God's Choices, Our Choices, New Choices

9 September 2007 – Proper 18C * Jeremiah 18:1-11 – Luke 14: 25-33

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD

God’s Choices, Our Choices, New Choices

Too often we feel as if we have no control over our future. There are numerous other forces at work beyond our control. Worse still, we find it all too convenient to blame someone or something else for how things are turning out. Common targets of such blame are parents, genes, society, diet, music, peers, the Church, multi-national corporations, congress, the White House, the judiciary, the media – the list can go on and on and on.

Against such a fatalistic world view, Jeremiah the prophet was given a metaphor by God in an attempt to establish a more responsible world-view. The people of Judah faced a crisis that would cost them their political independence and lead the people into a generation of slavery in Babylon.

Pottery, clay, was as common to manufacturing in Jeremiah’s time some six centuries before Christ as something like steel or plastic is for us today. Such things as bricks, lamps, toys, ovens, roof tiles, figurines, tableware, storage jars, cooking pots, even jewelry were all made of clay.

The Lord God of Israel says to Jeremiah, “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” This would be a familiar image.

This is an invitation for all of us to come, go, see and hear what the Lord has to say. And what we see is the Lord sitting at a potter’s wheel “throwing” a vessel of clay. It is spoiled, somehow not what the Lord has in mind, so the potter reworks the vessel until it seems “good to him.” God starts over – God begins again – God begins anew.

The initial lesson is perhaps obvious: God can choose to deal with us – individuals and nations – as God chooses. God has the freedom and the power to shape us and re-shape us. God can simply destroy us or start over with us as God pleases.

What is revolutionary in Jeremiah’s portrayal of this scene is the suggestion further on that the clay, the vessel, we, also makes choices: we can choose to be good or to be evil, we can choose to listen to God’s word or not. Clay cannot choose, but we, individuals and nations, as clay in God’s hands, can and do make choices every day – choices that either reflect God’s will or not. We can choose to repent and return to the Lord’s way, or not.

According to the choices we make –as individuals and as nations – God says, “I will change my mind about the good I had intended to do.” God as potter wants to do good for us, but when we stray from becoming a vessel that “looks good” to the potter, the potter can and has and will destroy one vessel to fashion a new one.

The choices we make matter. How we choose effects our future. We are responsible for what happens – we have a moral responsibility for creating the world in which we live.

Jesus makes a similar point to those who would be his disciples. All his talk about hating family, counting the costs and giving up all our possessions takes the importance of God’s choices and Our choices to a whole new place.

Jeremiah calls people to return to traditional moral norms and values – Jesus calls us to go beyond such traditional norms. What Jesus asserts is that living in accord with traditional moral choices is not enough to respond to God’s new movement in their lives. It will involve making choices that seem to make no sense at the time, but will lead the people to shape their future by making such radical new choices in the present.

Our calendar of Feasts and Fasts in the Book of Common Prayer celebrates the lives of individuals who have made such bold choices in an attempt to reshape the future of the church, the nation and the world.

Last Tuesday, we remembered one such individual: Bishop Paul Jones, born in 1880 in the rectory of St. Stephen’s Church, Wilkes-Barre, PA. In 1914 he was elected bishop of the Missionary District of Utah, at the outbreak of World War I.

Bishop Jones spoke openly of his opposition to the war, expressing his belief that “war is unchristian,” a position for which he was attacked in the headlines of the Utah press. As a result of his position, a Commission of the House of Bishops investigated Bishop Jones, and in a commission report concluded, “The underlying contention of the Bishop of Utah seems to be that war is unchristian. With this general statement the Commission cannot agree.” Leave it to the Church to come up with a committee that would make such a conclusion!

The report called for his resignation, and in the spring of 1918 Bishop Jones resigned as Bishop of Utah. For the next 23 years, however, until his death in 1941, he continued a ministry within the church and society dedicated to peace and conscience, speaking always with a conviction rooted in the Gospel.

“Where I serve the church is of small importance, so long as I can make my life count in the cause of Christ,” he said in his farewell to the Missionary District of Utah.

We all pray for a world without war, without violence, without the kinds of hatred and thirst for power that leads us into one conflict after another. God keeps sending us one voice after another with names like Gandhi, King, Berrigan, McCalister and Jones. We sing, “You are the potter, we are the clay, the work of your hands…." Forgetting, perhaps, that we have the choice to be molded by God's hands, or not. "Or not" leads to war, global warming, poverty, etc.

