Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church

The Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 3:1-15 & Luke13:1-9

Loving the QuestionsO God our King, by the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ on the first day of the week, you conquered sin, put death to flight, and gave us the hope of everlasting life: Redeem all our days by this victory; forgive our sins, banish our fears, make us bold to praise you and to do your will; and steel us to wait for the consummation of your kingdom on the last great Day; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 835].

There is a wonderful Jewish story from the thirteenth century entitled What is Talmud? about a young girl named Rachel who wants to learn how to study the Talmud. She enters her father’s study where he, the rabbi, is poring over the text. Rabbi Meir asks Rachel what she wants and she tells him her desire. He explains that the study of Talmud is more than reading and memorization, it also requires one to think. Rachel says, “Let me try.” So the rabbi gives her a lesson. Two men working on a roof fall through the chimney. One has a clean face and one has a dirty face. Who goes to wash his face? Rachel thinks of course the dirty one and then she thinks some more and says that it is the one with the clean face. The rabbi asks his daughter why? She says because the one with the clean face sees the one with the dirty face and thinks his face must be dirty, whereas the one with the dirty face sees the clean face and thinks his face must also be clean. The rabbi commends her good thinking but cautions that she must think harder that to study Talmud. Rachel wonders why and her father answers how is it possible that one of them falling down the chimney would have a clean face? Rachel’s face fell when she heard this. But her father consoles her and says: “You did very well. Always look for the question behind the question. That is how we study Talmud” (from While Standing on One Foot: Puzzle Stories and Wisdom Tales from the Jewish Tradition, by Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin [NY: Henry Holt, 1993] 45-49).

Always look for the question behind the question. This is how one studies Talmud. It is how one does theology. Theology is the study of God, not only as a theoretical enterprise but also as a practical way of loving God. Theology is born out of our relationship with God as we try to understand God and what God has done, is doing and will do forever. God loves questions. God loves when we question because it deepens our relationship with God. God isn’t disturbed when we question God. God is only hurt when we stop asking, when we become bored and indifferent to God.

As a parent, I know how difficult and tiring it can be to try to answer all of your child’s questions. Some days it never seems to end. And as they get older, the questions get harder. How do you explain Communism and the Cold War to an eight year old? It seems so long ago, like ancient history now even though I grew up in the midst of it. But as exasperating as the questioning can be, I would never want my children to stop asking questions. We don’t have to have all the answers but we need the patience to work with the child towards them. When Jesus teaches the disciples that the kingdom of God belongs to children, I think he is celebrating both the faith of children and their endless questioning. Children accept that they are loved and their questions are born out of awe and wonder about the world around them. As we grow older, we tend to lose this sense of wonder and we accept the world as it is. Slowly we become bored and indifferent to the wonder of life. We lose our love for living, for questioning. We have lots of answers but we forget to question. We forget to look for the question behind the question.

I know that many people think theology is boring. Lately there has been a concerted attack on the Creeds as an instrument of repression used by the Church down through the centuries to squelch dissent and the questioning of the Church’s authority. As we enter a new age after the period of Christendom, there is an excitement and retrieval of alternate ways of being the Church. Often from this new perspective, the Creeds are seen as a way of controlling people. Now, while I concede that the Church has misused its authority and abused its power, I don’t think that the Creeds themselves are to be blamed. If anything they are an attempt to foster further questions and a deeper understanding of who God is and what God has done. I can appreciate why Baptists don’t think they need Creeds, but I think the Creeds are a way of teaching us how to do theology, of how to ask questions and question the questions themselves. Any good thing can be misused, like the Bible itself and Creeds, but Creeds and the Bible are not the final answer itself, instead they point us towards God and they teach us how to think and talk about God. Far from being the ultimate answer they cause us to question more and to deepen our relationship with God.

So why have Creeds? Because they are the story of our salvation. They are the story of how God has created us, how God saves us, how God is with us today. They are the story of God’s love for us and for all creation. In our lessons this morning, we see Moses shaken out of his doldrums by a bush that was burning but not consumed. Curious, he want to see what was happening and the questions never stopped coming. Who are you God? Why me? How can this be? What is your Name? And in the Gospel, we see the danger of any theology that gives pat answers that condemns others. Jesus teaches us that we can’t proclaim God’s judgment against others because of disasters whether in Siloam or Haiti. Instead we need to judge ourselves. We need to question our motives, our behavior. Far from being a weapon to harm others or a way of ending all questions, theology is an attempt to talk with God and about God with others. It is a way of thinking about God, a way of asking questions about questions, a way of learning to think with God. So often we imagine that all our questions will be answered in heaven. And in one sense they will, when we experience the fullness of God’s unending love. Like little children we will accept this love for who it is and our participation in it. But like children, there will still be more to learn and to question. The rabbis say that in heaven we will continue to study Torah and Talmud. There is no end to our questions, as there is no end to God who is love. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

The Second Sunday of LentGenesis15; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1 & Luke 13:31-35

The First Sunday in Lent

Luke 4:1-13

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 288].

