that from time to time God is disappointed in our overall stewardship of creation? Today we get two examples of God's frustration with our care for the earth and care for one another - especially those "others" who are utterly unlike us, without resources (widows, orphans and resident aliens as the Bible describes them), and even our enemies - those who wish us harm and those whom we have injured or offended.
First, there is God in Isaiah, some eight hundred years or so before Jesus, who had chosen Israel to be a little demonstration community of how this all should work. The people of God are God's vineyard, a sort of model organic vineyard taking the most meticulous care of the vineyard as well as the people who worked it, visited it and lived around it. It takes no careful exegesis to hear the utter pathos in God's lament, "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done it? ... I looked for justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"
The last time God had heard such a cry they were slaves in Egypt. The Exodus, the Wilderness experience, the giving of the Land, the Law, and especially the law of the Sabbath, was to have resulted in a land of justice and peace among people and with the land - instead there was an increasing gap between the haves and have nots, and the Land was being wasted, and bloodshed was rampant.
Fast forward eight hundred years. God as Jesus comes to live among us once and for all to show us how to be the demonstration community he has always dreamed we would be. We should note these are hard times - life under Roman rule was a vast and harsh, culturally diverse set of societies, unrelated by languages, economics, religions and histories, all forced into political unity by a brutal military presence. The vast majority of those under Roman rule resented or hated the forced political unity, and experienced few, if any, benefits from its social and economic structures. It was a non-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, status-based world of haves and have nots - mostly have nots. Bass, Diana Butler, A People’s History of Christianity, p.27
Jesus came to change all of that - to draw to himself a community of people dedicated to living out God's dream. Suddenly he finds himself in Luke's gospel surrounded by people like his own disciples arguing over who will be the greatest when God's Kingdom supplants Rome, wanting to rain fire on their Samaritan enemies, and quibbling siblings, whom he has already labeled "fools," more interested in how much they can get out of their father's estate rather than how much they can contribute to the new community of Christ - a world which Luke displays later in the Book of Acts as a community that shares all resources so as to provide for "the least of our sisters and brothers."
So can we blame him if he appears to be out of sorts? Feeling much as he did eight hundred years earlier he must feel like saying all over again, What more can I do for you to show you how this all works? Love of God and Love of Neighbor - devotion and ethical behavior. Can I break it down any more simply than this? I am not here to validate the status quo - that is devotion and identity to family kinship groups is no longer going to work. Devotion to God and to loving others will. Does anyone hear me at all? Turns out God does care what we are or are not doing.
Tucked neatly between these two episodes of Divine Frustration is the witness of someone who evidently does hear him and does get it - the mysterious and unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews - curiously regarded these days as "not a letter" and "not to Hebrews at all," but a treatise to a group of early Christian who seem to have already lost their way prior to 70 CE.
It is by one who understands that Christianity at its outset was not a set of beliefs so much as a new way of life - a way utterly different than life in the Roman Empire. By enacting the teachings of Jesus, Christianity changed and improved the lives of people and served as a practical spiritual pathway. Why did Christianity succeed in the Roman Empire? Not because it offered “other worldly compensations for suffering in this life,” rather it was a faith that “delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now.” All grounded in a faith in which we are to Love God and Love our Neighbor. It was this faith that propelled them to do things in ways contrary to the Empire. Ibid, p.26
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen...By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." That is how this eleventh chapter of Hebrews begins - and it catalogs, beginning with Abel, Abraham, Noah, Rahab and others, just what people who have grasped God's dream have done, not knowing how things would eventually work out!
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God.Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." Hebrews 12: 1-2
Back in 1916 Rauschenbusch cites this passage from Hebrews when he writes, "The man who wrote the little treatise from which this is quoted saw the history of humanity summed up in the life spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is the quality of mind which sees things before they are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Read Hebrews 11. So he calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with [people] running a race in an amphitheatre packed with all the generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them to keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet persons of all time." ibid p.189
There are those who have gone before. There are those who see the dream now. There are those who will be greeted by Jesus at the goal. The good news is that because we look to Jesus to perfect our faith, we can be like them. The only question is, will we? Amen.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Give, Forgive, Lead, Deliver
25 July 2010 – Hosea 1:2-10//Luke 11:1-13
Give, Forgive, Lead, Deliver/Ask, Seek, Knock
God’s strategy ratchets up – instead of Amos’ looking at a bowl of fruit or a plumb line as a metaphor for what message the prophet is to carry to a people who have lost their focus on God and neighbor, now in Hosea the Prophet must become the metaphor and marry a whore. That is right. Hosea is the metaphor of adultery and infidelity to demonstrate our need to repent.
Note that the land is distressed. We read elsewhere in Hosea that “Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; end even the fish of the sea are taken away.” (4:3) Look at how we have failed to care for God’s creation. Whole species disappear daily. The land and bays polluted with petro-fertilizers. Hosea could have been written today!
All because the people had made military alliances with foreigners, wasted resources on defense, turned back to worshipping idols (“My people inquire of a thing of wood, and their staff gives them oracles – For a spirit of harlotry has led them away; they have left their God to play the harlot.” 4:12)
Hosea re-visions a new Israel – a new people of God. After marrying Gomer the harlot, after she bears children with other men, Hosea welcomes her home and forgives her as a sign of God’s love for those who repent and return to the Lord! Hosea acts out God’s mercy.
Just as Jesus does - only God’s strategy pushes even further than with Hosea – Jesus is [not was] the word of God that speaks of a new creation. Creation – the very thing we attempt to dominate, manipulate and manage as resource for our own idolatrous addictions!
Even when we create a department like the EPA to restore and care for creation we corrupt it into an institution that serves corporate greed in the name of the gods of Profit and Comfort! Idolatry. Agencies tasked to protect the seas from underwater drilling turn their heads while we drill, baby, drill. Idolatry. We allow mining interests to blow off the tops of mountains, filling in valleys, destroying streams and rivers. Idolatry.
Prophets demand action – and then offer a new vision to lead us into an unknown and unknowable future with God, rather than the all too knowable future of our own making.
Idolatry and its twin, self-serving and self-deceiving Ideology, always want to absolutize some arrangement of power and knowledge, so that we may bow down to the work of our hands. We never seem to get past the Golden Calf! [Brueggemann, Texts That Linger, Words That Explode, p 38]
Prophetic speech and action always exposes, critiques and assaults every phony absolute, for all such absolutes of nation, race, party, consumption, corporate greed or sex will end in death.