God’s choices, our choices, new choices – Jesus challenges us to shape our future by the choices we make in the present. Jeremiah and Jesus both offer a hopeful view of the future by saying the choices we make in the present will shape our future. It is up to no one else but us – one choice at a time – to join with God in creating the world God wants this to be.

“Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” May we come, go down and listen. Amen.

Please join me in singing:

Come, go down to the Potter’s House

And listen to my word

Come, go down to the Potter’s House

And listen to my word

Just like clay in the Potter’s hands

So you are in mine (repeats in each verse)

Come, go down to the Potter’s House

And listen to my word

Turn back from your evil ways

And all the things you do

Turn back from your evil ways

And all the things you do

Just like clay in the Potter’s hands

So you are in mine (repeats in each verse)

Turn back from your evil ways

And all the things you do

Before you go to wage a war

Measure all the costs

No matter where you serve the Church

You count in the cause of Christ

My word is love, my word is peace

How will you make it yours

The choice you make is the chance you take

To serve the Lord our God

Copyright Sounds Divine

Kirk A Kubicek

Labor Sunday

Labor Sunday – September 2, 2007

Sirach 10: 12-18 * Luke 14:1,7-14

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland

Labor Sunday

Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and , as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. (BCP 261)

Our first reading from Sirach warns, “The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker … The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly … plucks up the roots of the nations and plants the humble in their places … erases the memory of them from the earth … Pride was not created for human beings…”

And we find Jesus echoing these themes as he urges us to rethink just who we ought to be inviting to the dinner table, which is and always has been the Lord’s own table – he points his host in the direction of common people, workers and those in special need. That is why we say grace a mealtimes at home – to remember from whence our bounty comes, and that it is the Lord’s table not ours. That is why we join in the Great Thanksgiving as we lift up our offerings every time we approach the Altar of the Lord’s supper, Holy Communion – the Holy Eucharist. Just who do we invite to gather around this table?

In 1882, Tuesday, September the 5^th, the Knights of Labor organized the original Labor Day celebration and parade in New York City. It was initiated to create a day off for the “working man and woman,” and to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community. In 1884 came a second parade, followed by a general strike in 1886 which eventually won the eight-hour work day in the United States – an idea that would still look pretty good to most of us who work!

In 1887 President Grover Cleveland established the September date as the ongoing and official day for Americans to celebrate Labor Day. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor in1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday, dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Recognizing the centrality of labor in the life of the human community, The Book of Common Prayer, our primary worship book, calls us to pray for those who do work for the common good every day.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Book of Common Prayer had a vision for Anglican and what eventually became Episcopal daily life: it was to be grounded in regular daily prayers in the morning, at noon, in the evening and at bed-time. The prayers are not common so much in the sense that we say them together, but rather that we all be saying our prayers wherever we are, and praying for the same concerns. We may say them with others, or by our selves, but they will still be prayers we hold in common.

Every night before bed-time the prayer office of Compline is outlined in our Prayer Book. Compline may be said with others or by oneself. Near the end of the office, one has the choice of two prayers on page 134:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for you love’s sake. Amen

or this

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our common life depends on each other’s toil. One must wonder just how the great political debates of our age might be reshaped were we to actually pray these prayers every night or every day? How might we look, for instance, at immigrant and migrant workers differently?

I find myself often reflecting on just how many individuals it takes to produce and deliver the loaf of bread I buy at the market – seed manufacturers, farmers, farm hands, mill workers, truckers, bakers, delivery people, store managers, buyers, shelf-stockers and the person at the check-out line. And I have probably left some out. It is all a part of God’s economy for our common good. Today we are called to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of labor.

To help us with this, here is a poem by Carl Sandberg, one of America’s most famous poets. Often his poems were populated by factory workers, washerwomen, hobos, crooked politicians, and people of the great Midwestern prairie.

I Am the People, the Mob

By Carl Sandberg

I am the people – the mob – the crowd – the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done

through me?

I am the workman, the inventor, the maker of the

world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons

come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then

I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for

much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.

I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.

I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes

me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red

drops for history to remember. Then – I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the

People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer

forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a

fool – then there will be no speaker in all the world

say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a

sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob – the crowd – the mass – will arrive then.

Meditative Prayer with Scripture Part 3

29 July 2007 * Proper 12C

Genesis18:20-32 * Luke 11:1-13

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland

The Word Is Very Near To You: Meditative Prayer with Scripture Part 3

Over the past two weeks we have moved from a notion of prayer as conversation with God to an understanding that God is a conversation – a conversation that is eternal and already ongoing between Abba/Father, Jesus/Son and the Wind/Breath/Spirit of God. And we have discovered that Meditative Prayer with God begins with our attentiveness to God’s word, receiving it in love, and responding to it, letting God set the agenda. And we learned that in fact our attentiveness may be all the response that is needed!

