Christmas 2008 – Luke 2:1-20 * The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Peter’s at Ellicott Mills
Details, Details, Details
It’s all in the details of this story, but they are so easy to miss. Yet, attention to the details can completely change the way we enter into this story
For instance, Luke tells us that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. What do we know about him? As founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus brought Peace to the world by putting an end to the wars after Julius Caesar was murdered. The Age of Augustus was called the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. He was hailed as, “Savior of the World.” Also regarded as a god, one ancient inscription reads, “The Birthday of the God was for the world the beginning of good news (ie tidings, gospel, euangelion) of Joy on his account.”
Place that beside the greeting of the angel to the shepherds in Luke, “Be not afraid, for behold I bring you good news (tidings, euangelion) of a great joy which will come to all people ; for to you this is the birthday in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
A little counter-point to the Pax Romana, which of course was enforced by military might – if you are looking for a savior, writes Luke, you now have a choice: Augustus the “savior of the world,” or Christ the Lord, the savior of “all people.”
Sounds as if Luke is doing more than setting the time and place – by mentioning Augustus he is making a political statement as well. Not all that much has changed in two thousand years. Those of us who desire to live into this story of Christ the Lord still have a choice to make as to just where our commitments lie: Caesar or Christ. Those in Luke’s original audience who did not have the benefit of the crèche or the Christmas Pageant to domesticate what from the git-go can be seen as a test of wills: the will of the Empire versus God’s will, God’s Son, God’s Savior. It’s all in the details.
And what about “the inn?” I am embarrassed to say after four years of an undergraduate degree in Religion, three years in Seminary, studying both Hebrew and Greek, only recently did I discover that the word in chapter two of Luke translated as “the inn” really means “the guest room.”
You know, that spare room where you store all the extra stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else in the house, but that you clear out every time a relative or guest shows up from out of town? Remember, Joseph was from Bethlehem, the City of David the Shepherd King. As a young man he moved about as far away from home as one could get and still be in Israel – Nazareth. Nazareth was not just a few miles down the road from Bethlehem as it is in Pennsylvania! It was about 70 miles as the crow flies, four to seven days journey by foot and donkey, with possible stop-overs in Megiddo, Ibleam, Shechem, Shiloh, Ai and Jerusalem. That’s Megiddo as in Armageddon, Shechem as in where Abraham sat ‘neath the Oak at Moreh and where the tomb of Joseph was located, and so on – tourist stops and shrines for a traveling Israeli.
Of all the relatives of David the Shepherd King, it seems as if Joseph had the furthest to go to report for the census of Augustus, god and savior of the world. No doubt by the time he and Mary arrived all the guest rooms in all his relative’s homes were already filled with a great many other cousins, aunts, uncles and the like. The homes were often built in a square around a central courtyard, with the animals living in one side of the square. Evidently one kindly relative, not the long-reviled inn-keeper, said, “Look you guys, even though the guest room is filled, the room with the animals is probably the warmest place in the house on a cold December (which of course had not been invented yet!) night such as this. Why don’t you snuggle up with those wooly sheep and goats, burrow into the straw, what with Mary in the shape she’s in and all.” Kind of changes the whole scene when we see how it is that family takes care of family. With Jesus it seems it is always that way: a few days later total strangers like Anna and Simeon act like family with him, and all throughout Luke’s good news of Christ the Lord He seems to adopt everyone as family - even you and me through Baptism and Eucharist.
Which would be the last detail we will touch upon. (Whew, it’s almost over and time to head back to the egg nog!) As you know, they place the baby Christ the Lord in a manger, which is a feeding trough. In nursery school Chapel we call it “a cow’s cereal bowl,” which is not too bad a description of where the Son of God lies. I cannot hear the word “trough” without recalling Kurt Vonnegut’s image of people slurping at the money trough – an apt metaphor what’s going on all around us today!
The manger would be made of wood, which points the alert listener to the cross near the end of the story. The hard wood of the manger is the hard wood of the cross. But of course we are those people who know the cross is not the end of the story by a long shot! Luke may also be signaling the reader of the Good News of Christ the Lord to associate the feeding trough with the table – you know, as in the Last Supper table, which by the way is the one place the word “guest room” comes up again. The upper room of the Last Supper was “the guest room.”
The baby resting in the manger, in the feed trough, is the one destined to become “the bread of God…which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” He is “the bread of life.” (John 6:33,35) Think of the manger as foreshadowing – since it foreshadows the very fact of our being here tonight and nowhere else to share Eucharist, thanksgiving! Here is yet another contrast: the Bread of Life arrives humble in an animal’s feeding trough while the managers of the Empire slurp at the money trough! Makes one ask, “Where am I fed?”
Someone once wrote that human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the sly. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ the Lord must be born and in their very manger He must be laid – and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God. The birth of Christ in our souls is for a purpose beyond ourselves: it is because His manifestation in the world must be through us. We are to ponder this truth.
Each time we gather at this table, we come to remember the mystery of the Good News of Christ the Lord, Savior of the world and All people. Without reminders like the manger and the bread and the wine it becomes almost incomprehensible that God took on human form, lived among us, suffered for us, died and was raised that we might know true life in this world and the next.
And so it is on Christmas that we gather at His table, our feeding trough, to feed on his body and his blood in order that we might just as mysteriously live as His Body in the world – the Church. Somehow we become the very means by which he is the Savior of all people, not just the people of the empire.
These details – Augustus, guest room, feeding trough - invite us to join with Mary, ponder these things in our hearts until we know that He is alive in us. Like the shepherds let us rejoice and tell the whole world what we have seen and heard this night. It is just as it has been told to us – the babe in the manger is Christ the Lord! Tell it out to all the world! A world that still yearns for Good News of Glad Tidings waits for us to proclaim the Good News of Christ the Lord in all that we do and all that we say. Merry Christmas! God bless us everyone!
Amen!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The World As It Should Be
Advent 3B * Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11/John 1: 6-8, 19-28
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
As It Should Be!
A Sunday School teacher in Kansas reports this conversation in her class:
“If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked the children in my Sunday School class.
"NO!" the children all answered.
"If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything
neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?"
Again, the answer was, "NO!"
"Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my wife, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked them again.
Again, they all answered, "NO!"
"Well," she continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?"
A five-year-old boy shouted out, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!"
These Advent lessons lead us to think about such things as salvation and mission. And we may as well admit it, we tend to think in terms of such questions as: From what are we being saved? God’s punishment? The Devil? Our own Sins? Death? All of which tends to make us think of salvation in terms of “getting into heaven.”
Such thinking inevitably leads us to think of mission as the work of getting as many people into heaven as possible! Further, such thinking makes us ask such questions as, “who will be saved,” or “who will be in heaven.” And underneath it all is the little boy’s assumption that the single prerequisite for salvation and heaven is death.
Along come Isaiah and John. Isaiah is a poet. John, in today’s rendering is “a man sent from God,” who came “as a witness.” Both Isaiah and John have something to say about salvation. What they both seem to be saying is that salvation is not another place or time. Both Isaiah and John announce that salvation is the reality of this world as it should be.
Isaiah offers a vision of just what salvation looks like: we are to turn our attention to those named as recipients of God’s Good News – the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted, captives, prisoners, the mournful and the faint of spirit. Our mission to, with, and among those named in this poem defines God’s people as those people who exist for the sake of others.
Further, Isaiah the poet says we will know we are involved in God’s saving mission work when others, “the nations of the world,” notice that God’s people live differently – that is we live for God and for others, all others. Earlier in Isaiah 49:6 the poet says, “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Enter “The Light” from before time and forever. In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John (which would be John the Evangelist, not John “a man sent from God...”) one is immediately struck by the fact that he is not named “John the baptizer” as he is in Mark, or “John the Baptist” as he is in Matthew, or even “John the son of Zechariah” as we find in Luke. John is simply “a man sent from God…as a witness to testify to the Light.”