In graduate school I once wrote a paper on self-deception in the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. I remember one student was terribly troubled by this topic. Like Dr. Spock, he argued that it was illogical; that no one could lie to himself or herself; you would know that you were lying. How can you deceive yourself? That’s nonsense. But as Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” Not only do I think it’s possible to lie to oneself, such self-deception is part and parcel of the pride that is at the heart of our original sin when we put ourselves in God’s place and broke our relationship with God.

Recently a parishioner gave me a business/management book, Leadership and Self-Deception, which has one of the best examples of self-deception with which most of us will be able to identify. It’s late at night. The baby starts to cry and you awaken. You think I should get up and get the baby so my spouse can sleep. But you don’t get up. Instead of honoring that choice, you betray it and choose not to get up. In order to justify to yourself your self-betrayal, you start to change how you see the world and yourself in order to be in the right. And so even though you didn’t think it before the baby cried, now you are thinking about what a hard worker you are and how you deserve your sleep and how your spouse is lazy and inconsiderate and should get up and get the baby. In an instant, a split second, you are thinking of yourself as a good parent and spouse and how insensitive and lousy your partner is. He or she is just faking sleep. Why don’t they get up? The author goes on to give many examples of how we deceive ourselves in order to justify our behavior both for things that we do and that we fail to do [The Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box{San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2002}].

It’s hard to see self-deception in one’s self because we think of ourselves as good and the self-deception is a way of justifying to ourselves our goodness. It’s illogical but practical. Such deception keeps us from the hard work of self-examination. In some ways, it’s easier for the person who has messed up his or her life to understand the need for help from God. When the only way out is to acknowledge how you have messed up your life, then you are already on the road to recovery. Good people don’t feel like they need help and see their goodness as proof of their deserving entrance into paradise. But this is where Jesus comes into the picture. Throughout his life, Jesus used parables as a way of holding a mirror up to us, so that we could see ourselves and see how we seek to justify our behavior. But more importantly, Jesus himself faced the temptation of self-deception and shows us how to face it in our own lives.

In the desert, after his baptism, Jesus is tested by Satan. He has heard God declare that he is the beloved Son, the one with whom God is well pleased. Like a new Moses, he has gone through the baptismal waters symbolizing both death and new freedom. Now he is in the desert for forty days echoing the forty years that Israel wandered in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. But this Gospel passage also echoes the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. But here Jesus doesn’t seek to put himself in the place of God. Instead he trusts in God, in God’s Word, to show him what to do. We need to see that Jesus is truly tested, truly tempted by Satan. He is not some kind of Superman, but rather he is fully human and responding out of his human nature to the challenges issues to him. Everything that he is challenged to do is a good thing: to feed the hungry people of the world by changing stones into bread; to rule the world, who could do a better job of it than Jesus himself? to show the world that he is the true Messiah by having God’s angels rescue him in a dramatic display of his Sonship. With each of the challenges, Satan offers a reasonable analysis of why he should accept the challenge. Satan voices our own voices of self-deception. But in each instant, Jesus doesn’t look towards himself, but to the will of God. It’s not about him, it’s about God. It’s all about our relationship with God. In Eden, we broke that relationship by declaring that we could live without God. That we would be gods ourselves. Here Jesus is undoing that deception. He is showing us how to respond to our own self-deceptions and to the temptations of the world, by trusting not in ourselves alone but in the Word of God.

During the Ash Wednesday service, we are invited to observe Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. We are challenged to take a moral inventory of our lives. To use the language of the 12 steps to “Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” And to be ready to have God remove these defects of character [with thanks to Bp. Lawrence, SC]. In a word, self-examination removes the temptation of self-deception. We don’t need to deceive ourselves or our loved ones or God, instead we can come clean and start anew. Repentance is returning to God. Self- examination helps us to see where we have gone astray and God shows us the way back through prayer, fasting, self-denial and reading the Bible.