We also learned that Meditative Prayer with scripture is both a welcoming of God, Father, Son and Spirit, into the household of our heart as our guest, while at the same time allowing God to become our host, inviting us, calling us, wooing us to share in the very intimacy of conversation, dance and song going on between the three persons of the Christian Trinity.

How wonderful is it that we draw these current reflections on prayer to a close with the teaching of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, and the example of Abraham.

“Jesus was praying in a certain place…” Jesus needs a place to pray, and so do we. We need to find a place as free of other distractions as possible. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus directs us to find a room and to shut the door. Which is not to say that we cannot pray anytime and anyplace, but for meditative prayer with scripture, a quiet place will aid us in giving God our undivided attention. Find a certain place to pray.

This seems to be a luxury in our time and place, and we will find many excuses to say it is impossible to find a certain place to pray. This may reflect an unconscious resistance to finding intimacy with God. It may reflect a cultural suspicion or discomfort with solitude and quiet. It may reflect our shyness at letting others know our need for a place specifically for prayer. And it may reflect our fear of being unable to settle down once we find a certain place to pray. We wonder where to sit, how to sit, how to orient our bodies and ourselves to facilitate our attention to the conversation that is God.

Similarly, we wonder when we can possibly find the time to spend half-an-hour being attentive to the conversation that is God. As Martha thought last week, there are so many other important things we need to be doing, attending to the needs of others and ourselves. Yet, as Jesus suggests, when we allow Him into the household of our hearts, and let him feed us, nurture us, care for us and tend to us, we become far better equipped to extend hospitality, especially His hospitality, to others. We become more fully our selves so we have more to offer.

We need at least a half hour to attend to God’s Word to even begin to sense that God’s word is, indeed, very near to us. Once we sense the nearness of God’s Word, we need time for it to touch us, to formulate our response, and then time to transition back to “business as usual.” With any luck, however, after spending time in a certain place with God and God’s Word, there will no longer be “business as usual,” but instead a life that is continually and eternally transformed and made new!

The disciples want to know “how to pray.” John the Baptizer had taught his disciples how to pray, we want to know too. Jesus may have his own reasons up to now for not teaching the “how” of prayer - perhaps because he wants us to experience the presence of God’s Word without concern for technique and form. Remember, Jesus wants us to share the very same intimacy with Abba-Father that he already shares. Technique and form might only get in the way of such intimacy – might hold us back from just jumping into the eternal dance that is already in full swing between Abba/Father, Jesus/Son and Holy Spirit.

But if you must have “some thing” for which to pray, pray for kingdom living – Hallow God’s name, pray for God’s Kingdom, pray for bread which is given daily, forgive and be forgiven, resist temptations to sin. Note how simple Luke’s version of this all too familiar prayer really is. We have gussied it up for public worship, but at its core it is stripped down and to the point.

In meditative prayer with scripture we might find our selves reflecting on just what it means to allow our selves to be dependent on bread which is given daily. How might our lives be shaped by such dependence? Or, just how does one “hallow” God’s name? How might every thing we say and everything we do reflect the hallowedness we desire to give to God’s name?

Giving our attention to Genesis 18, what do we learn about responding to God’s Word? Do we sense that it is OK to challenge God? Do we sense that like Abraham we might have a say in what God does or does not do? Do we sense that God allows us to disagree with God? Do we sense that an important role for us is to advocate for the needs of others – others who might not have a standing before God, or don’t even know our God the way we come to know God through meditative prayer with scripture?

Martin Smith suggests that the shape of such prayer might look like this: Select a specific story or passage before your prayer time. Find a certain place. Set a certain time. Find ways to settle down. Ask God to touch you through this scripture. Read the scripture several times (perhaps even while walking). Notice which words or phrases you trip over, or jump out at you. Stay with those words. Place the Bible aside and let your imagination go. Bring the scene to life. Become a participant. How are you feeling? Let the drama unfold. Don’t control the story. Don’t be thinking of applications to your life. Be attentive to the words and actions of the story and your feelings. Let yourself respond. Tell God/Jesus/Spirit how you have been touched! What are you thankful for? What do you need? How is God inviting you, wooing you, caring for you, tending to you? Sometimes it is best to just soak it all in, savor it, and let your attentiveness be your response. Come to a simple conclusion, perhaps with the Lord’s prayer or some other familiar or easy prayer. Or, forget about these guidelines altogether and just be with the Word that is very near to you. Martin Smith, The Word is Very Near to You (Cowley, Cambridge: 1989) p. 105-107