The Light, of course, is “the Word,” or logos, which has been with God and is God since before creation, and of whom it is said, “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3) This same Word or Light, we are told, “became flesh and dwelt among us – pitched his tent to tent among us.” (John 1:14)
As God’s Word, God’s Light grew up and lived in our midst, he would one day read Isaiah chapter 61 in his hometown synagogue and declare, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) That is, the time is now to begin living out the vision of salvation and mission Isaiah proclaimed. It is time for salvation as the reality of this world as it should be! It is this vision of salvation and mission John was sent to witness. John is a witness, in Greek he is a martyria, from which we get the word martyr. Witnesses say what they have seen or heard or attest to the truth of another’s testimony.
John’s role is to recognize the true Light which has come into the world – a light which the darkness has not overcome - and to call attention to this Light so that others might recognize it and believe. Belief in this sense means to recognize, trust and commit ourselves to the Light – the Light which is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision.
This in turn means, of course, to commit ourselves to the kind of salvation and mission Isaiah proclaims, John recognizes, Jesus lives and both John and Jesus call us to follow so our lives might become “a light to the nations!”
John was not the light, but came to testify to the light. John did not come to decorate everyone and every thing for Christmas. John did not come to announce the beginning of the Christmas sale season. He did not come to stir us into a frenzy of shopping and spending. He came to remind us and to bear witness to all who will listen that the darkest forces of the world are not as powerful as they claim or appear.
We begin this Third Sunday of Advent praying, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with Great Might come among us.” Will we take the time this Advent to allow God to stir things up within us and within our parishes and throughout the Church, so that we might become more like John, “a man sent from God?” For that is, in fact, who we really are – men and women sent from God as witnesses to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
And maybe, just maybe, as we testify, bear witness to, and proclaim the glory of the Light, we will embody the Light and become those who reveal the life of Christ anew in the world – a world that increasingly is desperate to see and know the Light. For in the Light is “life, and the life was the light of all people.” (John 1:4) All people look to us to see the Light. When all that we say and all that we do bears witness to the Light, heaven and salvation will be understood not as a time and place after death, but rather the world as it should be here and now! Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
As It Should Be!
A Sunday School teacher in Kansas reports this conversation in her class:
“If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked the children in my Sunday School class.
"NO!" the children all answered.
"If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything
neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?"
Again, the answer was, "NO!"
"Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my wife, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked them again.
Again, they all answered, "NO!"
"Well," she continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?"
A five-year-old boy shouted out, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!"
These Advent lessons lead us to think about such things as salvation and mission. And we may as well admit it, we tend to think in terms of such questions as: From what are we being saved? God’s punishment? The Devil? Our own Sins? Death? All of which tends to make us think of salvation in terms of “getting into heaven.”
Such thinking inevitably leads us to think of mission as the work of getting as many people into heaven as possible! Further, such thinking makes us ask such questions as, “who will be saved,” or “who will be in heaven.” And underneath it all is the little boy’s assumption that the single prerequisite for salvation and heaven is death.
Along come Isaiah and John. Isaiah is a poet. John, in today’s rendering is “a man sent from God,” who came “as a witness.” Both Isaiah and John have something to say about salvation. What they both seem to be saying is that salvation is not another place or time. Both Isaiah and John announce that salvation is the reality of this world as it should be.
Isaiah offers a vision of just what salvation looks like: we are to turn our attention to those named as recipients of God’s Good News – the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted, captives, prisoners, the mournful and the faint of spirit. Our mission to, with, and among those named in this poem defines God’s people as those people who exist for the sake of others.
Further, Isaiah the poet says we will know we are involved in God’s saving mission work when others, “the nations of the world,” notice that God’s people live differently – that is we live for God and for others, all others. Earlier in Isaiah 49:6 the poet says, “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Enter “The Light” from before time and forever. In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John (which would be John the Evangelist, not John “a man sent from God...”) one is immediately struck by the fact that he is not named “John the baptizer” as he is in Mark, or “John the Baptist” as he is in Matthew, or even “John the son of Zechariah” as we find in Luke. John is simply “a man sent from God…as a witness to testify to the Light.”
The Light, of course, is “the Word,” or logos, which has been with God and is God since before creation, and of whom it is said, “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3) This same Word or Light, we are told, “became flesh and dwelt among us – pitched his tent to tent among us.” (John 1:14)
As God’s Word, God’s Light grew up and lived in our midst, he would one day read Isaiah chapter 61 in his hometown synagogue and declare, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) That is, the time is now to begin living out the vision of salvation and mission Isaiah proclaimed. It is time for salvation as the reality of this world as it should be! It is this vision of salvation and mission John was sent to witness. John is a witness, in Greek he is a martyria, from which we get the word martyr. Witnesses say what they have seen or heard or attest to the truth of another’s testimony.
John’s role is to recognize the true Light which has come into the world – a light which the darkness has not overcome - and to call attention to this Light so that others might recognize it and believe. Belief in this sense means to recognize, trust and commit ourselves to the Light – the Light which is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision.
This in turn means, of course, to commit ourselves to the kind of salvation and mission Isaiah proclaims, John recognizes, Jesus lives and both John and Jesus call us to follow so our lives might become “a light to the nations!”
John was not the light, but came to testify to the light. John did not come to decorate everyone and every thing for Christmas. John did not come to announce the beginning of the Christmas sale season. He did not come to stir us into a frenzy of shopping and spending. He came to remind us and to bear witness to all who will listen that the darkest forces of the world are not as powerful as they claim or appear.
We begin this Third Sunday of Advent praying, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with Great Might come among us.” Will we take the time this Advent to allow God to stir things up within us and within our parishes and throughout the Church, so that we might become more like John, “a man sent from God?” For that is, in fact, who we really are – men and women sent from God as witnesses to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
And maybe, just maybe, as we testify, bear witness to, and proclaim the glory of the Light, we will embody the Light and become those who reveal the life of Christ anew in the world – a world that increasingly is desperate to see and know the Light. For in the Light is “life, and the life was the light of all people.” (John 1:4) All people look to us to see the Light. When all that we say and all that we do bears witness to the Light, heaven and salvation will be understood not as a time and place after death, but rather the world as it should be here and now! Amen.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Prepare, Prepare the Way of the Lord
7 December 2008/Advent 2B * Isaiah 40:1-11/Mark 1: 1-8
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
The Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The Bible begins, “In the beginning….” Mark begins, “The beginning…” Mark means to take us back. Way back to the very beginning. So Mark quotes Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah. Those who first heard this story of Mark’s would know that, would hear that. Standing in the ruins of Jerusalem on top of Mount Zion after the Roman legions had quelled the Jewish revolt of 66-70ce, Mark means to give them a story of hope and redemption: some Good News, or Gospel. As they listen to these opening verses, standing amidst the ashes, this is what they hear.
Once upon a time, in an ancient and faraway country, when there were no cities and no towns, only small tribes and caravans of people living on the land, wandering from place to place, looking for fresh water and green vegetation, there was a mountain top.
Those who climbed up to the top of this mountain said they felt the presence of God. A presence that says, “Love the One God who loves you and cares for you always, and love and care for one another, especially the others, the poor, the widows, the orphans and strangers.”
So they would come down from the mountain and tell others to Love God and Love others, all others. Throughout the years those who would go to the top of the mountain would leave a stone at the place where they felt the presence of God to commemorate their time there. Even those who did not experience God left a stone to remember the stories they had heard of those who had.
Each placed a stone, a token, one atop the other, year after year, until one day a magnificent Cathedral covered the place on the mountain top where God’s presence could be found and felt and heard: Love God and Love Others. People would come to the Cathedral, and entering they would know that something important was there, something sacred and true. They would stop and praise God and remember the stories of all those in the past who had been to the mountain top.
Over the years as more and more people made the journey to the top of the mountain leaving more and more stones one atop the other, soon a city was built around the Cathedral, with long winding, narrow streets, lined with homes and shops and plazas and fountains. People coming to the mountain to experience God and hear the stories of the past would need to stop and ask directions to find their way to the Cathedral so as not to get lost in the back streets of the city. And each in turn would leave a stone to remember the great events and stories of the past.
Soon there were so many stones a great wall surrounded the city with majestic gates and ramparts. People coming to the mountain to go to the Cathedral would have to find a gate they would be allowed to enter. Sometimes the gates were open, sometimes the gates were closed.
