Sermons 'n' Things

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Christ The King?

Christ the King?

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

-Luke 23:43

Says Jesus to the thief who defends him as they hang on the cross. I try to imagine such a conversation. It is the scripture for what has become called Christ the King Sunday. In the conversation between Jesus and the thief on the cross I hear echoes of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower.

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the cold distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

I will not presume to know what Dylan has in mind, but the pieces fit in an odd sort of way, and he did study wholly writ. The elements of Luke’s portrayal of the last moments of Jesus on the cross could be like this.

Christ the King? It is a modern feast of the churches. It was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI as a supposed bulwark against a perceived creeping secularism. Another example of what happens when the church employs novelty to impose its world view – a world view which may or may not conform with that of the young man in Israel whose vision she hopes to live and enshrine. I grow increasingly leery of such attempts by the Church. Take Christmas for instance. Not until around the mid-fourth century does it appear on a calendar on its present date, December 25 – the time of pagan celebrations Sol Invictus and Saturnalia. Whether or not the Church intentionally meant to “Christianize” these older holidays, the result has morphed into a post-Dickens orgy of commercialized consumer driven capitalism without which many businesses would not survive today. Despite many attempts to take this pagan-like orgy out of Christmas who among us really thinks Christmas bears any resemblance to what Jesus was thinking that day on the cross he talks to the thief about paradise?

An odd metaphor to be sure, Christ the King. After all it is Pilate who orders these very words to be nailed upon the cross beneath his feet. Or very nearly. “The King of the Jews,” he ordered. We can still see the sneer on his face and hear his laughter at what he no doubt thought was at once a clever joke and menacing warning to all and any who may be tempted to continue what this upstart from Galilee had begun.

We may not know a lot about this Galilean, but what we do know is that unlike other kings, he had no army, no land holdings, no possessions, no money to speak of (relying on the generosity of others to support him and his followers), he wrote no books, issued no proclamations, and, according to tradition, “emptied himself taking the form of a common slave.”

What he did possess was a vision that things could be different – very different – which today’s gospel from Luke describes as “paradise,” an interesting word which appears to be of Persian (Iranian) origin, imported into the Greek pardiso of the New Testament. Interesting in that it is often used to describe a walled or enclosed garden or park. I cannot help but wonder if Jesus knew of one known simply as The Buddha, the Awakened One, who lived some five or six hundred year earlier in what has become known as the Axial Age. The Buddha, who upon his awakening is said to have been tempted by the demon Mara to turn his back on the world and depart to some eternal nirvana – a total escape from the world of suffering. “No one will possibly understand what you have just understood,” taunted Mara. The Buddha thought about it and then declined. “There are those who will understand,” he is reported to have said. He then committed himself to some 40 or 50 years of living with and teaching those who desired to understand. Like any movement, these followers divided into several groups, some who sought individual deliverance from the world of suffering, and those who like The Buddha himself tip-toed up to the edge of nirvana but elected to stay just this side to nurture others along the way.

The story is told of four fellow travelers crossing a wilderness when they come upon a wall. One climbs to the top, looks in, and scrambles over the wall. So does the second one and the third – all three scramble over to the other side. The fourth climbs the wall, looks and sees – a walled in paradise of trees and flowers, rivers, streams, lakes, abundant fruits – beauty and abundance as far as the eye could see. This one climbed down and returned to this world saying, “There are those who will understand. I will not climb over the wall myself until even the grass is enlightened.”

Major trade routes, from east and west, north and south, all criss-crossed through the middle east of Jesus. No fantastic tales of a young Jesus traveling to India or China is necessary to imagine that with all the travelers making their way through ancient Israel that tales such as this one were common place.