Jesus concludes today by saying to us, “…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” This is an invitation to prayer, to communion and intimacy with Abba/Father God. As George Herbert so eloquently puts it in his poem, “Prayer 1,” it is an invitation to:

Prayer the Church's banquet, Angel's age,

God's breath in man returning to his birth,

The Soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

Engine against th'Almighty, sinner's tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

The Word is very near to you. Attend to it with your heart and mind and soul, and it will be the Father’s good will to give you the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Meditative Prayer with Scripture: Part 2

22 July 2007 – Proper 11 – Genesis 18:1-10a – Luke 10:38-42

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD

The Word is Very Near to You: Prayer with Scripture Part 2

Last Sunday we began to reflect on Prayer with Scripture, or what is sometimes called Meditative Prayer. We examined a standard definition of Prayer: Prayer is a conversation with God. Although we tend to assume it is our responsibility to get the conversation going, we discovered that prayer is not initiated by us.

God initiates prayer – indeed, one might say God initiates all, but all is a rather too comprehensive a reality to take on within the friendly confines of a Sunday morning sermon! As we begin to reflect on the reality that it is God who is calling us, wooing us, choosing us and inviting us, that the “conversation” is already in process, we learn that the first priority in a life of Meditative Prayer with Scripture is to be attentive to what is already being said, to receive it from God, and to respond. We also have come to see that our attentiveness may be all the response that is needed.

So that if we discover in our time with scripture that God loves us, we are to savor that, and allow it to sink in. We do not have to “do” anything except perhaps bow our heads, or raise our hands and say, “Thank you, Lord.”

Yet, it is far too easy to simply reverse the common definition of prayer as conversation and say, “In prayer God speaks and I answer.” For to say that implies that God is out there speaking to us in a one-on-one confrontation, and to stay with this understanding prevents us from living into the distinctly Christian experience of God – God as expressed in Trinitarian worship and Trinitarian belief.

Early Christian writers soon discovered that the experience of Abba-Father, Jesus-Son and the Indwelling Spirit-Breath-Wind of God were not simply colorful metaphors to enliven our devotion to the One God, but rather the Christian community was led to a radical revisioning of who God is, a revisioning that is as daring today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago! So that Christian Orthodoxy came to insist that we cannot have a simple “one-on-one confrontation with God because God is not merely one. Got is a three-fold life – Trinity! The ‘personal’ God of Christian experience is not an omnipotent Individual, but a communion of self-giving love.” The Word is Very Near You, Martin Smith (Cowley, Cambridge: 1989) p 26

So when we are attentive to the conversation that is already going on, we come to know that there is no individual to whom we respond, but rather we are drawn in to a relationship and dynamism of mutual love and self-giving going on within God. So that it is “one thing to say that prayer is conversation with God. It is another to say that God begins the conversation. But it is yet something else to say that God is a conversation. In God love ever flows between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. Love is answered by love, and the conversation … takes in the suffering of a whole universe striving to attain fulfillment with its Creator.” Ibid, p 28

Prayer is communion between all that we are and all that God is.

When we allow our selves to sit with a story like the one in Luke 10 we sense some of all this. It is a continuation of a series of stories in Luke reflecting on our calling to love God and neighbor. Like Abraham and Sarah welcome the three mysterious strangers by the Oak tree, Martha welcomes Jesus into her home – much as we do in prayer, welcoming Father, Son and Spirit into the home of our hearts. Like Sarah and all middle-eastern women of her time and ours, she sets about meeting the needs of the guest in her home. Her sister Mary simply sits at Jesus’ feet and listens.

It is interesting to pay careful attention to what Jesus replies when Martha suggests Mary might be more of a host in the traditional sense: “Mary has chosen…” We might find it interesting to stay with the portrayal of Jesus who is open to the choices of women. He does not expect women to run for the kitchen when he comes within their home. Despite the traditional take on this story, Jesus does not appear to be chastising Martha, but rather is suggesting that she might also choose to sit at his feet and listen. There is room for Martha to join him as well. He permits choice. In so doing, Jesus becomes the host.

Much as the three mysterious visitors in Genesis 18, one of whom is later identified as the Lord, after receiving the extended hospitality as honored guests of Abraham become the hosts when they announce the good news that Sarah shall conceive and bear a son. Jesus and God desire to come into our home as guests and soon become our host.