For many people, even in the city, the top of the mountain became more difficult to find. It had been covered with so many many stones. The gates were crowded, the streets noisy and narrow, there was so much activity, so many distractions and attractions that no one could hear the directions to find their way to the top of the mountain where God’s presence stood ready to remind them to Love the God who loves and cares for them always, and to love and care for one another, especially the others beyond the walls of the city.
Far away, beyond the walls of the city, was a man, lonely in the wilderness. His name was John. He would cry out loud in the wilderness, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!” High above the crowded and noisy streets, above the gates, above the walls, above the top of the Cathedral itself, his voice could be heard floating on the wind. Some people, discouraged at no longer being able to find the top of the mountain could hear his voice, so loud and lovely was the voice of the man, lonely in the wilderness.
First one, then another went beyond the gates of the city and followed the sound of that voice. They followed the sound floating on the winds. They could hear it like music in the sky! When they found him they listened as he cried, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!”
More and more people came out of the city and from all the surrounding countryside to be with the man, lonely in the wilderness, until soon, all the inhabitants both inside and outside the walls of the city found themselves together with the man, lonely in the wilderness. Soon they all joined in singing, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!” Everyone everywhere could hear the cry carried on the wind to the four corners of the Earth!
Then the man, lonely in the wilderness, led them down to the River – the River their ancestors had crossed long long ago to come to the mountain. John invited them to bathe in the water, confess their sins of forgetting God’s Way, and remember their God – the God who loves them and cares for them always. “Remember to love God and to love the others, all others, especially the poor, the widows, the orphans and the strangers. And I tell you, another will come, stronger than me, who will show us the way back to the top of the mountain, to show us the way back into the Cathedral, to show us the way back to the God who waits to meet us there. Remember, remember, remember today – the one who shall come will show us the way!”
And so it is today. When you listen above the noise of the city, when you listen above the noise of the crowds, when are still and listen wherever you are, a voice can still be heard, floating on the wind, beyond the gates of the city, above the tops of the highest Cathedrals, calling us today, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!”
Remember, remember, remember today – the one who shall come will show us the way! This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
The Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The Bible begins, “In the beginning….” Mark begins, “The beginning…” Mark means to take us back. Way back to the very beginning. So Mark quotes Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah. Those who first heard this story of Mark’s would know that, would hear that. Standing in the ruins of Jerusalem on top of Mount Zion after the Roman legions had quelled the Jewish revolt of 66-70ce, Mark means to give them a story of hope and redemption: some Good News, or Gospel. As they listen to these opening verses, standing amidst the ashes, this is what they hear.
Once upon a time, in an ancient and faraway country, when there were no cities and no towns, only small tribes and caravans of people living on the land, wandering from place to place, looking for fresh water and green vegetation, there was a mountain top.
Those who climbed up to the top of this mountain said they felt the presence of God. A presence that says, “Love the One God who loves you and cares for you always, and love and care for one another, especially the others, the poor, the widows, the orphans and strangers.”
So they would come down from the mountain and tell others to Love God and Love others, all others. Throughout the years those who would go to the top of the mountain would leave a stone at the place where they felt the presence of God to commemorate their time there. Even those who did not experience God left a stone to remember the stories they had heard of those who had.
Each placed a stone, a token, one atop the other, year after year, until one day a magnificent Cathedral covered the place on the mountain top where God’s presence could be found and felt and heard: Love God and Love Others. People would come to the Cathedral, and entering they would know that something important was there, something sacred and true. They would stop and praise God and remember the stories of all those in the past who had been to the mountain top.
Over the years as more and more people made the journey to the top of the mountain leaving more and more stones one atop the other, soon a city was built around the Cathedral, with long winding, narrow streets, lined with homes and shops and plazas and fountains. People coming to the mountain to experience God and hear the stories of the past would need to stop and ask directions to find their way to the Cathedral so as not to get lost in the back streets of the city. And each in turn would leave a stone to remember the great events and stories of the past.
Soon there were so many stones a great wall surrounded the city with majestic gates and ramparts. People coming to the mountain to go to the Cathedral would have to find a gate they would be allowed to enter. Sometimes the gates were open, sometimes the gates were closed.
For many people, even in the city, the top of the mountain became more difficult to find. It had been covered with so many many stones. The gates were crowded, the streets noisy and narrow, there was so much activity, so many distractions and attractions that no one could hear the directions to find their way to the top of the mountain where God’s presence stood ready to remind them to Love the God who loves and cares for them always, and to love and care for one another, especially the others beyond the walls of the city.
Far away, beyond the walls of the city, was a man, lonely in the wilderness. His name was John. He would cry out loud in the wilderness, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!” High above the crowded and noisy streets, above the gates, above the walls, above the top of the Cathedral itself, his voice could be heard floating on the wind. Some people, discouraged at no longer being able to find the top of the mountain could hear his voice, so loud and lovely was the voice of the man, lonely in the wilderness.
First one, then another went beyond the gates of the city and followed the sound of that voice. They followed the sound floating on the winds. They could hear it like music in the sky! When they found him they listened as he cried, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!”
More and more people came out of the city and from all the surrounding countryside to be with the man, lonely in the wilderness, until soon, all the inhabitants both inside and outside the walls of the city found themselves together with the man, lonely in the wilderness. Soon they all joined in singing, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!” Everyone everywhere could hear the cry carried on the wind to the four corners of the Earth!
Then the man, lonely in the wilderness, led them down to the River – the River their ancestors had crossed long long ago to come to the mountain. John invited them to bathe in the water, confess their sins of forgetting God’s Way, and remember their God – the God who loves them and cares for them always. “Remember to love God and to love the others, all others, especially the poor, the widows, the orphans and the strangers. And I tell you, another will come, stronger than me, who will show us the way back to the top of the mountain, to show us the way back into the Cathedral, to show us the way back to the God who waits to meet us there. Remember, remember, remember today – the one who shall come will show us the way!”
And so it is today. When you listen above the noise of the city, when you listen above the noise of the crowds, when are still and listen wherever you are, a voice can still be heard, floating on the wind, beyond the gates of the city, above the tops of the highest Cathedrals, calling us today, “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord. Make a way for God to return!”
Remember, remember, remember today – the one who shall come will show us the way! This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Amen.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Where Are You?
November 30, 2008/Advent 1B * Isaiah 64:1-9/Mark 13:24-37
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Where Are You?
The Gospel of Mark is believed to have been written after the year 70 ce – that is after Rome destroyed Jerusalem, the Temple and pretty much all that matters. Isaiah chapter 64 is written after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (586bce), the Temple and pretty much all that matters. And both periods marked a time when the land – think agricultural farm land – was under foreign occupation and control – that is by people who did not know how to farm it.
Consider the reality that Jerusalem and the Temple were not just the center of Israelite religion and Israel’s capitol city. Jerusalem and the Temple were the Economic Center of all Israel. So as those to whom Isaiah writes who are returning from exile to see the land in ruins, and those to whom Mark writes are seeing the same destruction all over again, it is difficult for us to imagine just what this might represent in modern terms.
It would be, however, on a scale of the Stock Market not simply losing value, but all of Wall Street and New York City lying in rubble on the ground, while Washington D.C. also lies in ruins. Also imagine all useable farm land rendered at least temporarily useless since it has been exploited and not at all cared for by the foreign occupying forces.
So followers of Jesus want to know who will put Humpty Dumpty back together again and when? While those in Isaiah’s time are still stuck in trying to assign blame, going so far as to suggest that God’s absence – “…because you hid yourself we transgressed…” – is not only to blame for the Exile and Destruction, but that God’s absence is also to blame for their sins! Perhaps giving birth to the very notion of chutzpah!
And isn’t it fascinating that both Isaiah and Jesus, over 500 years later, respond by observing a change in the seasons. I see leaves fallen off the trees as work to be done – raking, chopping, moving, clearing. Isaiah sees a faded leaf blowing in the wind and sees the truth of the situation – our iniquities, our sins, our evil ways, our greed, our wickedness, our injustice, our poor stewardship of the earth and everyone and everything therein “take us away.” What our behavior takes us away from is God and God’s way.