Perhaps this is what he had in mind as he spoke to the thief – as women and barefoot servants were making their way for one last moment with the one who had shared with them a vision of another kind of world; as princes keep their view from afar and businessmen drink his wine. More than a victorious king on a cross I hear in these ancient words of Luke the commitment to the end to return, to use this last possible moment before his dying breath not to miss the opportunity to offer the experience of Awakening to one last person who reaches out seeking to understand. He empties himself one last time, taking the form of a servant – serving his last earthly companion until three days later he too climbs down from the wall to continue an eternity of selfless service to others, until one day even the grass understands.

“Outside in the cold distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.”

Amen.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Days of the Dead

1 Samuel: 28:3-25 – Saul and the Witch of Endor

All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls constitute what appears to have evolved as a three day observance in the fall – specifically Oct 31, Nov 1 & 2. All Saints, or All Hallows day, constitutes a day to stop and remember those who have gone before and have one way or another hallowed life – people we now refer to as saints but who often were anything but. Nonetheless they are people who remind us what things are most important in this life. And All Souls, as it sounds, is a day to remember all those who have gone before us who have contributed one way or another to the lives we live today. All Hallows Eve, now Halloween, began as an evening vigil before the observance of the following two days.

This tri-partite celebration falls at a time of year in the Northern hemisphere when leaves are falling, the sun is doing its disappearing act, days are darker in the morning and the evening, the weather is cooler, frost begins to kill off less hardy plants and flowers – a sort of natural winding down to the “death” of winter. So our minds naturally tend to recall those who have passed before us – which takes one to think of cemeteries and columbariums, spirits, ghosts and pretty soon one also finds oneself thinking about all those creatures that inhabit the shadow worlds of darkness – hobgoblins, devils, and things that go bump in the night!

As I was carving the traditional jack-o-lanterns, first emptying out all the “guts” of the pumpkin, then carving eyes, nose, mouth in either friendly or scary stylings, two verses of the new testament came to mind. First Paul in Philippians, when he says that Christ did not take equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself, taking the life of a servant; and the first verses of John which equate the Word, the logos, Jesus, with God and with that first Light that burst upon the world in Genesis 1 or The Big Bang (take your pick) – the light which is the light of the world. The pumpkin is emptied and then filled with light to shine in the darkness – a somewhat appropriate reminder of Christ after all is the Jack-O-Lantern, sentinel of the night as little ghosties and beasties roam the streets looking for a treat as we collectively thumb our nose at death and all its acolytes.

Then I recalled the days of my childhood, when on Saturday evening my father would go to the El Station in Oak Park to buy the first edition of the Sunday papers – all four Chicago Daily Papers: The Sun, the Tribune, the Daily News and the American. I would wake up Sunday morning to find the color comics from all four papers at the foot of my bed and would gleefully and diligently read them all before getting up and getting ready to go to church.

On this Halloween weekend the Tribune would always have a special banner cartoon depicting a harvest moon and haystack scene. Just below it would be Peanuts with Linus van Pelt sitting in the pumpkin patch with a sign, “Welcome Great Pumpkin,” as he waited for the Great Pumpkin’s arrival – or at least a sign. And every year he was disappointed.

All of which eventually turns my mind to this story about King Saul and the Witch of Endor. I believe it is the only Bible story to feature both a witch and a ghost – the ghost of the boy prophet Samuel. Saul, like Linus, is looking for a sign – a sign or a word from God – as he faces a hostile Philistine army about to attack. He has been praying to God but gets no answer. He asks his men to find someone who can conjure dead spirits. They remind him that as King he has outlawed any and all such people from practicing their “trade.” He insists he needs to find someone and finally they say, “Well there are reports of a witch at Endor.” Disguised as not-the-king, off they go to Endor.

Saul-disguised asks for a séance. The Witch wisely replies, “Have you not heard? Saul has outlawed such things!” He says, “Don’t worry, he won’t find out – I won’t turn you in.” Still hesitant she asks who in fact he needs to speak to. “Samuel.” So up rises Samuel from the dead – at which point the Witch realizes this IS Saul in her house. “You tricked me – oh, woe is me!” “Don’t worry,” he says, “all shall be well.”