Hosea critiqued the twin powers of the monarchy, idolatry, and rapacious destruction of the land. Jesus faced a similar situation – the Imperial Power of Rome which was in the process of setting the template for all such imperialistic empires to acquire more and more territories from which to extract resources to feed the endless appetites of those who manage and manipulate the political and social arenas – which in turn rapes the land. Hosea’s metaphor of whoredom and infidelity is more apt today than ever.
Jesus knows this – and so do his followers who are seeking an avenue by which to address the God of the Exodus/Passover – the God of deliverance, mercy, forgiveness. How shall we pray, they ask? It has been said by Anne Lamott that there really are only two prayers: Thank You, and Help Me! Jesus puts them together. One notes it does not closely resemble our liturgical Lord’s Prayer – that is, the tradition has managed to update, expand and change it as each unfolding era demands a new telling of it.
After acknowledging God as “hallowed,” a way of saying “thank you,” it moves on into what can only be described as rather impetuous and demanding “help me” language: give, forgive, lead and deliver us. Acknowledging we are incapable of giving, forgiving, leading and delivering ourselves. Do we get this when we pray? Jesus’ parable that follows is just as demanding, asserting that the life of prayer is grounded in asking, seeking and knocking until we can awaken God from slumber. It is a lesson in assertiveness training!
This, by the way, is how the story begins way back in Exodus – under devastating oppression in the empire of Egypt, the people wail and moan until God finally hears their cry and delivers them.
Blinded by a political and economic system that demands conspicuous consumption, grounded in covetousness – the perceived “need” for the newest, greatest, biggest innovation of the moment – we find ourselves all the way back in the landscape of Hosea – the empire has gone ideologically idolatrous, and creation is disappearing and falling apart at an alarming rate. Who shall advocate for the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the very land itself? In Hosea, God plans to make a covenant with creation instead of us!
One wonders what sort of new “strategy” and prophetic voice might have a chance of waking us out of our obvious slumber – for it is now we who have been asleep, unable to see the ways in which we sow the signs of our own, and creation’s, destruction? Would that we could look at a plumb line, or look at a basket of fruit and be inspired to repent and re-vision what it means to live in this world of God’s making. Or, learn the lesson of Hosea.
Will a simple re-telling of the Hosea prophecy lead us to see that we are the whoring people? That we are the adulterous generation Hosea and Jesus speak of? That we have simply gone off the rails and are living about as far away from “your kingdom come” as a people can get? Can we see how we are meant to be wedded to creation in a marriage of nature and grace?
It is one thing to give thanks for the bounteous gifts we have been given – Thank you. Yes. But are we capable of crying out, “Help me!” with any sense that what we are really asking is for God to help us from ourselves?
Despite knowing that use of the Internet now eclipses all commercial air travel in use of energy resources, I still use the Internet to research portions of this sermon and feed my need to consume more products more efficiently. Despite knowing that air conditioning accounts for one-fifth of all of our nation’s energy consumption, it took me until two days ago to put our thermostat up two more degrees from 78 to 80.
We desperately want to pray to be forgiven, but do we sincerely pray to be lead and delivered from temptation and evil?
After thirteen chapters of what may be the most harsh condemnation in all of prophetic literature, in the final and fourteenth chapter we hear, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the Lord…I will heal their unfaithfulness, I will love them freely….I will be as dew to Israel; he shall blossom as a lily…” (14:1-2a, 4-5)
There is hope on the unknown horizon of the future – if only we will do as we pray and allow God to lead and deliver us. Even though God is weary of a people who have turned their backs on him and his creation, he stands ready to take us back. If only we will return. Amen.
Give, Forgive, Lead, Deliver/Ask, Seek, Knock
God’s strategy ratchets up – instead of Amos’ looking at a bowl of fruit or a plumb line as a metaphor for what message the prophet is to carry to a people who have lost their focus on God and neighbor, now in Hosea the Prophet must become the metaphor and marry a whore. That is right. Hosea is the metaphor of adultery and infidelity to demonstrate our need to repent.
Note that the land is distressed. We read elsewhere in Hosea that “Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; end even the fish of the sea are taken away.” (4:3) Look at how we have failed to care for God’s creation. Whole species disappear daily. The land and bays polluted with petro-fertilizers. Hosea could have been written today!
All because the people had made military alliances with foreigners, wasted resources on defense, turned back to worshipping idols (“My people inquire of a thing of wood, and their staff gives them oracles – For a spirit of harlotry has led them away; they have left their God to play the harlot.” 4:12)
Hosea re-visions a new Israel – a new people of God. After marrying Gomer the harlot, after she bears children with other men, Hosea welcomes her home and forgives her as a sign of God’s love for those who repent and return to the Lord! Hosea acts out God’s mercy.
Just as Jesus does - only God’s strategy pushes even further than with Hosea – Jesus is [not was] the word of God that speaks of a new creation. Creation – the very thing we attempt to dominate, manipulate and manage as resource for our own idolatrous addictions!
Even when we create a department like the EPA to restore and care for creation we corrupt it into an institution that serves corporate greed in the name of the gods of Profit and Comfort! Idolatry. Agencies tasked to protect the seas from underwater drilling turn their heads while we drill, baby, drill. Idolatry. We allow mining interests to blow off the tops of mountains, filling in valleys, destroying streams and rivers. Idolatry.
Prophets demand action – and then offer a new vision to lead us into an unknown and unknowable future with God, rather than the all too knowable future of our own making.
Idolatry and its twin, self-serving and self-deceiving Ideology, always want to absolutize some arrangement of power and knowledge, so that we may bow down to the work of our hands. We never seem to get past the Golden Calf! [Brueggemann, Texts That Linger, Words That Explode, p 38]
Prophetic speech and action always exposes, critiques and assaults every phony absolute, for all such absolutes of nation, race, party, consumption, corporate greed or sex will end in death.
Hosea critiqued the twin powers of the monarchy, idolatry, and rapacious destruction of the land. Jesus faced a similar situation – the Imperial Power of Rome which was in the process of setting the template for all such imperialistic empires to acquire more and more territories from which to extract resources to feed the endless appetites of those who manage and manipulate the political and social arenas – which in turn rapes the land. Hosea’s metaphor of whoredom and infidelity is more apt today than ever.