Perhaps God is not hiding from us after all. It is more likely that we are hiding from God. Is this not an echo of the story of the first two people in the garden? The minute they sinned, they hid from God, as if that were somehow possible. God, walking in the cool of the evening, came into the garden and called out, “Where are you?” Instead of blaming me for your poor stewardship of the good earth I gave to you and all the resulting predicaments, where are you? It’s a pivotal question for all of us really.
Jesus makes a similar observation with the fig tree – those who are paying attention will know when it is time for a new season, new growth, new life. And then can we hear him virtually shouting the conclusion of his little story about the man on a journey coming home: KEEP AWAKE!!! Which five hundred years later is surely another echo of God’s plaintive and heartfelt cry, “Where are you?”
I had a Yoga teacher, Sally Rich, who would periodically throughout each class ask us, “Where is your mind?” This, I believe, is pretty much all God really cares about – where are we, and where are our minds? It is a matter of what some call mindfulness, awareness, even consciousness. What are we thinking? What are we doing?
So God is not hiding from us. We are hiding from God. It is more likely that we have ceased to be those people who are attentive and waiting for God. Often we no longer allow ourselves to be the clay in the hands of God the potter. We no longer allow ourselves to yield to God’s shaping and molding us.
Do we even see ourselves as the “work of God’s hands?” Or, do we think of ourselves as self-made, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps sorts of people? Do we strive to be, as we say, “self-made”? Maybe we don’t see God at work around us because we are not looking, have no time to look; because we are too busy Wanting, Having and Doing to take time out to be with God and to wait for God and be ready for God to arrive. Are we too busy to see God in our midst?
Years ago, my Aunt Virginia sent me this box – it’s from Austria where her two brothers, my father and uncle respectively, served in WWII. In it is a leaf, preserved now for several decades – perhaps like the leaf that inspired Isaiah. A few years after she sent this to me, I was walking up a stream-bed with an artist friend, Gerald Hardy. He had removed the silt one bucket at a time to re-store a babbling, bubbling brook in his backyard where before there had just been a trickle. As we made our way along, he stopped, pointed to a leaf such as this one, but wet and sticking to a rock in the stream-bed. The sunlight glistened off of it. “See this….it wasn’t here yesterday, and probably won’t be here tomorrow. We can only see this right now.”
The urgency of Advent, the Christian New Year, means to convey much the same truth. We can, like the ancient Israelites, put off waiting upon God now, distracting ourselves with all sorts of things like assigning blame for current crises like the economy, the war, the health care system, failed banks, failed relationships, failed friendships, failure all around! We can turn our attention to the endless Wanting, Having and Doing of the Christmas shopping season to try to fill the emptiness that lies at the belly of our souls with stuff – lots and lots of stuff. We can attempt to make something of ourselves, by ourselves, to prove what? That we can do things on our own? That we are rugged individuals who depend on no one else? We can stand around and speculate, like those with Jesus, as to just what day and what hour God might make another spectacular intervention like the Exodus, the escape from Exile, or the Resurrection, as if those mighty acts of God were not enough to get our attention, jump-start us and get us back on track.
Or, we can turn our hearts to God – or better yet, turn our hearts over to God. We can let ourselves become clay in God’s hands.
This is where the ancient Christian tradition and discipline of Contemplative or Centering Prayer means to put us – back in God’s hands. It is our way of saying to God on a regular basis, Here I am, Lord. It is a kind of Sabbath time – a time to do nothing but sit quietly with God. It is a place where we might discover that God is always willing, like the wind, to blow all our iniquities away so we might begin again. It is a place to discover that the branch of the fig tree is tender and that new growth and new life lies just around the corner. Contemplative prayer means to put us in touch with the one who placed us here.
Advent is a time for placing ourselves in God’s hands – a time to gather ourselves up into meditation and contemplation of the mighty acts God has done throughout history. We have here and now only a moment for this. But that is enough – even if our time of Contemplative prayer is almost immediately overwhelmed by all the other busyness and details of the season. It is enough, because once we learn to go to that deep still place where God is waiting for us, we always will know the way back. From the beginning of time God has been calling, Where are you? Imagine just how pleasing it is for God when we take the time to reply, “Here I am, Lord – shape me in your hands - in your Way.” Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Where Are You?
The Gospel of Mark is believed to have been written after the year 70 ce – that is after Rome destroyed Jerusalem, the Temple and pretty much all that matters. Isaiah chapter 64 is written after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (586bce), the Temple and pretty much all that matters. And both periods marked a time when the land – think agricultural farm land – was under foreign occupation and control – that is by people who did not know how to farm it.
Consider the reality that Jerusalem and the Temple were not just the center of Israelite religion and Israel’s capitol city. Jerusalem and the Temple were the Economic Center of all Israel. So as those to whom Isaiah writes who are returning from exile to see the land in ruins, and those to whom Mark writes are seeing the same destruction all over again, it is difficult for us to imagine just what this might represent in modern terms.
It would be, however, on a scale of the Stock Market not simply losing value, but all of Wall Street and New York City lying in rubble on the ground, while Washington D.C. also lies in ruins. Also imagine all useable farm land rendered at least temporarily useless since it has been exploited and not at all cared for by the foreign occupying forces.
So followers of Jesus want to know who will put Humpty Dumpty back together again and when? While those in Isaiah’s time are still stuck in trying to assign blame, going so far as to suggest that God’s absence – “…because you hid yourself we transgressed…” – is not only to blame for the Exile and Destruction, but that God’s absence is also to blame for their sins! Perhaps giving birth to the very notion of chutzpah!
And isn’t it fascinating that both Isaiah and Jesus, over 500 years later, respond by observing a change in the seasons. I see leaves fallen off the trees as work to be done – raking, chopping, moving, clearing. Isaiah sees a faded leaf blowing in the wind and sees the truth of the situation – our iniquities, our sins, our evil ways, our greed, our wickedness, our injustice, our poor stewardship of the earth and everyone and everything therein “take us away.” What our behavior takes us away from is God and God’s way.
Perhaps God is not hiding from us after all. It is more likely that we are hiding from God. Is this not an echo of the story of the first two people in the garden? The minute they sinned, they hid from God, as if that were somehow possible. God, walking in the cool of the evening, came into the garden and called out, “Where are you?” Instead of blaming me for your poor stewardship of the good earth I gave to you and all the resulting predicaments, where are you? It’s a pivotal question for all of us really.
Jesus makes a similar observation with the fig tree – those who are paying attention will know when it is time for a new season, new growth, new life. And then can we hear him virtually shouting the conclusion of his little story about the man on a journey coming home: KEEP AWAKE!!! Which five hundred years later is surely another echo of God’s plaintive and heartfelt cry, “Where are you?”
I had a Yoga teacher, Sally Rich, who would periodically throughout each class ask us, “Where is your mind?” This, I believe, is pretty much all God really cares about – where are we, and where are our minds? It is a matter of what some call mindfulness, awareness, even consciousness. What are we thinking? What are we doing?
So God is not hiding from us. We are hiding from God. It is more likely that we have ceased to be those people who are attentive and waiting for God. Often we no longer allow ourselves to be the clay in the hands of God the potter. We no longer allow ourselves to yield to God’s shaping and molding us.
Do we even see ourselves as the “work of God’s hands?” Or, do we think of ourselves as self-made, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps sorts of people? Do we strive to be, as we say, “self-made”? Maybe we don’t see God at work around us because we are not looking, have no time to look; because we are too busy Wanting, Having and Doing to take time out to be with God and to wait for God and be ready for God to arrive. Are we too busy to see God in our midst?
Years ago, my Aunt Virginia sent me this box – it’s from Austria where her two brothers, my father and uncle respectively, served in WWII. In it is a leaf, preserved now for several decades – perhaps like the leaf that inspired Isaiah. A few years after she sent this to me, I was walking up a stream-bed with an artist friend, Gerald Hardy. He had removed the silt one bucket at a time to re-store a babbling, bubbling brook in his backyard where before there had just been a trickle. As we made our way along, he stopped, pointed to a leaf such as this one, but wet and sticking to a rock in the stream-bed. The sunlight glistened off of it. “See this….it wasn’t here yesterday, and probably won’t be here tomorrow. We can only see this right now.”