There is no sense in kidding ourselves, if we are honest and logical, we need God’s help. Lent is the perfect time to ask for this help and to get out of the desert of ourselves into the paradise of relationship with God and each other. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 & Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Becoming the person God thinks that I am

Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed us from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed us from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the water of baptism you clothed us with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established us among your children in your kingdom. But we have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste. Receive us again into the arms of your mercy, and restore us to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen [BCP, 650].

Suzanne Sommers famously said: “My goal in life is to become the person my dog thinks I am.” This might well serve as an adequate description of what we are trying to do in Lent if we transpose the letters for dog into God: “My goal, our goal, in life is to become the person God thinks that I am.” We start by acknowledging how far we are from the person God has created us to be. We acknowledge that we have squandered the inheritance of the saints and have wandered far in a land that is waste. But we don’t have to stay there. The doctrine of sin is not a condemnation of humanity but a diagnosis of our condition, a way of measuring how far we have wandered from God. I like what Carol Zaleski recently said in The Christian Century:

I feel an instinctive kinship with people of all faiths who are trying to live out of the heart of their religious traditions. It seems natural to make common cause with them on a host of cultural and social issues, including respect for human life from womb to grave. We have a close friend who came to this country as a refugee from eastern Tibet, where he had lived in a Buddhist monastery of the Nyingma sect from the age of five. He settled eventually in our town, married and raised a family, and has sustained the practice of his ancient sacramental religion. We see eye to eye with him and his family on the deepest moral and aesthetic questions, not least of which is belief in the reality of sin and the need for redemption.

It is a striking fact that, though conceptions of sin vary widely, all the world’s religions recognize that there is something fundamentally awry with us, not merely maladaptive. I like this little ditty of John Betjeman’s: “Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime-juice minus gin, / Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born in sin.”

How else to explain our repeated failure to be human, the crude uses to which we put our exquisitely sensitive brains and hearts? Very little makes sense on any other view. But the belief in sin that Christians share with all traditionally religious people is fundamentally hopeful, for it implies that the cosmos has a moral structure and can be counted on to provide a means of liberation and cure.

[from: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8126]

For us Christians the means of liberation and cure is Jesus. By his baptism in the river Jordan and through his death on the cross of Calvary, Jesus has taken upon himself our sins and the sins of the entire world. Jesus is the cure for what ails us and the world. And so today we begin by acknowledging that we aren’t God. That we are created beings, formed out of the dust of the earth and that we shall return to dust. But because God has become one with us out of the dust of the earth, we can become like God through Jesus. We look to Jesus to see what it means to be a human being living in full relationship with God. In Jesus we have our model, our example of what it truly means to be human.

And so today we start anew, seeking to become the person God wants us to be. Through Jesus, God sees beyond our sins and sees our souls clothed in the shining garments of Christ’s righteousness. We need to be able to see ourselves as forgiven. We need to accept this forgiveness and the incredible indescribable love of God for us. It is this love that leads us out of the desert into the kingdom of God. No matter how far we have wandered off, Jesus is there to bring us home. Our responsibility is to let God be God, to let God so transform our lives that we reflect God’s love for all the world. During Lent, we become intentional about following Jesus. We set aside those things that keep us form the love of God and we devout time to our relationship with God. We pray, we fast, we read the Bible, we reach out and share the love of God with the world. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 6:1-13 & Luke 5:1-11

The Limits of Control

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated unto you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen [BCP, 832].

Two years ago Abraham Shakespeare won a $30 million dollar lottery in Florida. He was murdered last April and his body recently discovered in a home purchased by a woman who had befriended him after his win. The newspaper writes:

Family members say Shakespeare, a truck driver’s assistant, was constantly hounded for a piece of his winnings. Last week, Shakespeare’s brother told The Associated Press that Shakespeare often wished he had never bought the winning ticket. “‘I’d have been better off broke.’ He said that to me all the time,” Robert Brown said.

[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEAD_LOTTERY_WINNER?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-02-03-03-05-41].

I share this story because many of us imagine what we would do if we won the lottery. I’ve had several folks here share their plans to donate to the church to fix things up around here. Others imagine where they would like to live or how they would provide for their children or grandchildren’s future. It’s fun to fantasy, but the reality of winning is often harder and harsher than any of us can really imagine. Instead of bringing freedom, too often winning brings a loss of control over one’s own life. I share this story in relation to our Old Testament and Gospel readings.