Suggesting two things: 1) it is important to find time to welcome God as Father, Son and Spirit into our households, and 2) it is just as important to allow them to host us. For when we open ourselves to receive them into our hearts, we find they come to care for us, to tend to us, to heal and nurture us.

We are all “Marthas” much of the time. We are so busy doing, doing, doing day and night that we forget that when God enters the households of our busyness we have permission to drop everything, even time honored and expected hospitality, and sit quietly as our guest becomes our host, caring for us, comforting us, holding us, loving us for who we are, where we are.

Imagine what it would feel like to allow Jesus to wash your feet for just a few minutes in quiet once a day? This is what Meditative Prayer with Scripture means to be for us – an oasis of God offered hospitality in the midst of an otherwise all too busy day.

Concludes Martin Smith, “In the love the All-embracing Father has for the Son, and in the love the Son has for the Father, in the issuing of the Spirit from the Father and the Spirit’s return in the Love of the Son, there is everything we mean by prayer – intimacy, adoration, self-offering, love, desire, crucifyingly acute sympathy for a world torn by pain and joy. Our prayer is not making conversation with God. It is joining the conversation that is already going on in God. It is being invited to participate in the relationships of intimacy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is an eternal dance in full-swing, and we are caught up in to it. Prayer is allowing ourselves to join the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the persons of the Trinity.” Ibid, p 28 To be continued. Amen.

Prayer With Scripture-Part 1

15 July 2007 * Pentecost 7

Deuteronomy 30: 9-14 * Luke 10: 25-37

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD

The Word is Very Near to You: Prayer with Scripture Part 1

“The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

-Deuteronomy 30:14

A generation or more has passed since the rag-tag group of slaves was delivered from Egypt and at Sinai forged a covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In Deuteronomy they are on one side of the River Jordan ready to enter into the land of the promise. We can assume an air of excitement over-lain with anxiety and even fear of what lies on the other side of the river. It is a feeling we all know.

Moses has called everyone to review and renew the covenant before going one step further. God restates God’s promises and expectations. So as to reassure us, the Lord our God insists that the commandments and God’s word are not far away in the heavens or beyond the sea, but rather “the word is very near to you.”

Yet, despite such assurance the Bible can be seen as a record of just how far away God’s word seems at any given time or place. That word which is meant to ground us, form us, shape our lives, and keep us safe and abundant often seems to be set far away from our day to day circumstances, anxieties, fears, complexities and a just generalized sense of chaos – lives out of control. If this “word” is so near, how is it we cannot hear it, feel it or even know it is here?

Quite simply, there are many competing words and voices – voices which we too often allow to occupy our attention, distract our attention, and subsequently disrupt our covenant life lived with and even in God. These competing voices offer all kinds of promises, and yet most often result at best in disappointment, and more often lead us to loneliness, sadness and despair. Like Biblical characters from Abraham all the way to Jesus, Paul and beyond, we seek some way, some avenue of access, to this word which is said to be “very near you.”

One of the Four Holy Habits, daily prayer and study, is meant to offer us such access. Yet, the very thought of prayer and study can baffle us, intimidate us, and make us hesitant to even begin to make prayer a habit. Even if prayer becomes a habit, too often this degenerates into virtual endless talking and thinking on our part, distancing us even further from this “word” which is said to be “very near you.”

This could be, suggests Martin Smith in his guide to praying with scripture, “The Word Is Very Near You,” (Cowley:Cambridge: 1989) because we have too often been told that “Prayer is a conversation with God.” Which itself suggests we better get talking and hold up our side of the conversation! That this is a conversation that we had better begin ourselves! And the attendant expectation is that once we have spoken our side of things, God will reply with just the word we need to hear.

But this only raises further questions, such as just what do we expect God’s reply to sound or look like? And if prayer is a conversation with God, why is God’s side of the conversation often so sparse, sporadic and just plain silent? A silence that is often repeatedly broken by what Smith calls “the static of our random thoughts.” This can lead us to believe that there is something wrong with how we are praying, which itself is often a thinly veiled resentment of a God whom we experience as an all too passive partner in prayer.

All this, asserts Smith, calls for a new understanding of the whole enterprise of prayer, giving our attention first and foremost to attentiveness and receptivity. The God of Israel is the god who takes the initiative to address and approach us. After all it is in Deuteronomy that we hear God say, "I choose you not for what you have done, but because I love you." This makes prayer primarily about our attentiveness to God’s disclosure to us and the heart’s response to this disclosure. In fact, our attentiveness quite simply can be our response.