The urgency of Advent, the Christian New Year, means to convey much the same truth. We can, like the ancient Israelites, put off waiting upon God now, distracting ourselves with all sorts of things like assigning blame for current crises like the economy, the war, the health care system, failed banks, failed relationships, failed friendships, failure all around! We can turn our attention to the endless Wanting, Having and Doing of the Christmas shopping season to try to fill the emptiness that lies at the belly of our souls with stuff – lots and lots of stuff. We can attempt to make something of ourselves, by ourselves, to prove what? That we can do things on our own? That we are rugged individuals who depend on no one else? We can stand around and speculate, like those with Jesus, as to just what day and what hour God might make another spectacular intervention like the Exodus, the escape from Exile, or the Resurrection, as if those mighty acts of God were not enough to get our attention, jump-start us and get us back on track.
Or, we can turn our hearts to God – or better yet, turn our hearts over to God. We can let ourselves become clay in God’s hands.
This is where the ancient Christian tradition and discipline of Contemplative or Centering Prayer means to put us – back in God’s hands. It is our way of saying to God on a regular basis, Here I am, Lord. It is a kind of Sabbath time – a time to do nothing but sit quietly with God. It is a place where we might discover that God is always willing, like the wind, to blow all our iniquities away so we might begin again. It is a place to discover that the branch of the fig tree is tender and that new growth and new life lies just around the corner. Contemplative prayer means to put us in touch with the one who placed us here.
Advent is a time for placing ourselves in God’s hands – a time to gather ourselves up into meditation and contemplation of the mighty acts God has done throughout history. We have here and now only a moment for this. But that is enough – even if our time of Contemplative prayer is almost immediately overwhelmed by all the other busyness and details of the season. It is enough, because once we learn to go to that deep still place where God is waiting for us, we always will know the way back. From the beginning of time God has been calling, Where are you? Imagine just how pleasing it is for God when we take the time to reply, “Here I am, Lord – shape me in your hands - in your Way.” Amen.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Economics 101
16 November 2008 * Matthew 25:14-30
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Sabbath Economics
Prologue: “Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet, to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.
“To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is to not to have, but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of the things of space, becomes our sole concern.” Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel (Shambala, Boston:2003) p.ix
All of a sudden we are all hearing all sorts of lessons and theories of Economics. Experts abound. Those of us old enough may recall such moments in modern economic theory as E.F. Shumacher’s Small Is Beautiful and President George Herbert Walker Bush’s declarations about the Voodoo Economics of his then adversary. And we hear about such things as macro and micro economics, supply side and free market economics, Keynesian economics and the like. Economics very well may be a far more mysterious discipline and field of study than Theology!
But rarely do we hear much about Biblical Economics, or what some might call Sabbath Economics. We pray that “all holy Scriptures” are written for our learning – and we need to “read, mark and inwardly digest” ALL holy scripture to begin to understand any small section of the Bible.
There are three cornerstone principals of Sabbath Economics outlined in Manna Season way back in Genesis on the left hand side of the Bible: 1)Everyone is to have enough, 2) No one is to store up or accumulate more than enough, and 3)On the Sabbath there will be none. The Sabbath is not a religious regulation, but an economic practice that is an alternative to life in Egypt which was an economy based on ruthless policies of surplus-extraction and militarism. The Bible’s Sabbath regulations represent God’s strategy for teaching Israel - and anyone else who is reading, marking and inwardly digesting this stuff – about our dependence upon the land as a gift to share, not as a possession to exploit.
Enter our Parable of the Talents as it is called. It ought to be called the Parable of the Hero of Sabbath Economics. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as Sabbath or Biblical Economics. Like everyone else in the world, God has an economic plan. And to understand this Parable we need to know that. Or else, as we learned at Vestry on Monday evening, this looks like a bad news story rather than a good news story. Who would want to serve a God as mercy-less and rapacious as the Master in the story? Obviously something is amiss in our understanding of this tale that has too often been made out to be an affirmation of modern day investment strategies at worse, or a tame affirmation that we all have “certain talents” at best.
Make no mistake, this is about money, and lots of it. A Talent weighed between 57 and 74 pounds of silver! Equal to 6,000 denarii – the average days wage for a day laborer – it represents more than 15 years wages –which some have said the amount given the slaves for investment is worth approximately two and a half million of our dollars. We are talking serious day-trading and venture capital here! Not the fact that someone might be an expert at needlepoint or macramé.
In traditional Mediterranean society, stability, not self-advancement, is the ideal. Earning anything more than 12% was and is considered rapacious. Anyone trying to accumulate inordinate wealth is understood to be dishonorable since it is always the result of extorting and defrauding other members of the community through trading, tax collecting and money lending.
Further, the primary instrument of investment is land or property. Large landowners, like the master in our story, made loans to peasants based on crop production. With high interest rates, lean years, draught and famine, these tenant farmers unable to make their payments faced foreclosure. The cycle of poverty begins when a family falls into debt, deepened when forced to sell its land to service the debt (anyone hearing the words “home equity lines”), and concludes when all they could sell is their labor thus becoming bond-slaves. Remember, this is how we became slaves in Egypt to begin with, through a series of credit arrangements and mortgage foreclosures – a quick review and digestion of Genesis chapter 47 details this regression into poverty and slavery.
Those listening to Jesus tell this story recognize all too quickly who the bad guys are and who the lone good guy is because this is the story of their lives. The bad guys are praised by the master for having foreclosed enough mortgages to double his earnings, land holdings and bond-slaves. The good guy is the one who mounts a non-violent protest and refuses to defraud his fellow peasants by burying the talent in the ground.
This becomes a kind of peasant insider joke, which we who are so far distanced from the land and how our food is really produced have no chance of getting. Those who work the land know that all true wealth comes from God, the source of rain, sunshine, seed and soil. This silver talent when sown can produce no fruit – reminiscent of the money cast as religion – idols – which also have no power to produce good. The Talent, like idols, is bad seed.
Here is a clash of economic world-views: the traditional agrarian stability model of enough for everyone “use-value”, and the elite’s currency-based system of accumulation and “exchange-value.”
One needs to recall that at the end of last Sunday’s parable about the bridesmaids we were cautioned to “stay awake” so as not to be caught unawares by the upcoming moment of truth in this story. Those listening no doubt “get it” because they have a firm grasp of the Bible’s teaching of Sabbath Economics. So what do we make of our activist hero being cast into the “outer darkness?”
We presume this to be hell, and perhaps it is hell – hell on earth where those who are marginalized by the dominant, elite economic culture end up living in the shadows, on the mean streets, in the outcast territories between towns, beyond the lights of the big cities and great households – life lived with the poor. To grasp our hero-slave’s banishment we must turn to next Sunday’s, and Matthew’s, next parable – The Last Judgment (MT 25: 31-46) where we learn that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and prisoners and welcome strangers are where one is most likely to meet Christ. That is, the whistleblower’s punishment kicks him out of the rich man’s system but closer to the true Lord who dwells among the poor. It is the same Lord who teaches us to pray for daily bread (manna), and to forgive debts (n.b., sin and debt are the same word in Jesus’ native Aramaic) – that is, Jesus teaches us to pray for a return to Sabbath Economics.
As we heard last Sunday, what we call The Lord’s Prayer is really, says Bishop Sutton, The Disciples’ Prayer – a prayer for Sabbath Economics. Can we read, mark and inwardly digest this story seriously enough to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life” Jesus offers in this challenging and clever critique of all systems of economics which compete with Sabbath Economics? It is difficult to imagine any more important time to do so than now! Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Sabbath Economics
Prologue: “Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet, to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.
“To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is to not to have, but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of the things of space, becomes our sole concern.” Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel (Shambala, Boston:2003) p.ix
All of a sudden we are all hearing all sorts of lessons and theories of Economics. Experts abound. Those of us old enough may recall such moments in modern economic theory as E.F. Shumacher’s Small Is Beautiful and President George Herbert Walker Bush’s declarations about the Voodoo Economics of his then adversary. And we hear about such things as macro and micro economics, supply side and free market economics, Keynesian economics and the like. Economics very well may be a far more mysterious discipline and field of study than Theology!