Isaiah is a priest working in the Temple when suddenly God Almighty appears to him, filling the Temple with the glory and radiance of God. Isaiah has dedicated his life to worshipping God and yet when God appears he is completely blown away. In the presence of the Holy he feels his own unworthiness and sinfulness. He literally fears for his life. In this moment of epiphany, Isaiah is commissioned to preach to his people even though they will fail to listen.

A similar moment of holiness occurs with Simon Peter and his companions as they catch a record-breaking haul of fish. Peter has probably dreamed his entire life of such a catch. With such a haul he could pay off his creditors, his taxes, maybe even get a bigger, better boat. A fisherman always has to hope and dream of such a catch. It lessens the pain and disappointment of all those catch-less nights that haunt him and keep him and his family in poverty. Oh, to have such a haul one day. It would be having one’s dreams come true at last. And yet Peter’s reaction isn’t one of delight and gratitude. He’s scared and terrified to the very core of his being. Like Isaiah he knows that he is in the presence of God and feels his own unworthiness. This is too much! Simon feels his sinfulness, his distance from God and yet here is God over-blessing him. This catch is just too much. Now in the past, I’ve talked about these lessons in terms of holiness and finding oneself in the presence of God. But today I want to look at another aspect and that is the loss of control.

We are use to talking about God being present in our lives and answering our prayers. But when it really happens, we are taken back and realize to the very core of our being that we aren’t in control. God is. Like Isaiah we come to Church and worship God and one day find God filling the entire Temple with the glory and radiance of God’s holiness. We hope to win the lottery and find that instead of setting us free, it has become a tiresome burden. We are no longer in control of our lives and we realize how much we are use to being in control. How we pay lip service to God but really don’t expect God to show up in the midst of our day-to-day lives. When it happens we are shaken to the core. Like Isaiah, like Peter, we know that we don’t deserve God’s love, God’s care and concern for us. It is overwhelming, terrifying but ultimately freeing in the end. It’s that moment when someone suffering from an addiction realizes that he or she is no longer in control, but God can be. He or she is set free to help others battle their addictions. Just as Isaiah was empowered to be a prophet to Israel, just as Peter was commissioned to fish for men instead of fishes, so too when we acknowledge God’s presence and ultimate control in our lives, we are set free to share the good news with others.

We spend our lives worrying about being in control. Worrying about what others think about us, about what we are doing, about what we should do or say. We wish that we would win the lottery and be free of our debts, free to realize our dreams. But true freedom comes when we let God be in control. When we realize that God is in charge and that we don’t have to run the universe. Instead we are set free to be the pople God has called us to be. We are set free of our fears of death, of scarcity, of not being in control, because we know that God is. Like Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians, I want to remind you that by his death and resurrection Jesus has shown us a better way to live. To let God be in charge and to seek to live out God’s will here and now as followers of Jesus. In his Name, Amen.

Burial of the Dead Lisa Relaford Coston

The GiftO God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 819].In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel composed his masterwork Messiah in a breathtaking 24 days. This is more akin to transcribing than composing. In the NPR notes on Messiah they note the speed of its composition and write:

Another legend attached to the work relates to his inspiration, which casts the frenzied composition as a sort of divine dictation. Handel is said to have emerged at some point (usually, it is noted, after finishing the “Hallelujah” chorus,) and proclaimed: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself!”[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6581236]Clearly Messiah was a gift to us from God. In his book The Gift, Lewis Hyde describes this phenomenon of artistic inspiration:

We also rightly speak of intuition or inspiration as a gift. As the artist works, some portion of his creation is bestowed upon him. An idea pops into his head, a tune begins to play, a phrase come to mind, a color falls in place on the canvas. Usually, in fact, the artist does not find himself engaged or exhilarated by the work, nor does it seem authentic, until this gratuitous element has appeared, so that along with any true creation comes the uncanny sense that “I,” the artist, did not make the work. “Not I, not I, but the wind that blows thorough me,” says D.H. Lawrence. Not all artists emphasize the “gift” phase of their creations to the degree that Lawrence does, but all artists feel it {Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World [NY: Vintage, 2007] xvi}.I want to address this uncanny sense of a divine gift today as we remember Lisa. Her cousin Jackie shared this story with me in the hospital with Lisa. When Lisa was almost a year old her father had sung part of Messiah in concert. The next morning, they heard Lisa in her crib singing the Hallelujah chorus. I can’t think of a better description of Lisa than this story of her divinely inspired singing. Without a doubt, when Lisa sang, she sang to the glory of God.Her email address alone gives us a sense of who Lisa was imnodiva@gmail.com. Lisa could easily have been a diva, but she sang not to her glory, but for God. And so we gather today to give God thanks for her life, for her music, for her ministry. We say goodbye to a dear sister, a friend, a colleague, a gentle soul.