For instance, if in prayer we are made aware that “God loves us as we are, even in our mediocrity, our best response is to savor that, to allow it to sink in, rather than to start to make resolutions and promises to God, which might be a subtle way of changing the subject to what we can do.” To change the subject would in some way prevent God from doing to us what God desires to do: to love us and receive us into the household of love, the household of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - suggesting that prayer is more about our receiving rather than doing. God has already started the conversation – and from a Christian point of view this conversation includes the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Prayer is our way of being attentive to their conversation that is already ongoing, some of which is recorded in scripture. Prayer with scripture helps us to attend to what God is already saying.

For instance, when we pray with the story of the Good Samaritan we may find that what God is saying to us is to know ourselves to be the man lying on the side of the road. Our need for prayer says that is who we are – we need someone to come to our aid, to comfort us, to take care of us, to arrange for our care. To admit this, however, makes us uncomfortable, since it means facing our need and accepting dependence on another. In the story the other who comes to take care us of turns out to be the most surprising person of all, a hated, enemy Samaritan. Yet, even if that other were to be God, we are still anxious to surrender our self-sufficiency and allow ourselves to be served. Prayer wants us to become aware of this need of ours and our dependence on God’s grace and God’s love.

For those who are attentive and receptive to this word, God sends Jesus to heal us, who in turn arranges for our eternal care by the Holy Spirit.

For God is a lover, not a taskmaster. Prayer is meant to bring us deeper into the truth of this love. And prayer as attentiveness to what God is already saying to us reveals to us that we are not alone in this need for dependence on God’s care and love – whether it is care and love from God directly or through the many stranger/Samaritans God sends our way.

“You are not alone” is perhaps the singular message of prayer – by which prayer draws us into relationship with others, all others, who are also exploring this mystery. For if we are in God’s prayers, we are in one another’s prayers – all other’s prayers.

God is already talking to us. In prayer with scripture we attend to what God is saying, receive it in love, and let God set the agenda. Prayer and the desire for prayer, writes Smith, draws us out of isolation into the greatest of communities, the ultimate one, the communion of saints. To be continued. Amen.

Women and The Bible

17 June 2007 * Pentecost 3 * 1 Kings 21:1-21a * Luke 7:36-8:3

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills

Women, Tradition and Inclusiveness

I hope you saw the church sign on Frederick Road in Catonsville this past week: “Women be subject to your own husbands as unto the Lord.” A curious rewrite of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and an all too familiar stripping of that one line out of its context in that letter – a letter which bears witness to attempts by Paul, of all people, to grant women equality with men in the church and in marriage. I digress, but this is related to the matters at hand.

There are at least two somewhat related, greatly important things going on in our lessons about Jezebel and the unnamed woman in Luke: one is what Walter Brueggemann calls “the traditioning” of women in the Bible, and the other has to do with attempts throughout history to “purify” Biblical religion. There are, of course matters to do with land ownership, prophetic actions and pronouncements, and a realization that Jonathan Edwards was at least right in part: we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.

Back to the two women in our stories: A quick look at Webster’s yields the evolution of “Jezebel” as coming to mean a scheming, shameless woman as well as the 9^th Century BCE wife of Ahab, king of the Northern kingdom of Israel. And Luke, through some literary mind-reading trick involving Simon the Pharisee, labels the unknown woman anointing Jesus as a “sinner.”

Now what is interesting to note here, without getting too detailed about it, is that the offending character in the first story ought to be Ahab’s father Omri who through marriage and diplomatic alliances attempts to supplant the religion of Israel and the God Yahweh with the religion of the God Baal. It does not take much analysis of the text to sense that what the narrator attempts to do, once again [recall the Genesis Fruit eating Story], is to pin it all on a woman, when in fact it was Omri and his sons who have caused all the trouble.

Are we really to believe this farcical portrayal that a mighty King of Israel is reduced to having an infantile tantrum on his bed over a vineyard, of which he seems to have many to spare? Besides, the offense here revolves around tradition – the land was not Naboth’s to give away according to Israelite tradition. The land is God’s, and Naboth’s family has been tasked to tend the land in perpetuity. So corrupted by Baal (who may as well be a golden calf) is Ahab that he has utterly forgotten the tradition.

Eventually enters Elijah to announce that the unfair transgressions against God and Naboth will not go un-avenged. But now it is Elijah, good defender of the faith, Jezebel corruptor of the faith. But it turns out that Jezebel and Elijah have a lot in common – Elijah has just slain a large number of Baal’s prophets, Jezebel arranged for the death of one man, both do so to defend their respective faith traditions. Ah, the complexities of religious pluralism seem not to be so modern after all! Elijah represents, in Northern Israel, a detrimental and minority opinion – an exponent of a militant fundamental Yahwism. Elijah might be called today a Yahwismofascist - espousing a fundamental purification of Israelite religion.