But rarely do we hear much about Biblical Economics, or what some might call Sabbath Economics. We pray that “all holy Scriptures” are written for our learning – and we need to “read, mark and inwardly digest” ALL holy scripture to begin to understand any small section of the Bible.
There are three cornerstone principals of Sabbath Economics outlined in Manna Season way back in Genesis on the left hand side of the Bible: 1)Everyone is to have enough, 2) No one is to store up or accumulate more than enough, and 3)On the Sabbath there will be none. The Sabbath is not a religious regulation, but an economic practice that is an alternative to life in Egypt which was an economy based on ruthless policies of surplus-extraction and militarism. The Bible’s Sabbath regulations represent God’s strategy for teaching Israel - and anyone else who is reading, marking and inwardly digesting this stuff – about our dependence upon the land as a gift to share, not as a possession to exploit.
Enter our Parable of the Talents as it is called. It ought to be called the Parable of the Hero of Sabbath Economics. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as Sabbath or Biblical Economics. Like everyone else in the world, God has an economic plan. And to understand this Parable we need to know that. Or else, as we learned at Vestry on Monday evening, this looks like a bad news story rather than a good news story. Who would want to serve a God as mercy-less and rapacious as the Master in the story? Obviously something is amiss in our understanding of this tale that has too often been made out to be an affirmation of modern day investment strategies at worse, or a tame affirmation that we all have “certain talents” at best.
Make no mistake, this is about money, and lots of it. A Talent weighed between 57 and 74 pounds of silver! Equal to 6,000 denarii – the average days wage for a day laborer – it represents more than 15 years wages –which some have said the amount given the slaves for investment is worth approximately two and a half million of our dollars. We are talking serious day-trading and venture capital here! Not the fact that someone might be an expert at needlepoint or macramé.
In traditional Mediterranean society, stability, not self-advancement, is the ideal. Earning anything more than 12% was and is considered rapacious. Anyone trying to accumulate inordinate wealth is understood to be dishonorable since it is always the result of extorting and defrauding other members of the community through trading, tax collecting and money lending.
Further, the primary instrument of investment is land or property. Large landowners, like the master in our story, made loans to peasants based on crop production. With high interest rates, lean years, draught and famine, these tenant farmers unable to make their payments faced foreclosure. The cycle of poverty begins when a family falls into debt, deepened when forced to sell its land to service the debt (anyone hearing the words “home equity lines”), and concludes when all they could sell is their labor thus becoming bond-slaves. Remember, this is how we became slaves in Egypt to begin with, through a series of credit arrangements and mortgage foreclosures – a quick review and digestion of Genesis chapter 47 details this regression into poverty and slavery.
Those listening to Jesus tell this story recognize all too quickly who the bad guys are and who the lone good guy is because this is the story of their lives. The bad guys are praised by the master for having foreclosed enough mortgages to double his earnings, land holdings and bond-slaves. The good guy is the one who mounts a non-violent protest and refuses to defraud his fellow peasants by burying the talent in the ground.
This becomes a kind of peasant insider joke, which we who are so far distanced from the land and how our food is really produced have no chance of getting. Those who work the land know that all true wealth comes from God, the source of rain, sunshine, seed and soil. This silver talent when sown can produce no fruit – reminiscent of the money cast as religion – idols – which also have no power to produce good. The Talent, like idols, is bad seed.
Here is a clash of economic world-views: the traditional agrarian stability model of enough for everyone “use-value”, and the elite’s currency-based system of accumulation and “exchange-value.”
One needs to recall that at the end of last Sunday’s parable about the bridesmaids we were cautioned to “stay awake” so as not to be caught unawares by the upcoming moment of truth in this story. Those listening no doubt “get it” because they have a firm grasp of the Bible’s teaching of Sabbath Economics. So what do we make of our activist hero being cast into the “outer darkness?”
We presume this to be hell, and perhaps it is hell – hell on earth where those who are marginalized by the dominant, elite economic culture end up living in the shadows, on the mean streets, in the outcast territories between towns, beyond the lights of the big cities and great households – life lived with the poor. To grasp our hero-slave’s banishment we must turn to next Sunday’s, and Matthew’s, next parable – The Last Judgment (MT 25: 31-46) where we learn that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and prisoners and welcome strangers are where one is most likely to meet Christ. That is, the whistleblower’s punishment kicks him out of the rich man’s system but closer to the true Lord who dwells among the poor. It is the same Lord who teaches us to pray for daily bread (manna), and to forgive debts (n.b., sin and debt are the same word in Jesus’ native Aramaic) – that is, Jesus teaches us to pray for a return to Sabbath Economics.
As we heard last Sunday, what we call The Lord’s Prayer is really, says Bishop Sutton, The Disciples’ Prayer – a prayer for Sabbath Economics. Can we read, mark and inwardly digest this story seriously enough to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life” Jesus offers in this challenging and clever critique of all systems of economics which compete with Sabbath Economics? It is difficult to imagine any more important time to do so than now! Amen.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Sacred Knitting
All Saints 2008 * Revelation 7:9-17/1 John 3:1-3/Matthew 5:1-12
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
“Beloved, we are God’s children now!”
Think of someone you know knitting. Sitting in a comfortable chair, needles in hand, a skein of yarn on the floor, skillfully taking a single strand of yarn or thread and transforming it into a pair of socks, a sweater, a comforter, a scarf, a cap – generally speaking things that keep us warm and snug. This person knitting is usually a woman. I remember my Grandma Cooper knitting me a sweater when I went away to college in New England!
Our collect for today, and a number of places in Scripture, says that God is like this: “Almighty God, you have knit together your elect into one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Jesus Christ….” Psalm 139 says, “…you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Paul in Colossians chapter 2 writes, “…that their hearts may be encouraged as they are knit together in love, to have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ…” And again Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 4, “…from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.”
I love to think about God knitting! Sitting there, needles going full tilt, knitting us, knitting us together into her community, her fellowship, the mystical body of God’s own son, upbuilding us with love, encouraging our hearts, filling us with the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ!
What I hear in this metaphor of God as cosmic knitter is that in creating us and creating the community of God’s own people in Christ, there is one strand, on thread if you will, connecting us all one to another and all to God in Christ. It is the Holy Spirit, God’s spirit, God’s breath, God’s wind that is the common thread. One common thread knit into the very fabric of God’s kingdom on earth.
We inspire – literally breathe in - this Spirit with each breath we take! By the inspiration of this Holy Spirit the thoughts of our hearts are cleansed! And we are made One Body, One Spirit committed in our hearts to One Lord of All – not some, not most, not many, but the Lord of All.
God in Christ, however, uses water instead of knitting needles to do much of her knitting us together into one communion and fellowship. Water. It is the water of creation over which the Spirit/Breath/Wind of God hovered in Creation. It is the water of the Red Sea which God’s Sprit/Breath/Wind drove aside so the Hebrew children could scamper their way from slavery to freedom. It is the water of the Jordan River in which Jesus received the baptism of John and was visited by the Holy Spirit and a voice proclaiming, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God says these very words to each of us when we are baptized.
It is the very same water in which All the Saints we remember this day were baptized. This water shaped their lives in such a way that they did astonishing deeds to further establish God’s kingdom in our midst.
On pages 19-30 you can find some of their names. Every Tuesday morning we recall their lives one by one. Since 1979 we have added about two or three names every three years so that the list has grown.
We need to remember, not one of them ever set out to be saints. It has only been in retrospect that we call them that. As we sing, they were baptized just like you and me, and like Nolan and Benjamin will be this morning. Some, like James Hannington and his companions, gave their lives attempting to bring the love of Christ to others. Some were amazing teachers, some abandoned a life of riches and nursed the sick and tended to the poor. They have names like Lawrence, Hilda, Margaret, and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky! They all bathed in the water in this font, God’s Holy Water, and so were knit together into the fabric of the life of God’s kingdom on earth.