Like Martha, in the Gospel reading we wonder why our sister has died. If only God had been there and healed her. But we recognize the power of death and all that opposes God in this world and with Martha we hear the words of Jesus that he is the resurrection and the life. As Christians we believe that Jesus is the Messiah who has ushered in the kingdom of God and that by his life and death, Jesus has destroyed the power of death. So that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God. With our Jewish brothers and sisters, we await the final day when death will be destroyed completely and all will come to sing God’s praises in Jerusalem. But because of Jesus, we, as Christians, believe that Lisa is already singing with all the heavenly host Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. Let us now sing together this chorus to the glory of God, Amen.

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

1Corinthians 13:1-13

God is love

O God, by the preaching of your apostle Paul you have caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we pray, that we may show ourselves thankful to you by following his holy teaching; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen [BCP, 238].

J. D. Salinger died this past week. He’s most famous for The Catcher in the Rye, but my favorite are his two short stories published together as Franny and Zooey. Franny is trying to learn how to say the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Zooey takes his sister to task for failing to say the prayer to Jesus as he is and not to some imaginary saintly person:

“If you’re going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi’s grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you’d like him to have been” [Franny and Zooey, {NY: Little, Brown & Co., 1955} 168].

I think this is the problem for the Corinthians. They are so focused on themselves, instead of Jesus. I can well imagine Paul’s conflicted feelings about his congregation in Corinth. On the one hand he is proud of their spiritual gifts and devotion to God. On the other he is troubled by their pride and self-centeredness. They are using their spiritual gifts to boast about themselves. Giving themselves the glory instead of God. Now, one of the very first things you learn in Psychology 101 is how a trait or characteristic that we dislike in someone else is usually something we dislike in ourselves. We project our dislike outwards instead of removing the speck in our own eye as Jesus taught us. And so I see Paul’s frustration with the Corinthians as part of his resisting the temptation to boast about himself and his close relationship with God. I am imagining that the Corinthians behavior reminds Paul of his own boasting especially before his conversion.

We are all familiar with the lesson from 1 Corinthians this morning. It is appropriately one of the most often read lessons at weddings and an appropriate choice for when there is conflict in the Parish. Paul is teaching the Corinthians a better way of being spiritual. The focus is not on their spirituality but on God. In this light I want to reread today’s lesson substituting God for the word love in the passage:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have God, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have God, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have God, I gain nothing. God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God does not insist on God’s own way; God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and God abide, these three; and the greatest of these is God [NRSV, adapted].

Paul wants the Corinthians to focus on God, not themselves. Like the Gospel writer John, Paul knows that God is love and he wants his people to not only know God’s love but to become that love for others. It’s not enough to know about God, even the demons know God, but we need to become like God.

There is a famous saying by Athanasius that God became man so that man could become a god. We are always tempted by the sin of Eden of putting ourselves in the place of God, of confusing knowledge with wisdom, of thinking that if we know the difference between good and evil we will be like God. But the only way to be like God is to follow Jesus into the kingdom of love. To be like God requires us to have love. Without love we are a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. Without love, without God, we are literally no-thing. In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us a road map, a set of directions of how to grow more godlike, more loving. The secret is keeping our eye on Jesus. It’s so easy to focus on oneself, but the way of Jesus, the way of love is keeping the focus on others. If we follow Jesus, as He is, and not how we imagine him or want him to be, then we like Paul will grow up and as adults learn how to love like God. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Nehemiah 8; 1 Corinthians 12 & Luke 4:14-21

The Work God Calls Us To

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen [BCP, 236].

I’m tempted to follow the example of Jesus and to just sit down and say, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Short, sweet and to the point. However, we know that Jesus preached a bit longer than this sentence. For while everyone is marveling at his words, he continues on to say that a prophet is without honor in his own hometown and that God will work miracles with foreigners before they see the good news. By the end of his sermon, a lynch mob has been formed to throw him out of the synagogue and off the mountainside. So perhaps, I’ll preach a little longer this morning.