Not exactly. Samuel is not happy to return only to find it is Saul who has awakened him from his eternal rest. “What do you want from me?”

Saul explains that God is not answering his prayers, the Philistines are on the horizon, can’t you get God to give me some sort of an answer, some sort of sign? Samuel replies in effect, You never listened to God before why should he listen to you now. Things look bad and guess what? They are!

Samuel leaves, and Saul falls over, we are told, like a dead tree. At this point the Witch of Endor springs into action. She kills the fatted-calf, makes some bread and tries to get Saul to eat. He has not eaten all day and is refusing to eat now. He is in total despair. Yet, she convinces him to rest and have a good hot meal before going on. She cares for him and gives him strength to face his fears head-on.

One take away from this odd episode in the longer story of the life of faith is that often, like Linus and Saul we look for a sign – some assurance that there is some power greater than our selves, be it God, be it the Great Pumpkin, be it the Big Bang. But sometimes we are looking for the wrong thing, or asking the wrong questions, or seeking the wrong answer.

Note how Saul gets what he needs, not what he wants. In the peculiar calculus that is the Bible, he meets the face, heart and hands of God in the very person he has banished from his kingdom – a witch. He wants a sign from God and it is given – for what he needs at that moment is someone who cares for him, nurtures him, and strengthens him. We often find what we need is not what we seek, and just as often what we need comes from places and persons we have written off long ago.

All Hallows Eve. Filled with lessons not too late for the learning, if only we will open ourselves to what the Witch of Endor and all her colleagues really have to offer us – a vision of how what we really need is someone who cares – someone who reflects the light that shines in the darkness – light which the darkness has not overcome. Amen.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

There By The Grace of God Am I

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, or, There but by the Grace of God go I !

Luke 18: 9-14

We have all heard it. We have all said it. But like, “God helps those who help themselves,” is it Biblical?

I don’t think so. As the Chicago Daily News’ Mike Royko famously used to say, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it!”

The Pharisee is a best understood as a Doctor of the Law, the “Law” being Torah, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis-Deuteronomy. Today he might be a professor of Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament, or a church Canon Lawyer, or a Divinity School Theologian of some kind. At the time of Jesus in this little parable, if you had questions regarding the living of Torah, or what the Hindus might call living your dharma, you would go to your local Pharisee for a consultation. Despite the negative and adversarial ways in which New Testament scripture tends to portray them, these were good, respected citizens dedicated to the study and practice of Israelite religion.

Tax Collectors, on the other hand, were considered, and indeed were, collaborators with the much hated functionaries of the ironically termed Pax Romana – a “pax” or peace enforced by repeated acts of brutality on behalf of the Roman military against the citizens of any and all regions Rome had conquered in the name of Caesar – whichever one that may be – aka “Caesar is God.” Tax collectors in the Pax Romana were local citizens tasked with getting money out of their fellow local citizens by any means – a certain amount for Rome to feed its endless appetites for commodities and to sustain the shock troops that kept the local populace under control, and any amount the tax collector wanted to keep for oneself. The basic problem is that tax collectors were the man next door whose money collecting system fed the troops who meted out brutality daily against your other neighbors – crucifixion being the primary means of “teaching the locals as lesson.” In modern day terms, he is the equivalent of a Nazi collaborator, a Pol Pot collaborator, or any other collaborator you might want to put in as a placeholder, keeping in mind this is not a “chosen profession,” but one placed on his shoulders which, should he refuse to do it, probably meant instant crucifixion on the side of the road as a reminder to one and all that this is what happens to those who do not please Caesar.

So, you have the tax collector, painted by Jesus with heart-wrenching pathos, truly sorry that he has to be the means by which Rome makes his fellow citizens suffer on a day-to-day basis, begging God for mercy – mercy, which Kurt Vonnegut once said in a Palm Sunday Sermon, is the one good idea we have been given so far; and the Pharisee, who is proclaiming the first century ce equivalent of, “There but by the grace of God go I.”