Once upon a time, about 25 years ago, I baptized a little girl named Eleanor. She was about four or five years old. After her baptism we were back at her family’s home having brunch when I felt a tug on my pants leg. It was Eleanor. I asked, “What is it, Eleanor?” “Can you still see the cross on my forehead?” she asked. Meaning, of course, the cross traced with oil blessed by our bishop, sealing her as Christ’s own forever. Also a sign of the promises she made to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace for all people. Not most people, some people, or a lot of people, but all people. And I said, “Yes, Eleanor, I can still see the cross on your forehead.”
This morning, on a mountain top near the Sea of Galilee Jesus says, “You are blessed.” We are blessed if we are hungry, if we are thirsty, if we are peacemakers. By water and the Holy Spirit, we have been knit together with all those who have gone before us, and all who will come after us into the mystical body of those people who are peacemakers in the name of Jesus Christ. There is one thread holding us all together and it is the thread of Christ that connects us to God the Father. It is the thread of the Holy Spirit that says with the First Letter of John, “Beloved, we are God’s children, now!”
In a moment we will all promise that all that we say and all that we do will proclaim the Good News that God is at work in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to herself as she knits away day after day, night after night, knitting us together into one communion and fellowship! When we put on the garment God is knitting for us, people will see the cross on our foreheads and know who we are and whose we are.
And a world that is hungering for righteousness, a world that mourns, a world that seeks comfort and love and care, a world that seeks mercy shall obtain mercy and shall be satisfied because the things we do this day makes us blessed. The blessing we are given is a blessing that is meant for the whole world and everyone therein – it is meant to usher in a world of justice and peace for all people – not some people, not lots of people, but all people. Let us be glad and thank God for making us her Beloved children, Now. Amen.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
“Beloved, we are God’s children now!”
Think of someone you know knitting. Sitting in a comfortable chair, needles in hand, a skein of yarn on the floor, skillfully taking a single strand of yarn or thread and transforming it into a pair of socks, a sweater, a comforter, a scarf, a cap – generally speaking things that keep us warm and snug. This person knitting is usually a woman. I remember my Grandma Cooper knitting me a sweater when I went away to college in New England!
Our collect for today, and a number of places in Scripture, says that God is like this: “Almighty God, you have knit together your elect into one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Jesus Christ….” Psalm 139 says, “…you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Paul in Colossians chapter 2 writes, “…that their hearts may be encouraged as they are knit together in love, to have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ…” And again Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 4, “…from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.”
I love to think about God knitting! Sitting there, needles going full tilt, knitting us, knitting us together into her community, her fellowship, the mystical body of God’s own son, upbuilding us with love, encouraging our hearts, filling us with the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ!
What I hear in this metaphor of God as cosmic knitter is that in creating us and creating the community of God’s own people in Christ, there is one strand, on thread if you will, connecting us all one to another and all to God in Christ. It is the Holy Spirit, God’s spirit, God’s breath, God’s wind that is the common thread. One common thread knit into the very fabric of God’s kingdom on earth.
We inspire – literally breathe in - this Spirit with each breath we take! By the inspiration of this Holy Spirit the thoughts of our hearts are cleansed! And we are made One Body, One Spirit committed in our hearts to One Lord of All – not some, not most, not many, but the Lord of All.
God in Christ, however, uses water instead of knitting needles to do much of her knitting us together into one communion and fellowship. Water. It is the water of creation over which the Spirit/Breath/Wind of God hovered in Creation. It is the water of the Red Sea which God’s Sprit/Breath/Wind drove aside so the Hebrew children could scamper their way from slavery to freedom. It is the water of the Jordan River in which Jesus received the baptism of John and was visited by the Holy Spirit and a voice proclaiming, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God says these very words to each of us when we are baptized.
It is the very same water in which All the Saints we remember this day were baptized. This water shaped their lives in such a way that they did astonishing deeds to further establish God’s kingdom in our midst.
On pages 19-30 you can find some of their names. Every Tuesday morning we recall their lives one by one. Since 1979 we have added about two or three names every three years so that the list has grown.
We need to remember, not one of them ever set out to be saints. It has only been in retrospect that we call them that. As we sing, they were baptized just like you and me, and like Nolan and Benjamin will be this morning. Some, like James Hannington and his companions, gave their lives attempting to bring the love of Christ to others. Some were amazing teachers, some abandoned a life of riches and nursed the sick and tended to the poor. They have names like Lawrence, Hilda, Margaret, and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky! They all bathed in the water in this font, God’s Holy Water, and so were knit together into the fabric of the life of God’s kingdom on earth.
Once upon a time, about 25 years ago, I baptized a little girl named Eleanor. She was about four or five years old. After her baptism we were back at her family’s home having brunch when I felt a tug on my pants leg. It was Eleanor. I asked, “What is it, Eleanor?” “Can you still see the cross on my forehead?” she asked. Meaning, of course, the cross traced with oil blessed by our bishop, sealing her as Christ’s own forever. Also a sign of the promises she made to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace for all people. Not most people, some people, or a lot of people, but all people. And I said, “Yes, Eleanor, I can still see the cross on your forehead.”
This morning, on a mountain top near the Sea of Galilee Jesus says, “You are blessed.” We are blessed if we are hungry, if we are thirsty, if we are peacemakers. By water and the Holy Spirit, we have been knit together with all those who have gone before us, and all who will come after us into the mystical body of those people who are peacemakers in the name of Jesus Christ. There is one thread holding us all together and it is the thread of Christ that connects us to God the Father. It is the thread of the Holy Spirit that says with the First Letter of John, “Beloved, we are God’s children, now!”
In a moment we will all promise that all that we say and all that we do will proclaim the Good News that God is at work in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to herself as she knits away day after day, night after night, knitting us together into one communion and fellowship! When we put on the garment God is knitting for us, people will see the cross on our foreheads and know who we are and whose we are.
And a world that is hungering for righteousness, a world that mourns, a world that seeks comfort and love and care, a world that seeks mercy shall obtain mercy and shall be satisfied because the things we do this day makes us blessed. The blessing we are given is a blessing that is meant for the whole world and everyone therein – it is meant to usher in a world of justice and peace for all people – not some people, not lots of people, but all people. Let us be glad and thank God for making us her Beloved children, Now. Amen.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Current Spiritual Crisis: Part 2
26 October 2008 * 1Thessalonians 2: 1-8/Matthew 22:34-46
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation
Last Sunday we began an exploration of how the Spiritual Life is not about conjugating the three verbs To Want, To Have, To do, but rather to ground ourselves more thoroughly in the foundational verb, To Be – and that what we are To Be is a people of God in Christ, God’s Beloved, Imitators of Christ and an Example of the Christ-like life for others.
This portion of Paul’s letter to the church in Thessolonika has always spoken to a very deep place within me as to just how we are To Be. So much so that when the Church Deployment Office invites one to write a Personal Ministry Statement of no more than 254 characters (110 more than the 144 previous word limit!), I appealed to this passage as a way of expanding what I wanted to say: Committed to shared servant ministry which seeks to interpret and meet the needs, concerns and hopes of the world in the spirit of I Thess 2:5-8.
It was a way of inviting search committees to do some Bible study and squeezing more into the little box on the CDO Profile all at once. Paul writes, in part, “…we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others…But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”
It is this vision of shared servant ministry Paul so eloquently describes what brought me here to Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills. After nearly fourteen years I still feel the same deep desire to care for everyone here, all those the Spirit brings into our midst, sharing not only the Gospel of God, Jesus Christ, but also my own self – a shared servant ministry.
And no doubt like everyone here, I continue to hear these words from Holy Scripture in all four lessons against the backdrop of a world that seems to grow more and more uncertain as each day of the present financial and monetary crisis deepens and widens.
So loud is the background noise of the crisis, the election, and two wars, not to mention the competing voices of work, family and the mundane details of simply maintaining – maintaining house, home, physical health, mental health, relationships, yardwork, housework, homework, rehearsal schedules, athletic practices, auto maintenance – the list might go on and on and on.
It is such that when we hear Paul or Jesus calling us back to a Spiritual Life we are apt to say, “I cannot do anything more, thank you! I have no time to delve into my interior life. I have no time to develop a more holy, pious and disciplined religious life.”