Jesus knows this – and so do his followers who are seeking an avenue by which to address the God of the Exodus/Passover – the God of deliverance, mercy, forgiveness. How shall we pray, they ask? It has been said by Anne Lamott that there really are only two prayers: Thank You, and Help Me! Jesus puts them together. One notes it does not closely resemble our liturgical Lord’s Prayer – that is, the tradition has managed to update, expand and change it as each unfolding era demands a new telling of it.
After acknowledging God as “hallowed,” a way of saying “thank you,” it moves on into what can only be described as rather impetuous and demanding “help me” language: give, forgive, lead and deliver us. Acknowledging we are incapable of giving, forgiving, leading and delivering ourselves. Do we get this when we pray? Jesus’ parable that follows is just as demanding, asserting that the life of prayer is grounded in asking, seeking and knocking until we can awaken God from slumber. It is a lesson in assertiveness training!
This, by the way, is how the story begins way back in Exodus – under devastating oppression in the empire of Egypt, the people wail and moan until God finally hears their cry and delivers them.
Blinded by a political and economic system that demands conspicuous consumption, grounded in covetousness – the perceived “need” for the newest, greatest, biggest innovation of the moment – we find ourselves all the way back in the landscape of Hosea – the empire has gone ideologically idolatrous, and creation is disappearing and falling apart at an alarming rate. Who shall advocate for the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the very land itself? In Hosea, God plans to make a covenant with creation instead of us!
One wonders what sort of new “strategy” and prophetic voice might have a chance of waking us out of our obvious slumber – for it is now we who have been asleep, unable to see the ways in which we sow the signs of our own, and creation’s, destruction? Would that we could look at a plumb line, or look at a basket of fruit and be inspired to repent and re-vision what it means to live in this world of God’s making. Or, learn the lesson of Hosea.
Will a simple re-telling of the Hosea prophecy lead us to see that we are the whoring people? That we are the adulterous generation Hosea and Jesus speak of? That we have simply gone off the rails and are living about as far away from “your kingdom come” as a people can get? Can we see how we are meant to be wedded to creation in a marriage of nature and grace?
It is one thing to give thanks for the bounteous gifts we have been given – Thank you. Yes. But are we capable of crying out, “Help me!” with any sense that what we are really asking is for God to help us from ourselves?
Despite knowing that use of the Internet now eclipses all commercial air travel in use of energy resources, I still use the Internet to research portions of this sermon and feed my need to consume more products more efficiently. Despite knowing that air conditioning accounts for one-fifth of all of our nation’s energy consumption, it took me until two days ago to put our thermostat up two more degrees from 78 to 80.
We desperately want to pray to be forgiven, but do we sincerely pray to be lead and delivered from temptation and evil?
After thirteen chapters of what may be the most harsh condemnation in all of prophetic literature, in the final and fourteenth chapter we hear, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the Lord…I will heal their unfaithfulness, I will love them freely….I will be as dew to Israel; he shall blossom as a lily…” (14:1-2a, 4-5)
There is hope on the unknown horizon of the future – if only we will do as we pray and allow God to lead and deliver us. Even though God is weary of a people who have turned their backs on him and his creation, he stands ready to take us back. If only we will return. Amen.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Standards
11 July 2010/Proper 10C - Psalm 82: 3-4 Luke 10:25-37
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter's at Ellicott Mills
The Standards
The Reverend Robert Bonner was a mentor of mine - taught me much of what I know about Stewardship and Parish Ministry. He often told a story about his son Bruce. Bruce was a football player in Texas where they take football mighty seriously. In the off-season the coach required his players to be on the track team for conditioning. Bruce's high school was not all that big, and as they were handing out track team roles, they got to High Jump and Bruce was the one boy left - so High Jump it was! Now as a football player Bruce was not exactly built like a high jumper - long and lean - but was rather shorter and stout. Nevertheless, every night when Bob came home, there was Bruce in the backyard with a broom handle suspended between two jury-rigged poles. They call those poles "standards" - two standards hold the high jump bar. Bob would ask Bruce at dinner every night, "How high can you jump, son?" And Bruce would hold his hand just below his shoulders and say, "This high!"
Along came the day for the first track meet. Bruce was anxious about the high jump. Bob said, "Bruce, just do your best. That's all any of us can do." Off Bruce went. Bob had to do some work for the church that day and so could not attend the track meet. When he came home he asked," Bruce, how did the High Jump go today?"
"Well," said Bruce, "remember I told you I could jump this high?" pointing to just below his shoulders. "Yes," said this Father. "Well, today they started with the bar this high," he said, pointing just below his chin." "That's OK, son, all that matters is you tried your best....I am proud of you just the same." God is like that - sets the bar high and forgives us the difference.
A lawyer comes to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" That is, what are the standards - what does God expect from us? Jesus says, "There are two standards," just like the high jump. " You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." In fact those two standards are so basic to following Jesus that the Church used to begin the Eucharist every week with just those words of Jesus: you shall love God and love your neighbor. We call this The Great Commandment, the cornerstone of Great Command Christianity.
When asked, "And who is my neighbor?" and just what does this love look like? Jesus answers with a story. It is about a man who is mugged on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite, we are told, pass him by without offering any assistance. This suggests to me that whoever compiled Luke was not all that familiar with life in Israel since the priests are Levites, but that is for another day. As we all know, a Samaritan comes by and helps the man - thus the expression, Good Samaritan. Not only does he help the man, but provides money for extended care. For the lawyer, probably a Pharisee, to say the Samaritan was the only one who showed mercy is quite surprising - since Samaritans were considered unclean, unspiritual enemies of Israel because they refused to worship in Jerusalem with everyone else.
The point of the story, of course, is that the person you least likely expect to be your neighbor is your neighbor and you are meant to love them just the same as Aunt Sally and Grandpa Joe.
That is, Jesus sets the bar pretty high. Not at the height we are used to living at, but always just a little bit higher. This is where God's mercy, or forgiveness comes in. Later Jesus says, "I want you to be perfect just like God is perfect." Whoa, Nelly! That is setting the bar pretty high! But along with that comes a promise - for those who try to jump over the bar but miss, I will forgive them the difference, as long as they love God and love their neighbor - all neighbors, always and everywhere. I am proud of you just the same.