Meanwhile, the negation of Jezebel is the result of a deep ideological dispute within Israel, leaving us with no possible attempt to understand her as anything but ultimate evil opposing ultimate good – and such negation is underlined and given a harsher nuance by her simply being a woman. Big surprise there! Yet, Jezebel could be held in as high esteem as Elijah for remaining faithful to her religious convictions, for upholding the prerogatives of royalty, for supporting her husband and children, and for opposing her enemies until death.

Similarly, Luke seems to have taken the earlier story in Mark of an unknown woman anointing Jesus just before his passion, placed it earlier in the narrative, called her a sinner (which was not so in Mark), and has her anoint his feet instead of his head to make her appear even more questionable of character. Anointing the head is a the job of a prophet to appoint a King for Israel on God’s behalf, while anointing and kissing feet is made to look more like the actions-in-trade of what we might call “a woman of the night.” All this, it seems, so that Luke can give some radical new interpretive meaning to the parable of forgiving the two debtors which occurs in other narrative clothing in other gospels.

Understand, a woman in a story who was once portrayed as a prophet like Moses or Elijah anointing Jesus as King has been reduced to some sort of Galilean floozy so that Luke can editorialize on forgiveness. Though the outcome may be good, the utility of the woman and the original story is at least questionable, and decidedly deplorable.

I know, it is Father’s Day, and perhaps it seems as if someone like Mary Marguerite should be giving this sermon, but to avoid all this would only be to make the problem of the traditioning of women in the Bible as evil and sinners worse and ongoing. Men need to take the lead in this conversation.

There is hidden good news in all of this – Jesus never ever is portrayed as supporting the exclusivist purity tradition both of these stories are portraying. We get a full dose in 1 Kings of how evil and awful gentile foreign religionists can be, while in Luke how easy it is to look at an allegedly sinful woman and look down our Pharisaic noses at her with Simon and his cohort.

But Jesus does two things that are remarkable: 1) he allows the woman to touch him in public and forgives her and interprets her actions as acts of love on the part of someone who has recognized and accepted God’s forgiveness in Jesus, and 2) he allows women of all kinds, sorts, conditions and economic status, we are told, to travel alongside him and his disciples. He does not, in fact, allow them, he welcomes them and invites them. There is an important difference in that fact.

Paul’s letters, which predate all four gospels, give ample witness to the leadership of women in the early church. Their eventual marginalization seems to reflect the customs and social world of the emerging Christian community rather than any exclusionary policy of Jesus.

Put differently, Jesus refutes exclusionary-purity religion at every possible turn of events. No doubt this contributed to the fate he faced in Jerusalem. A look at how women, minorities, resident aliens, widows, orphans, homosexuals and anyone considered “others” are treated in the church and society today must begin with a realization that Jesus would have no part in marginalizing anyone. For Jesus the purity code was a thing of the past – an inclusive invitation and welcome for all to participate fully in God’s kingdom was to be the future.

The sad news is that the ideological disputes of 1 Kings and Luke are still with us today. The good news is that Jesus secured the victory over such exclusionary policies on the cross and beyond the empty tomb. To him we give glory, now and forever – we are to respond in love like the un-named woman and take our place alongside her as one of his true disciples. Amen.

Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday 2007

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland

All Those Shoes

If you ever want to empty a roomful of clergy, try this. Tell them they all have to write a sermon about the doctrine of the Trinity and then watch them head for the doors and jump out the windows! It is truly funny how we shy away from the one church feast day dedicated not to a person or an event but to a doctrine – a doctrine of God no less. Each year we struggle to find something to say, something new, something fresh, something to bring a lump to someone’s throat, or set a bush on fire in their mind’s eye.

The Blessed Augustine remarked concerning the subject of the Trinity that ‘in no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more rewarding’.

The story is told of St Augustine thinking on the problem of the Holy Trinity while walking on a beach. "How could God be three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and somehow all be one unity as the nature of God?" He spotted a little boy who was running to the sea with a sea shell where he would scoop some water and then run back to the sand where he had dug a little hole. He would then empty the shell into the hole and repeat his procedure. Thinking this a bit strange, Augustine stopped the boy and asked him what he was doing. "Sire, I am emptying the sea into the hole." "Child, that is clearly impossible," Augustine retorted. The little boy then said, "Far easier for me to finish my task than for you to find an answer to your problem." And then the little boy vanishes in a poof: little boy? Or, an angel of God? That’s for you to decide.