It is no fault of our own that we sense that whatever one might call The Spiritual Life has something, maybe even everything to do with us, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. As all the great spiritual teachers in every religious tradition try to help us to see, it is not about us. It simply is not about us at all. Yet, most of what passes for Spirituality in the marketplace, on radio and tv, on the bookshelves of our major book retailers all make appeals that sound as if Spirituality is a core constituent part of all the great American self-improvement, self-actualization movements.
So far astray have our notions of the Spiritual Life gone that Bishops Sutton and Rabb spent three days reminding the clergy of the diocese that it is not about us – the Spiritual Life is not about us. It is all about God and others. Late in the conference Bishop Rabb was writing something on newsprint. It was faint and difficult to see. A colleague shouted out, “It’s invisible we cannot see it!” The Bishop replied, “I am just making these notes for myself.” Prompting me to shout out, “It’s not about us!”
It is about God and others. So saith our Lord and Saviour Jesus this morning: Love God and Love Neighbor – look outward and beyond one’s self toward God. And anyone who looks outward toward God will inevitably be drawn into God’s never ending love and care for others – all others, male and female, slave and free, young and old, the just and the unjust, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastarian, Buddhist and beyond!
It is a rather breathtaking vision of life – real life, the kind of life Jesus promises in abundance!
Evelyn Underhill in her little book, The Spiritual Life, sums up our relationship with God in three words very different from the three verbs To Want, To Have and To do. They are Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation. She writes, “This means, that from first to last the emphasis is to be on God and not ourselves. Admiring delight, not cadging demands. Faithful and childlike dependence – clinging to the Invisible, as the most real of all realities, in all the vicissitudes of life – not mere self-expression and self-fulfillment. Disinterested collaboration in the Whole, in God’s vast plan and purpose; not concentration on our own small affairs. Three kinds of generosity. Three kinds of self-forgetfulness. There we have a formula of the spiritual life: a confident reliance on the immense fact of His Presence, everywhere and at all times, pressing on the soul and the world by all sorts of paths and in all sorts of ways, pouring out on it His undivided love, and demanding our undivided loyalty. … We stand in a world completely penetrated by the Living God, the abiding Source and Sum of Reality. We are citizens of that world now; and our whole life is or should be an acknowledgment of this.” (pp. 59-60)
God’s Undivided Love and our Undivided Loyalty – Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation.
So just how do we enter such a relationship with the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus? Perhaps we can recall the Four Holy Habits: Tithing, Daily Prayer and Bible Study, Sabbath Time, and Weekly Corporate Worship. We are in the Season of Tithing and Pledging. We are invited to begin the Spiritual Life with this first Holy Habit, the Tithe. Against the backdrop of all that is going on around us, can we quiet the background noise long enough to consider our Undivided Loyalty to God here and now as we consider making a pledge? A pledge that reflects our Adoration and Adherence to God in Christ? A pledge that makes Cooperation with God’s will and God’s plan a reality?
Remember, an investment in Christ’s Body, the Church, is a sound investment no matter what the markets are doing. God seeks our Cooperation. God offers God’s Undivided Love in return.
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland
Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation
Last Sunday we began an exploration of how the Spiritual Life is not about conjugating the three verbs To Want, To Have, To do, but rather to ground ourselves more thoroughly in the foundational verb, To Be – and that what we are To Be is a people of God in Christ, God’s Beloved, Imitators of Christ and an Example of the Christ-like life for others.
This portion of Paul’s letter to the church in Thessolonika has always spoken to a very deep place within me as to just how we are To Be. So much so that when the Church Deployment Office invites one to write a Personal Ministry Statement of no more than 254 characters (110 more than the 144 previous word limit!), I appealed to this passage as a way of expanding what I wanted to say: Committed to shared servant ministry which seeks to interpret and meet the needs, concerns and hopes of the world in the spirit of I Thess 2:5-8.
It was a way of inviting search committees to do some Bible study and squeezing more into the little box on the CDO Profile all at once. Paul writes, in part, “…we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others…But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”
It is this vision of shared servant ministry Paul so eloquently describes what brought me here to Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills. After nearly fourteen years I still feel the same deep desire to care for everyone here, all those the Spirit brings into our midst, sharing not only the Gospel of God, Jesus Christ, but also my own self – a shared servant ministry.
And no doubt like everyone here, I continue to hear these words from Holy Scripture in all four lessons against the backdrop of a world that seems to grow more and more uncertain as each day of the present financial and monetary crisis deepens and widens.
So loud is the background noise of the crisis, the election, and two wars, not to mention the competing voices of work, family and the mundane details of simply maintaining – maintaining house, home, physical health, mental health, relationships, yardwork, housework, homework, rehearsal schedules, athletic practices, auto maintenance – the list might go on and on and on.
It is such that when we hear Paul or Jesus calling us back to a Spiritual Life we are apt to say, “I cannot do anything more, thank you! I have no time to delve into my interior life. I have no time to develop a more holy, pious and disciplined religious life.”
It is no fault of our own that we sense that whatever one might call The Spiritual Life has something, maybe even everything to do with us, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. As all the great spiritual teachers in every religious tradition try to help us to see, it is not about us. It simply is not about us at all. Yet, most of what passes for Spirituality in the marketplace, on radio and tv, on the bookshelves of our major book retailers all make appeals that sound as if Spirituality is a core constituent part of all the great American self-improvement, self-actualization movements.
So far astray have our notions of the Spiritual Life gone that Bishops Sutton and Rabb spent three days reminding the clergy of the diocese that it is not about us – the Spiritual Life is not about us. It is all about God and others. Late in the conference Bishop Rabb was writing something on newsprint. It was faint and difficult to see. A colleague shouted out, “It’s invisible we cannot see it!” The Bishop replied, “I am just making these notes for myself.” Prompting me to shout out, “It’s not about us!”
It is about God and others. So saith our Lord and Saviour Jesus this morning: Love God and Love Neighbor – look outward and beyond one’s self toward God. And anyone who looks outward toward God will inevitably be drawn into God’s never ending love and care for others – all others, male and female, slave and free, young and old, the just and the unjust, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastarian, Buddhist and beyond!
It is a rather breathtaking vision of life – real life, the kind of life Jesus promises in abundance!
Evelyn Underhill in her little book, The Spiritual Life, sums up our relationship with God in three words very different from the three verbs To Want, To Have and To do. They are Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation. She writes, “This means, that from first to last the emphasis is to be on God and not ourselves. Admiring delight, not cadging demands. Faithful and childlike dependence – clinging to the Invisible, as the most real of all realities, in all the vicissitudes of life – not mere self-expression and self-fulfillment. Disinterested collaboration in the Whole, in God’s vast plan and purpose; not concentration on our own small affairs. Three kinds of generosity. Three kinds of self-forgetfulness. There we have a formula of the spiritual life: a confident reliance on the immense fact of His Presence, everywhere and at all times, pressing on the soul and the world by all sorts of paths and in all sorts of ways, pouring out on it His undivided love, and demanding our undivided loyalty. … We stand in a world completely penetrated by the Living God, the abiding Source and Sum of Reality. We are citizens of that world now; and our whole life is or should be an acknowledgment of this.” (pp. 59-60)
God’s Undivided Love and our Undivided Loyalty – Adoration, Adherence, Cooperation.
So just how do we enter such a relationship with the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus? Perhaps we can recall the Four Holy Habits: Tithing, Daily Prayer and Bible Study, Sabbath Time, and Weekly Corporate Worship. We are in the Season of Tithing and Pledging. We are invited to begin the Spiritual Life with this first Holy Habit, the Tithe. Against the backdrop of all that is going on around us, can we quiet the background noise long enough to consider our Undivided Loyalty to God here and now as we consider making a pledge? A pledge that reflects our Adoration and Adherence to God in Christ? A pledge that makes Cooperation with God’s will and God’s plan a reality?
Remember, an investment in Christ’s Body, the Church, is a sound investment no matter what the markets are doing. God seeks our Cooperation. God offers God’s Undivided Love in return.
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