Back around 1993 my friend and mentor Bob developed a malignant brain tumor. It was a difficult time for Bob and his family. One Saturday as I was rattling about the parish office, the phone rang. I confess I don't always answer the phone on Saturday, but this time something within me said to answer that call. It was Bob. I was shocked. He said most days he could not really talk much, but on good days he liked to call his friends and was thinking of me. I was truly humbled. Then he said, "Do you want to hear the rest of the story about Bruce?" "Of course! I said.
Well, says Bob, Bruce is dyslexic, so he was in high school an extra year and was ineligible to play football, but come fall Bob saw Bruce going to practices every day. He asked him why? Bruce said, "Well, I know that if I don't do something with discipline I'm going to get myself in trouble, so I do it for myself. But also, I am bigger and stronger than most of the team, so I figure if I go out there and push them around it is better for the team as well."
I do it for myself, and I do it for the team. That is what the Big Command Christianity is all about: doing something that is good for yourself and good for the team - God's team that is.
Standards. They hold the bar high inviting us, challenging us, to do better than we think we can. Mercy. God in Christ stands ready to forgive us if only we will try our best to love God and love neighbor. Do it for yourself, and do it for the team. You will be glad you did.
Thank you Bob, and keep jumping Bruce, now a priest in the Episcopal Church. Amen.
Love the Lord with all your heart
With all your Soul
And all your mind
Love your neighbor as yourself
Every one
All of the time
Jump as high
As you can jump
Look as far
As you can see
Don't give up
And you will find
You are the person
God wants you to be
> Copyright Sounds Divine
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter's at Ellicott Mills
The Standards
The Reverend Robert Bonner was a mentor of mine - taught me much of what I know about Stewardship and Parish Ministry. He often told a story about his son Bruce. Bruce was a football player in Texas where they take football mighty seriously. In the off-season the coach required his players to be on the track team for conditioning. Bruce's high school was not all that big, and as they were handing out track team roles, they got to High Jump and Bruce was the one boy left - so High Jump it was! Now as a football player Bruce was not exactly built like a high jumper - long and lean - but was rather shorter and stout. Nevertheless, every night when Bob came home, there was Bruce in the backyard with a broom handle suspended between two jury-rigged poles. They call those poles "standards" - two standards hold the high jump bar. Bob would ask Bruce at dinner every night, "How high can you jump, son?" And Bruce would hold his hand just below his shoulders and say, "This high!"
Along came the day for the first track meet. Bruce was anxious about the high jump. Bob said, "Bruce, just do your best. That's all any of us can do." Off Bruce went. Bob had to do some work for the church that day and so could not attend the track meet. When he came home he asked," Bruce, how did the High Jump go today?"
"Well," said Bruce, "remember I told you I could jump this high?" pointing to just below his shoulders. "Yes," said this Father. "Well, today they started with the bar this high," he said, pointing just below his chin." "That's OK, son, all that matters is you tried your best....I am proud of you just the same." God is like that - sets the bar high and forgives us the difference.
A lawyer comes to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" That is, what are the standards - what does God expect from us? Jesus says, "There are two standards," just like the high jump. " You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." In fact those two standards are so basic to following Jesus that the Church used to begin the Eucharist every week with just those words of Jesus: you shall love God and love your neighbor. We call this The Great Commandment, the cornerstone of Great Command Christianity.
When asked, "And who is my neighbor?" and just what does this love look like? Jesus answers with a story. It is about a man who is mugged on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite, we are told, pass him by without offering any assistance. This suggests to me that whoever compiled Luke was not all that familiar with life in Israel since the priests are Levites, but that is for another day. As we all know, a Samaritan comes by and helps the man - thus the expression, Good Samaritan. Not only does he help the man, but provides money for extended care. For the lawyer, probably a Pharisee, to say the Samaritan was the only one who showed mercy is quite surprising - since Samaritans were considered unclean, unspiritual enemies of Israel because they refused to worship in Jerusalem with everyone else.
The point of the story, of course, is that the person you least likely expect to be your neighbor is your neighbor and you are meant to love them just the same as Aunt Sally and Grandpa Joe.
That is, Jesus sets the bar pretty high. Not at the height we are used to living at, but always just a little bit higher. This is where God's mercy, or forgiveness comes in. Later Jesus says, "I want you to be perfect just like God is perfect." Whoa, Nelly! That is setting the bar pretty high! But along with that comes a promise - for those who try to jump over the bar but miss, I will forgive them the difference, as long as they love God and love their neighbor - all neighbors, always and everywhere. I am proud of you just the same.
Back around 1993 my friend and mentor Bob developed a malignant brain tumor. It was a difficult time for Bob and his family. One Saturday as I was rattling about the parish office, the phone rang. I confess I don't always answer the phone on Saturday, but this time something within me said to answer that call. It was Bob. I was shocked. He said most days he could not really talk much, but on good days he liked to call his friends and was thinking of me. I was truly humbled. Then he said, "Do you want to hear the rest of the story about Bruce?" "Of course! I said.
Well, says Bob, Bruce is dyslexic, so he was in high school an extra year and was ineligible to play football, but come fall Bob saw Bruce going to practices every day. He asked him why? Bruce said, "Well, I know that if I don't do something with discipline I'm going to get myself in trouble, so I do it for myself. But also, I am bigger and stronger than most of the team, so I figure if I go out there and push them around it is better for the team as well."
I do it for myself, and I do it for the team. That is what the Big Command Christianity is all about: doing something that is good for yourself and good for the team - God's team that is.
Standards. They hold the bar high inviting us, challenging us, to do better than we think we can. Mercy. God in Christ stands ready to forgive us if only we will try our best to love God and love neighbor. Do it for yourself, and do it for the team. You will be glad you did.
Thank you Bob, and keep jumping Bruce, now a priest in the Episcopal Church. Amen.
Love the Lord with all your heart
With all your Soul
And all your mind
Love your neighbor as yourself
Every one
All of the time
Jump as high
As you can jump
Look as far
As you can see
Don't give up
And you will find
You are the person
God wants you to be
> Copyright Sounds Divine
Saturday, June 19, 2010
What Are You Doing Here?
20 June 2010/Proper 7C - 1Kings 19:1-15a * Luke 8:26-39
Often after all is said and done there are only questions. Only questions remain. As Elie Wiesel has often suggested, God loves questions - it is only we who are left unsettled. So we turn to stories like the ones before us this morning seeking answers to our questions, only to discover that God has other questions for us.