Which one best exemplifies what Biblical religion has in mind?

Never missing the teachable moment, Jesus shocks his first century listeners by holding up as an example to one and all the man whom everyone despised – the tax collector. He is the kind of person Torah sets out to make each and every one of us – a humble servant of the Lord who recognizes his own failures and asks to be forgiven. Note, he does not justify what he is doing, he does not defend it, he acknowledges and bewails (great word!) his shortcomings and begs for the one good idea we have been given so far, mercy.

The rest we can figure out. Except perhaps the heart of the lesson: to come away thinking ill of the Pharisee is to participate in just the kind of thinking he represents in the parable – there but by the grace of God go I. It’s a trap. Neatly set, and we willingly and eagerly spring it on ourselves nearly every time. For you see, God wants us to be merciful just as God promises to be merciful. We are to be merciful to the tax collector AND the Pharisee. Hard work, to be sure, but it is necessary work if we are ever to experience personally and collectively the emerging Kingdom of God that Jesus is sent to promote. No one ever said loving our enemies would be easy.

I remember one day serving in a soup kitchen in Baltimore many years ago. About a hundred or so homeless and nearly homeless people passing through the serving line one at a time, each stopping to say thank you, each looking tired but glad to have one hot meal on that day. A colleague of mine, The Reverend William Rich, turned to me and said, “There by the grace of God am I.” I hope and pray that I will never forget that moment.

So there you have it. God helps those who help others. There by the grace of God am I.

Be merciful. It’s the one good idea we have been given so far!

Amen.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

One In Ten

13 October 2013

Chapter 17 of Luke reflects on two major Biblical themes: faith and going home. It is left up to us to reflect on what faith and homecoming have to do with one another.

Last week the disciples ask Jesus for more faith. It helps to remember that up to this point he is always telling them that their problem is that the do not have enough faith. So they ask for more. What does he say? Are you kidding me? All you really need is a teeny, tiny bit of faith – as small as a mustard seed – and you can say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea.’

We may as well face it – even without any prodding from Jesus, we live in a culture that virtually worships having more of everything: more money, more food, more clothes, more shoes – whatever there is, we are meant to want more. It is our patriotic duty! It is how we keep “the economy” moving! I venture to say we put more time and energy into getting more of everything than we do into our prayer lives or following Jesus. Which is a shame since in our baptism we promise to “follow and obey him wherever he goes.” BCP 303

So look where he goes: the region between Israel and the Samaritans – a kind of no man’s land, a kind of wilderness that is meant to remind us of the 40 years experience after the Exodus, the Passover. It is also meant to remind us of exiles such as Jeremiah writes about. Exile is a new kind of wilderness. Both exile and wilderness connote a place with no power, no resources, and, perhaps most importantly, a place where we are not at home.

Huston Smith in his book, The World’s Religions, suggests that all religious traditions reflect on the most basic question, “Where are we?” That is, in fact how the Bible begins. The man and the woman disobey the Lord, they hear him approaching them in the garden. They attempt to hide from the Lord. We may as well face it, most of us try to do that too. It makes no sense, but as we can see, God plays along with us and calls out in the garden, “Where are you?”

Isn’t God supposed to know where we are? Isn’t he busy counting the hairs on our heads? So this must be some sort of rhetorical question. Philosophical really. Where are we? We often end up feeling as if we are in exile, or wandering in a wilderness of our own making, or tossed about by the winds of fate or providence depending upon our world view of such things.

The ten fellows Jesus runs across are in exile from their communities for having something like eczema, or psoriasis, or vitiligo. Their skin is scaly, irregular, not quite right. The only thing we are fairly certain is that they did not have Hansen’s Disease, or leprosy, since it did not exist in the Biblical era. Which makes their exile even more poignant really. We think this kind of ostracizing of fellow humans is incredibly inhuman and ancient, then we turn around and talk about “the heartbreak of psoriasis.” And if TV advertising doesn’t do it to us, we, like the first man and woman, try to hide it ourselves.