Which may point us in the right direction. Religion itself can be said to be mystical. Moses tending flocks in Midian, Buddha under a tree, Jesus up to his knees in the waters of the River Jordan – each of them, writes Frederick Buechner [Alphabet of Grace], responds to something “for which words like shalom, oneness, God even, are only pallid, alphabetic souvenirs. I have seen things, Aquinas told a friend, that make all my writings seem like straw. Religion as an institution, as ethics, as dogma, as social action – all of this comes later and in the long run maybe counts for less. Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky.” (p.74)

All talk about the Trinity in the end is the attempt to describe our experiences of God. That is experiences, plural. For they are many, and for the most part they are mundane and not nearly as exciting as burning, talking bushes. Made even more mundane by the simple fact that to describe the most ineffable and transcendent of human experiences our innermost thoughts must be pressed into words beginning with A, B, C and having O, M, N and the rest of the 26 letters as the limit of human expression. To be forced into describing the limitless power, grace and love of God with only 26 letters to draw upon makes emptying the ocean into a hole on the beach look like a walk in the park. Mixed metaphors abound when speaking of God. Just read Paul!

The words Father, Son and Holy Spirit are simply agreed upon words to describe our limitless experiences of God. So they say more about us than they do about God. But it is the best we can do. It is particularly true when indeed many experiences of God come out of silence and solitude. Which can happen at the least silent, least alone times of our lives.

One day, for instance, I was in a bookstore in my hometown of Oak Park, Kroch’s and Brentano’s. I picked up a book by Thomas Merton and opened to a chapter marked Love and Solitude. Merton writes:

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. These pages seek nothing more than to echo the silence and peace that is “heard” when the rain wanders freely among the hills and forests. But what can the wind say where there is no hearer? There is then a deeper silence: the silence in which the Hearer is No-Hearer. That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude.

Without ever having heard of the Blessed Augustine I had the strange sensation of no longer being in Kroch’s and Brentano’s, and no longer holding a book, but rather being on the beach as a rather impressive wave was breaking over the top of my head. As the waters pulled back into the sea I can remember the distinct sensation of hearing nothing of the Christmas shoppers all around me, nothing of the cash register ringing up its seasonal sales, but only a still, small voice, or an awareness really, that seemed to say, “You are going to seminary to learn more about all this.” The silence and solitude whispering the presence of God was with me in a crowded, noisy bookstore. I may have been standing there for a few moments, I may have been standing there for half an hour or half a year, I just don’t know.

Around the same time I was singing in a choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence, Rhode Island. This was after not having gone to church for a good number of years. Singing in the choir seemed a safe way to re-enter. The Director of Music, Gregg Romatowski, liked to keep the basses in the front row to keep tabs on us. It was chancel-choir seating. During communion we would be singing anthems or hymns while kneeling in the front choir stall. All I could see were people’s feet going to and from the altar – walking steadily in a stream to receive God’s body and blood only to return to the world to be the Body of Christ for others and for the world.

I could see how each person’s shoes wear in different ways – some on the inside, some on the outside of the shoe, some with heels worn down, all different kinds, shapes and colors of shoes, some bulging here others bulging there. Week after week, month after month, year after year, for two thousand years all these shoes represented all the people of God who have walked to and from God’s communion rail – all those shoes, I thought, all those people, I thought, and I mean to be one too, we sang. It was like an extended vision or meditation that stretched over several years looking at all those shoes – those shoes mediating the presence of God and God’s love in my heart. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I used to lie in the pews late at night and listen to Gregg play Olivier Messiaen and Cesar Franck. I Googled his name last night to see where he is – only to discover his name on several internet sites listing the names of musicians and artists who have died of AIDS. He was 37. He is now and forever as close to God's Love, Grace and Forgiveness as one can be.

You can see how difficult it is to put it all into words with only 26 letters at our disposal to describe the limitless yearning of God for us and us for God. The notes of Messiaen and Franck echoing in the empty church could say more about God, all those shoes could say more about God, Merton’s reflections on solitude and silence can say more about God than any doctrine or Creed. And yet, we need something to say, something to hang our experiences on, some words to describe that which is indescribable. We say them week in and week out knowing the inherent impossibility of the task, but wishing to express our thanks for those moments we have felt the presence of God’s love, grace and forgiveness. Next year we will try again! Amen.