Like, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Despite God not being in earthquake, wind and fire, despite God's emerging from " a sound of sheer silence," we can imagine that when God asks this question it reverberates like rolling thunder across the plains of the mid-west, shaking every thing and every one in its path. Addressed to us it should at least make us shudder: "What are you doing here?" It appears that that is what God wants to know. What are we to say? What is our answer? What are we doing here? Or, for that matter, what are we doing anywhere? Anywhere at all?
All the times one might wish for an encounter, a verifiable experience of the Almighty, seem to vanish in a mist when once we are face to face with God and the questions are put directly to us. Unless we can answer as Elijah does, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts..." our answers will no doubt fall somewhat short of God's expectations. Or, if God does not have expectations, which is altogether possible after an eternity of trying to communicate with us, God must at least have hope - hope that perhaps this time we have something to say for ourselves.
Suddenly we identify with the "man of the city who had demons." When faced with God's questions for us we want to shout out, "What have you to do with me? I beg you, do not torment me!" After all, we all have demons of one sort or another. Sure, after generations of practice we manage to keep them locked up and out of sight deep down in some mysterious place inside of our selves - or so we want to believe until those unexpected moments when they just come flying out, striking out at whatever or whomever is in our way.
God, aka Jesus, however, refuses to be intimidated by even the worst of our demons and asks what strikes us as an easy question, but one that means to get to the very essence of our being, "What is your name?" Anyone who doesn't believe that these gospel stories have been carefully crafted and edited has no idea how loaded the man's answer really is. For when he says, "Legion," it means a whole lot more than the implied "for many demons had entered him." Legion is a word the people in the Roman Empire knew all too well - a Roman Legion was comprised of about 6,000 soldiers and an equal number of support troops. To any and all residents of the Roman Empire these legions represented an occupying force whose presence meant loss of control over every dimension of their own society and lives.
The Tenth Roman Legion, by the time Luke tells this tale, had utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple - and isn't it curious that the symbol flying on the banners of the Tenth Legion was that of a Boar - a pig, a sign of being unclean, of being gentile, of being "other" - now the recipient body for the demons named legion that tumble headfirst into the sea and drowned. Sometimes Bible Study and Exegesis does pay off in a deeper understanding of these otherwise quaint and provincial stories.
One expects a cheer to go up from the crowd! The man is clothed and in his right mind. The Legion of demons are gone. Someone who has the power to challenge the forces of darkness and vanquish them is in the neighborhood. But no. The Pork Futures market has just collapsed. The man who was previously under some sort of control, ostracized from the rest, is now uncontrollably back in their midst. So all the people, not some of the people, or even a lot of the people, but all the people ask Jesus to leave. And without as much as a moment's hesitation, Jesus complies with their request.
Understandably the man, now healed, now made whole, asks to go with Jesus. Obviously he has not heard how the voyage over had almost capsized the boat and drowned the disciples like the pigs. He does not ask to go, we are told that he begs to go with them no matter how dangerous it might be to do so.
Our text has Jesus telling him to go home. The word there is oiko - household - from which we also get oikonomos - household management, or in English, Economy; and oikologia - study of the household/household relations, or in English Ecology. It turns out this story does have something to say about the economy and about ecology.
"Go home and tell others what God has done for you." And that is just what the man does. As Jesus and the disciples head back across the sea, the man tells the story of what God has done for him.
With any luck we are left to discover that vanquishing the Tenth Roman Legion, seeking righteous revenge, is not, at the end of the day, the lesson embedded in this tale. Nor does following Jesus mean fleeing where you now find yourself. To follow Jesus can mean to stay right where you are to tell the tale.
Leaving us, as always with God's questions for us. What has God done for you? Have you told anyone your story and God's story? Which is just one more way of God asking, What are you doing here? Believe it or not, God really wants to know, God hopes we have something new to say - for the future of the whole world depends on our answers to His questions. Amen.
Often after all is said and done there are only questions. Only questions remain. As Elie Wiesel has often suggested, God loves questions - it is only we who are left unsettled. So we turn to stories like the ones before us this morning seeking answers to our questions, only to discover that God has other questions for us.
Like, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Despite God not being in earthquake, wind and fire, despite God's emerging from " a sound of sheer silence," we can imagine that when God asks this question it reverberates like rolling thunder across the plains of the mid-west, shaking every thing and every one in its path. Addressed to us it should at least make us shudder: "What are you doing here?" It appears that that is what God wants to know. What are we to say? What is our answer? What are we doing here? Or, for that matter, what are we doing anywhere? Anywhere at all?
All the times one might wish for an encounter, a verifiable experience of the Almighty, seem to vanish in a mist when once we are face to face with God and the questions are put directly to us. Unless we can answer as Elijah does, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts..." our answers will no doubt fall somewhat short of God's expectations. Or, if God does not have expectations, which is altogether possible after an eternity of trying to communicate with us, God must at least have hope - hope that perhaps this time we have something to say for ourselves.
Suddenly we identify with the "man of the city who had demons." When faced with God's questions for us we want to shout out, "What have you to do with me? I beg you, do not torment me!" After all, we all have demons of one sort or another. Sure, after generations of practice we manage to keep them locked up and out of sight deep down in some mysterious place inside of our selves - or so we want to believe until those unexpected moments when they just come flying out, striking out at whatever or whomever is in our way.
God, aka Jesus, however, refuses to be intimidated by even the worst of our demons and asks what strikes us as an easy question, but one that means to get to the very essence of our being, "What is your name?" Anyone who doesn't believe that these gospel stories have been carefully crafted and edited has no idea how loaded the man's answer really is. For when he says, "Legion," it means a whole lot more than the implied "for many demons had entered him." Legion is a word the people in the Roman Empire knew all too well - a Roman Legion was comprised of about 6,000 soldiers and an equal number of support troops. To any and all residents of the Roman Empire these legions represented an occupying force whose presence meant loss of control over every dimension of their own society and lives.
The Tenth Roman Legion, by the time Luke tells this tale, had utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple - and isn't it curious that the symbol flying on the banners of the Tenth Legion was that of a Boar - a pig, a sign of being unclean, of being gentile, of being "other" - now the recipient body for the demons named legion that tumble headfirst into the sea and drowned. Sometimes Bible Study and Exegesis does pay off in a deeper understanding of these otherwise quaint and provincial stories.