Then as only modern liberals will do, we try to figure out of this story is “real.” Were these 10 chaps really healed? This is based on our overlooking the simple fact that getting to go home after being ostracized to the no-man’s-land is a really really big deal. They get to go home after getting re-certified by the local priest. They get to go home. Off they go, all except one. One in ten. That has a ring to it, does it not? Tis the season of Stewardship, and just one in ten stops to say, “Thank you!” That would be a tithe of ten men with flakey skin. Beginning with Jacob back in Genesis 28 the Bible is not so subtle in working in these little episodes where 10 percent is part of the story! There’s the stewardship message for the day.

Yet, there is more. When we are honest with ourselves, we are all these ten men. That only one in ten stops to say thank you to God. That after all is what stewardship is all about: giving thanks to God. Providing God and God’s church with the resources necessary to help and heal others. We are all the first man and woman hiding behind a tree lest God “find” us! We are all wandering in exile. We are all wandering in the wilderness. We are all trying to find our way home.

Good News! We are all going home. My friend Pierre Wolfe, a former French, Jesuit priest, summed up all theology in one simple phrase: we come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. God is love. We are all on our way home. God in Christ promises in the 14^th chapter of John to come and get us. He promises that even now he is preparing a place for us! All of life is a homecoming – a coming home to God. We are all going to get out of exile. We will all get out of the wilderness. If only we have a tiny, teeny bit of faith – as small as a mustard seed.

Another New Testament writer says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

A woman came to visit us at St Tim’s a few weeks ago. Among other things she said that there are certain practices that can help us to overcome stress. Mindfulness Meditation, Compassion and Hope.

Exile and Wilderness are stressful places to be – just ask the children of Israel, the sons and daughters of Jacob.

Mindfulness Meditation, or Centering Prayer, really is simply taking time to stop – stop doing, stop saying, stop thinking, and just Be – Be Here Now. Just a minute or two can make a huge difference every day. As a practice, a regular practice, it can be life changing.

Compassion is taking just a moment to focus on someone else’s problems. A smile will do. A look into another’s eyes that says, “I know” will do. A hug, a moment of silence together. You do not need much. You just need a little bit.

And Hope. Hope is what keeps us going. It is the conviction that God will take us home again. Because we come from the heart and home of God’s eternal love. That is our assurance. After all we are those who every week say we believe in all things God creates, “seen and unseen.” It is the unseen that holds the promise of our future! You need just enough hope to take one step forward after another until you find yourself out of exile and on the way home.

Perhaps you will be the one in ten who stops for a moment to say thank you.

Amen.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

On Faith

On Faith

In the study of the world’s religions one of the first things they all grapple with is some version of the most basic question: Where are we? This is a way of getting at what we rather casually call “the human condition.” It is one of the first questions God asks the first man and first woman in the garden as they attempt to hide from God, ashamed of having disobeyed his command not to eat of the tree: “Where are you?”

That seems rather odd. Is it possible that God did not know where they were? Or, is God calling us to acknowledge where we are? I rather imagine it is both/and. Looking over the events of the past several weeks in our nation’s capital I can imagine even God trying to understand where we are, how we have gotten here, what has pushed us to be right here right now. And, I can imagine God calling us out to acknowledge where we are and how we have gotten to this point – a place where people who are hurting so badly inside see no way out other than acting out violently – a place where elected officials of all stripes have lost sight of what we once called “the common good” and can think only of their own narcissistic political strategies for some future election, or some commitment to one dogma or another with seemingly little regard for any of the rest of us.

We sometimes think of these ancient stories as hopelessly old-fashioned and archaic, and yet, at some dimension within ourselves we are all asking the question, “Where are we?” Perhaps even more, we wish someone beyond ourselves would stop us and pleadingly ask us, “Where are you?”