One expects a cheer to go up from the crowd! The man is clothed and in his right mind. The Legion of demons are gone. Someone who has the power to challenge the forces of darkness and vanquish them is in the neighborhood. But no. The Pork Futures market has just collapsed. The man who was previously under some sort of control, ostracized from the rest, is now uncontrollably back in their midst. So all the people, not some of the people, or even a lot of the people, but all the people ask Jesus to leave. And without as much as a moment's hesitation, Jesus complies with their request.
Understandably the man, now healed, now made whole, asks to go with Jesus. Obviously he has not heard how the voyage over had almost capsized the boat and drowned the disciples like the pigs. He does not ask to go, we are told that he begs to go with them no matter how dangerous it might be to do so.
Our text has Jesus telling him to go home. The word there is oiko - household - from which we also get oikonomos - household management, or in English, Economy; and oikologia - study of the household/household relations, or in English Ecology. It turns out this story does have something to say about the economy and about ecology.
"Go home and tell others what God has done for you." And that is just what the man does. As Jesus and the disciples head back across the sea, the man tells the story of what God has done for him.
With any luck we are left to discover that vanquishing the Tenth Roman Legion, seeking righteous revenge, is not, at the end of the day, the lesson embedded in this tale. Nor does following Jesus mean fleeing where you now find yourself. To follow Jesus can mean to stay right where you are to tell the tale.
Leaving us, as always with God's questions for us. What has God done for you? Have you told anyone your story and God's story? Which is just one more way of God asking, What are you doing here? Believe it or not, God really wants to know, God hopes we have something new to say - for the future of the whole world depends on our answers to His questions. Amen.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Just Beginning!
Pentecost 2010
23 May 2010
Acts 2: 1-21
John 14: 8-17, 25-27 (RCL)
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek
Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, Maryland
“But I will always be with you….”
Charles Lloyd, the world renowned tenor sax, flute and virtually anything like a woodwind virtuoso, who gave us Forest Flower at Monterey Pop, and Billy Higgins, the quintessential west coast jazz drummer and sideman for literally hundreds of recordings the past fifty years or so, worked on an extended suite in the months leading up to Higgins’ death in 2001. It is a varied and extraordinary musical meditation titled Which Way Is East (EMC recording, 1878/79). Both musicians play an array of instruments and sing.
The music is written and played from the perspective that Billy Higgins is leaving this world. In the booklet that accompanies the two-CD set, there is a conversation between Lloyd and Higgins as Higgins lies in bed. The end of this conversation about their musical collaboration goes like this:
Higgins: With my instrument (the drums) it’s like I have to support so many people, so the creator keeps me around here longer, just because he know I got a lot of stuff to do. And with the drums being the whole bottom, I got to do what I got to do, so I don’t even question it….
Lloyd: We come through here, we sing our song, nobody knows us, and we’re gone.
Higgins: Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me… Hey, man! I’m tellin’ you, that’s a whole suite right there! That’s two guys, just two guys sittin’ on top of the mountain. You talkin’ about the journey’s end – the journey’s just beginning.
Lloyd: Can I say something to you in all sincerity? This is one of the greatest joys of my life – because what we have been able to do, to share it with you – and for you to peep that it’s real and that it’s blessed … I mean, it just encourages us.
Higgins: Let me tell you something, please…let’s please…this might be the last time we do this. It made me understand a lot of what I’m trying to do…but for us to be able to do it at the right time, in the right space…What we doin’ is getting our fire power to be able to do this on any level. We got to keep workin’ on this music….
Lloyd: Do you mean to tell me you’re going to get up off the bed and come back to work on this with me?
Higgins: I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you.
This sums up the major themes of Pentecost. Pentecost, like jazz for musicians, represents collaboration between God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the rest of us.
And as Billy Higgins says, “Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me.”
This is the essence of the Christian life. This is life lived in the Spirit. We submit to God’s spirit to the point that it is not coming from us, it is going through us.
And here they are, Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins, like Jesus and the disciples, coming to the end of years of collaborating in the life of the Spirit and the life of Truth, whether expressed in ministry or in music, reflecting on what the end of the journey is like.
And Higgins, like Jesus, says this end of the journey is in truth just the beginning of the journey. This may be the end of this form of the journey, but “what we doin’ is getting our fire power to be able to do this on any level… we got to keep workin’…”
Fire power! If that isn’t Pentecost Acts Chapter Two talk I don’t know what is! We keep on working on this thing we call faith and discipleship, kingdom living and life in the Spirit, so we can get our Fire Power together to be able to do this on any level.
So it is with Jesus and us, his disciples, his Pentecostal companions.
Jesus says that he and the Father are sending us the Holy Spirit to continue the work that he does.
So on Pentecost we would do well to remember just what it is Jesus does: teaching people, feeding people, healing people, raising people from the dead, blessing people, gathering people together (especially sinners, outcasts, the lame, the sick, the blind, prostitutes, tax collectors, children, women, fishermen, shepherds, all kinds of people), challenging people, encouraging people, and generally finding new ways to reach out to new kinds of people.
Notice the common denominator: People. All his work involves people.
So to continue the work that he does, we need to reach out and involve ourselves with people, all kinds of people. As we say in our Baptismal Covenant, we need to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Even as we have first been loved by God in Christ.
This love will be hard work and requires all the Fire Power we can muster. For it also means striving for Justice and Peace for all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Not some people, not a lot of people, not most people, but every human being.
Jesus says we can do this.
And then Jesus says something even more remarkable. He says this Holy Spirit we receive in our Baptism, this Fire Power, will enable us, empower us, lead us to do even greater works than he does, “greater works than these.”
People will know we know the Risen Lord Jesus if we do the work he does and greater works than these. What an amazing promise! What an awesome responsibility!
Now Jesus is saying all of this because the disciples are hoping he won’t be leaving them. Or, like the tradition that grew up around all that Jesus said and did, they were hoping at the least he would come back and show them how to keep doing this on any level.
So he replies, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of what I have said to you. Peace, shalom, I leave with you; my Peace, my shalom, I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
The hearts of the disciples must have leapt at these words. Our hearts leap even now.
Does this mean he will get back down here with us and keep on doing these things with us?
“I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you.”
Always, until the end of time. Which because God is eternal, is all of eternity for those who live their lives with God.