So one day the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” - Luke 17:5-6 (NRSV)

Not exactly the response they or we are hoping for. What is the matter with him, they no doubt asked themselves. We want practical faith. There is no way we can get trees to obey our commands. Well, he might reply, now you know how God might feel about us. But here is the surprise: Despite what a mess of things you have made, God loves you. Even despite your doubts. As one of my messengers Frederick Beuchner will put it one of these days, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” Just keep moving on this journey together we call Faith.

When I first undertook acupuncture treatments for a neck injury years and years ago, I discovered a book by Diane Connelly titled, All Sickness Is Home Sickness. The idea behind it was in fact inspired by the Blessed Augustine who writes in his Confessions that our hearts are restless “until we find our home in Thee.” We are on a journey that has taken us far from our true home. We find ourselves somehow separated from our true home. This makes us restless, uneasy – and when this restlessness is no longer grounded in some kind of faith, we find ourselves doing things, as Saint Paul so eloquently puts it, that “I would rather not do, and not doing the things I should want to do.”

So whether your faith is that there is a god or there is not a god, the good news is you do have faith! Therein lies a mustard seed of hope. The mysterious and unknown author of the epistle with the name Hebrews has this to say about faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” -Hebrews 11:1 (RSV) So as we continue to journey through this world, a world that so many of us want to escape, faith has the capacity to enable us to have some assurance that things we cannot see at present may very well hold the key to bringing us home. Again, Beuchner has said, “Faith is a journey, trusting that it will lead us home.” That is, as Hebrews reminds us, faith leads to a kind of hope that we are in fact on a journey that leads us home – which for many of us means a return to that place from whence we come – the heart of God’s eternal love.

It is when things get desperate, when things get stressed to the breaking point that the kind of hope that faith engenders begins to bend and even break. The old patterns and rituals seem ineffective in holding faith and hope together. A kind of chaotic depression begins to settle in and take over the way we see, hear and experience this journey called life. We call this stress.

Last week a woman came to speak to the girls at St. Tim’s. She observed that research has shown that when things reach some level of stress, there are three things, three strategies, three ways of “being,” that can relieve the stress and put us back on track: Mindfulness Meditation, Compassion, and Hope.

Mindfulness Meditation goes by many names: Centering Prayer, Transcendental Meditation, Sitting Zazen, and so on. It is really a practice that requires us to stop: stop doing, stop thinking, stop worrying, simply stop – sit, breathe, close your eyes, and let go. Such stopping has the capacity to break the cycles of stress, reset our faith and our hope, and put us back on a journey that we trust is leading us home again.

Compassion is that practice that takes us beyond ourselves and places our attention on the needs of others. It is the awareness that I am not the only one who is stressed here. And it is very possible that my experience of stress gives me the capacity to understand what troubles others, even just one other, and that I might hold the key to relieving their stress. Often we discover that in helping others, or simply being present to their distress, just being with them holds the key to relieving our own stress.

Finally, Hope is that dimension of faith that urges us to press on, trusting that, as Julian of Norwich assures us, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.” For those of us who have journeyed along the Judeo-Christian path, our sense of Hope is buoyed by our accepting that we are loved by Love.

The question for all of us is, “Where are you?” Are we in a place where we allow ourselves to stop doing, stop thinking, stop worrying and just accept the news that we are loved by Love? Are we in a place where we can stop and take the time to place our attention on the stress and suffering of others? Are we in a place where we allow ourselves to maintain a sense of Hope, a sense of direction, and a sense of trusting that faith, whatever our faith may be, will lead us home?

Years ago, reflecting on all of this I wrote the following song. I sometimes forget to sing it. I often forget that I even wrote it! Yet, here it is, a living reminder to myself that we do not need big, huge gobs of faith. It is as our Lord says, OK if you only have a teeny, tiny bit of faith as small as a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds that when planted and tended can grow into a great shrub capable of adding new and fresh flavors to this journey we call life which is really a life of homecoming – a coming home to the household of Love, the heart of God’s eternal love.