We are here today to get our Fire Power together so we can continue to do the things that he does and greater things than these on any level. At any time. At any place.
It is an endless, timeless, eternal collaboration. To be able to do this at all, let alone at the right time and in the right space, is our greatest joy! On Pentecost the journey’s end is the journey’s beginning.
“Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me.”
It’s going through us. Jesus’ Fire Power is going through us. In His Name. With His Spirit. Today we begin getting our Fire Power so we can do this on any level!
We can do this, and more, because in Pentecost, in Baptism and in the Holy Eucharist Jesus says to us, “I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you…You may think we’re talking about the journey’s end – the journey’s just beginning!”
Amen.
23 May 2010
Acts 2: 1-21
John 14: 8-17, 25-27 (RCL)
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek
Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, Maryland
“But I will always be with you….”
Charles Lloyd, the world renowned tenor sax, flute and virtually anything like a woodwind virtuoso, who gave us Forest Flower at Monterey Pop, and Billy Higgins, the quintessential west coast jazz drummer and sideman for literally hundreds of recordings the past fifty years or so, worked on an extended suite in the months leading up to Higgins’ death in 2001. It is a varied and extraordinary musical meditation titled Which Way Is East (EMC recording, 1878/79). Both musicians play an array of instruments and sing.
The music is written and played from the perspective that Billy Higgins is leaving this world. In the booklet that accompanies the two-CD set, there is a conversation between Lloyd and Higgins as Higgins lies in bed. The end of this conversation about their musical collaboration goes like this:
Higgins: With my instrument (the drums) it’s like I have to support so many people, so the creator keeps me around here longer, just because he know I got a lot of stuff to do. And with the drums being the whole bottom, I got to do what I got to do, so I don’t even question it….
Lloyd: We come through here, we sing our song, nobody knows us, and we’re gone.
Higgins: Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me… Hey, man! I’m tellin’ you, that’s a whole suite right there! That’s two guys, just two guys sittin’ on top of the mountain. You talkin’ about the journey’s end – the journey’s just beginning.
Lloyd: Can I say something to you in all sincerity? This is one of the greatest joys of my life – because what we have been able to do, to share it with you – and for you to peep that it’s real and that it’s blessed … I mean, it just encourages us.
Higgins: Let me tell you something, please…let’s please…this might be the last time we do this. It made me understand a lot of what I’m trying to do…but for us to be able to do it at the right time, in the right space…What we doin’ is getting our fire power to be able to do this on any level. We got to keep workin’ on this music….
Lloyd: Do you mean to tell me you’re going to get up off the bed and come back to work on this with me?
Higgins: I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you.
This sums up the major themes of Pentecost. Pentecost, like jazz for musicians, represents collaboration between God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the rest of us.
And as Billy Higgins says, “Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me.”
This is the essence of the Christian life. This is life lived in the Spirit. We submit to God’s spirit to the point that it is not coming from us, it is going through us.
And here they are, Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins, like Jesus and the disciples, coming to the end of years of collaborating in the life of the Spirit and the life of Truth, whether expressed in ministry or in music, reflecting on what the end of the journey is like.
And Higgins, like Jesus, says this end of the journey is in truth just the beginning of the journey. This may be the end of this form of the journey, but “what we doin’ is getting our fire power to be able to do this on any level… we got to keep workin’…”
Fire power! If that isn’t Pentecost Acts Chapter Two talk I don’t know what is! We keep on working on this thing we call faith and discipleship, kingdom living and life in the Spirit, so we can get our Fire Power together to be able to do this on any level.
So it is with Jesus and us, his disciples, his Pentecostal companions.
Jesus says that he and the Father are sending us the Holy Spirit to continue the work that he does.
So on Pentecost we would do well to remember just what it is Jesus does: teaching people, feeding people, healing people, raising people from the dead, blessing people, gathering people together (especially sinners, outcasts, the lame, the sick, the blind, prostitutes, tax collectors, children, women, fishermen, shepherds, all kinds of people), challenging people, encouraging people, and generally finding new ways to reach out to new kinds of people.
Notice the common denominator: People. All his work involves people.
So to continue the work that he does, we need to reach out and involve ourselves with people, all kinds of people. As we say in our Baptismal Covenant, we need to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Even as we have first been loved by God in Christ.
This love will be hard work and requires all the Fire Power we can muster. For it also means striving for Justice and Peace for all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Not some people, not a lot of people, not most people, but every human being.
Jesus says we can do this.
And then Jesus says something even more remarkable. He says this Holy Spirit we receive in our Baptism, this Fire Power, will enable us, empower us, lead us to do even greater works than he does, “greater works than these.”
People will know we know the Risen Lord Jesus if we do the work he does and greater works than these. What an amazing promise! What an awesome responsibility!
Now Jesus is saying all of this because the disciples are hoping he won’t be leaving them. Or, like the tradition that grew up around all that Jesus said and did, they were hoping at the least he would come back and show them how to keep doing this on any level.
So he replies, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of what I have said to you. Peace, shalom, I leave with you; my Peace, my shalom, I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
The hearts of the disciples must have leapt at these words. Our hearts leap even now.
Does this mean he will get back down here with us and keep on doing these things with us?
“I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you.”
Always, until the end of time. Which because God is eternal, is all of eternity for those who live their lives with God.
We are here today to get our Fire Power together so we can continue to do the things that he does and greater things than these on any level. At any time. At any place.
It is an endless, timeless, eternal collaboration. To be able to do this at all, let alone at the right time and in the right space, is our greatest joy! On Pentecost the journey’s end is the journey’s beginning.
“Anything you do, if it is in the spirit, it’s going to be right. So you submit to the point where it’s not coming from me, it’s going through me.”
It’s going through us. Jesus’ Fire Power is going through us. In His Name. With His Spirit. Today we begin getting our Fire Power so we can do this on any level!
We can do this, and more, because in Pentecost, in Baptism and in the Holy Eucharist Jesus says to us, “I didn’t say I would be there, but I will always be with you…You may think we’re talking about the journey’s end – the journey’s just beginning!”
Amen.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The Eighteenth Letter of the Alphabet
9 May 2010/Easter 6C - Revelation 21:10, 22-2:5/John 14:23-29
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter's at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
"...the word you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me...Peace I leave with you; my Peace I give to you." John 14
"On either side of the River [of Life] is the Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Revelation 22
In his book, Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom [United Church Press, 1982], Walter Brueggemann asserts that the central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of Creation is One, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature; or as the African-American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman expresses it, "a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky." And further, this vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation.
And if one were to choose a single word out of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to sum up this vision of love, loyalty, grace, justice, blessing, fruitfulness, righteousness, salvation and stewardship, that word would be shalom. Which is the very word Jesus gives us - shalom, peace, "Shalom I leave with you; my Shalom I give to you." This, he says, is not his word, but is from "the Father who sent me." Shalom, concludes Brueggemann, is "the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation. It refers to all those resources which make communal harmony joyous, effective and fruitful." (p.15-16)
Indeed, that other John, John the Revelator, re-calls our attention to the trees in the Garden of God's creation - the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are free to partake of the Tree of Life endlessly and forever, and the leaves of this tree "are for the healing of the nations." No doubt we could use a steady diet of these leaves about right now!
Yet, from the very beginning we appear to have believed The Big Lie: if you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, says the tempter, "you will be like God." Genesis 3:5 The problem here is two-fold, 1) we were already created in the image of God, imago Dei, and so were already "like God," and 2) rather than eating the healing and nourishing fruit of the Tree of Life, we have increasingly convinced ourselves that more and more Knowledge holds the promise or our salvation.
Note that this tree offers either/or, binary or dualistic choices, which have served such lofty worlds as science, mathematics, logic, mechanics and technology fairly well, but already we have begun to see the limitations of such knowledge - just ask the folks off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico who are watching an ecological disaster float towards their homes and livelihoods at this very moment; and which knowledge has given us such paradoxical capacities so as to harness the power of the atom while at the same time unleashing the atom's total potential to destroy all life as we know it.
So we need to re-turn, repent, turn back to the Tree of Life which some like Richard Rohr see rooted in the non-dual life of contemplative prayer, and a life of Shalom, a life of "resources which make communal harmony joyous, effective and fruitful," rather than anxious, ineffective and wasteful. Curiously, "resources" begins with "r", the eighteenth letter of the alphabet - a letter that gives us three other "r's" that may be just the resources we need to re-turn to the Tree of Life, moving away from our addiction to the Tree of Knowledge: reduce, reuse and recycle. Thanks to Bob Dorough (of Miles Davis and School House Rock fame) and Jack Johnson we can re-member how we can live a life of shalom with our planet [try here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSM2riAEX4U&feature=related]:
Three it's a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
Somewhere in ancient mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number
The Past, the Present and the Future,
Faith Hope and Charity
The heart, the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number
Because two times three is six
And three times six is eighteen
And the eighteenth letter
in the alphabet is R
We've got three R's
we're going to talk about today
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Well, if you're going to the market
to buy some juice
You've got to bring your own bags
and you learn to Reduce your waste,
we've got to learn to Reduce
And if your brother or your sister's
got some cool clothes
You could try them on
before you buy some more of those
Reuse, we've got to learn to Reuse
And if the first two R's don't work out
and if you've got to make some trash
Don't throw it out, Recycle,
we've got to learn to recycle,
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (4X)
Because three it's a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter's at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
"...the word you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me...Peace I leave with you; my Peace I give to you." John 14
"On either side of the River [of Life] is the Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Revelation 22
In his book, Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom [United Church Press, 1982], Walter Brueggemann asserts that the central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of Creation is One, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature; or as the African-American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman expresses it, "a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky." And further, this vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation.
And if one were to choose a single word out of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to sum up this vision of love, loyalty, grace, justice, blessing, fruitfulness, righteousness, salvation and stewardship, that word would be shalom. Which is the very word Jesus gives us - shalom, peace, "Shalom I leave with you; my Shalom I give to you." This, he says, is not his word, but is from "the Father who sent me." Shalom, concludes Brueggemann, is "the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation. It refers to all those resources which make communal harmony joyous, effective and fruitful." (p.15-16)
Indeed, that other John, John the Revelator, re-calls our attention to the trees in the Garden of God's creation - the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are free to partake of the Tree of Life endlessly and forever, and the leaves of this tree "are for the healing of the nations." No doubt we could use a steady diet of these leaves about right now!
Yet, from the very beginning we appear to have believed The Big Lie: if you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, says the tempter, "you will be like God." Genesis 3:5 The problem here is two-fold, 1) we were already created in the image of God, imago Dei, and so were already "like God," and 2) rather than eating the healing and nourishing fruit of the Tree of Life, we have increasingly convinced ourselves that more and more Knowledge holds the promise or our salvation.
Note that this tree offers either/or, binary or dualistic choices, which have served such lofty worlds as science, mathematics, logic, mechanics and technology fairly well, but already we have begun to see the limitations of such knowledge - just ask the folks off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico who are watching an ecological disaster float towards their homes and livelihoods at this very moment; and which knowledge has given us such paradoxical capacities so as to harness the power of the atom while at the same time unleashing the atom's total potential to destroy all life as we know it.
So we need to re-turn, repent, turn back to the Tree of Life which some like Richard Rohr see rooted in the non-dual life of contemplative prayer, and a life of Shalom, a life of "resources which make communal harmony joyous, effective and fruitful," rather than anxious, ineffective and wasteful. Curiously, "resources" begins with "r", the eighteenth letter of the alphabet - a letter that gives us three other "r's" that may be just the resources we need to re-turn to the Tree of Life, moving away from our addiction to the Tree of Knowledge: reduce, reuse and recycle. Thanks to Bob Dorough (of Miles Davis and School House Rock fame) and Jack Johnson we can re-member how we can live a life of shalom with our planet [try here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSM2riAEX4U&feature=related]:
Three it's a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
Somewhere in ancient mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number
The Past, the Present and the Future,
Faith Hope and Charity
The heart, the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number
Because two times three is six
And three times six is eighteen
And the eighteenth letter
in the alphabet is R
We've got three R's
we're going to talk about today
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Well, if you're going to the market
to buy some juice
You've got to bring your own bags
and you learn to Reduce your waste,
we've got to learn to Reduce
And if your brother or your sister's
got some cool clothes
You could try them on
before you buy some more of those
Reuse, we've got to learn to Reuse
And if the first two R's don't work out
and if you've got to make some trash
Don't throw it out, Recycle,
we've got to learn to recycle,
We've got to learn to
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (4X)
Because three it's a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
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