I want to talk today about the Bible and the work that we do day-to-day. Even though the people didn’t recognize it at the time, when Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he was saying not only were Isaiah’s words being fulfilled, but that he, Jesus, was the one fulfilling them. Jesus is the long awaited Messiah who ushers in the kingdom of God, the reign of God’s love and justice for all the world. Jesus embodies and fulfills God’s words of promise, hope and salvation for us. The Gospel writer would say that Jesus is the very Word of God. Which means that for us as Christians we look to Jesus to understand the Bible because Jesus is the Bible incarnate.

Now I know that this is the exact opposite of what I was taught in seminary. We would take the Bible apart and try to scientifically deduce what Jesus might actually have said using techniques from literary criticism and cultural studies. We learned to trust the process of formal analysis instead of learning to listen for the words of Jesus. I’ve said this before, but with biblical studies in seminary you are taught how to take a watch apart and see what makes it tick, but rarely are you shown how to put it back together again and to understand how to use a watch and what time is all about. I’m not saying this to put down biblical studies. I think scholarly research on the Bible is crucial and the more we know the better we can grow in our faith. But our faith in Jesus must come first before our faith in biblical studies.

So what do I mean? I am saying that while there is a place for the academic study of scripture, there is also a place for a more spiritual reading of the Bible where the Bible judges us instead of our standing in judgment over the Bible. At the end of his scholarly study of evil in the Bible, Paul Ricoeur says that after we have done the scholarly analysis of the text, we need to develop a second naïveté. We need to read the Bible again like children, trusting the words to show us Jesus and how Jesus wants us to live. I’m afraid that over the years, we have discouraged people from reading the Bible because they aren’t scholars, but you don’t need to be a scholar to read and understand God’s Word. You need faith, by which I mean you need to trust that God will speak to you through the Bible. Also I don’t think we ever really read the Bible alone. I believe that God is with us as we read, helping us to understand and to live into the promises for a life lived with God. As a preacher and a teacher, I can help you understand parts of the Bible, just as Ezra and Nehemiah and the scribes did for the people in our reading this morning. But you need to read the Bible every day and sorry, but I won’t be there with you. But God will be.

A colleague of mine at Fordham University, Mary Calloway, talks about developing in her students the habitus of scripture. By this she means the habits of reading the Bible not just from a scholarly perspective but also with a spiritual one. She wants to encourage her students to develop the habit of reading the Bible as the living Word of God speaking to us today just as God spoke with the people of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, or through Isaiah to the people of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth or as Paul did to his fellow Christians in Corinth. The Bible is more than a historical record of the people of God; it is more than a theological treatise about God; it is an invitation to be with God here and now. It is a way of hearing God speak directly to you and to show you how to live a Godly and holy life in Jesus. Because the Bible is all about Jesus, we read it to copy his way of life, to be his disciples. On that long ago morning in Nazareth, Jesus not only preached about but he also ushered in the kingdom of God. Today we continue his work of fulfilling scripture as we read the Bible and then go out into the world to do the work of Jesus: to bring good news to the poor and freedom to the captive and sight to the blind and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11

Trailer Park Theology

Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth, especially Port-au-Prince. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us and them honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 825].

When I was growing up I used to wonder why tornadoes always seemed to target trailer parks? It seems patently unfair that the people who can least afford it are so often the victims of disasters. The sad fact is that poverty limits the choices one can make. A trailer will sustain more damage than a house and the wealthy often have the long-term knowledge of where to build or not build, thus avoiding the somewhat predictable spots that flood or are prone to tornadoes. Sadly, the same thought returned this week with the earthquake in Haiti. Among nations, this is a country that can hardly make it day-to-day let alone losing 50,000 plus people and the infrastructure of its capital.

Now, unlike my colleague in Virginia Beach, I don’t think the Haitian people made a pact with the devil and hence have suffered for it for the past two hundred years. The crushing poverty and misery of Haiti is sinful but it can be accounted for by human greed and pride rather than by the work of the devil. Haiti unfortunately given its size and location couldn’t afford its independence from France. In 1804 France and the United States refused to recognize Haiti’s independence. We didn’t because of our own slave populations and our own fear of slave revolt in the South. France blockaded the island and demanded restitution for the lost land and plantations. In 1825 they demanded payment of 150 gold French francs as compensation for their losses. This would be approximately 22 billion dollars today. It took Haiti almost 100 years to pay this debt and it has permanently crippled the nation. The elite paid this debt at the expense of the poor. The first year the public schools were closed to in order to finance the debt to France. Now while the French bear some responsibility for the poverty of Haiti, it has also been plagued with poor leadership and the downward spiral of poverty that consumes capital before it can be used to grow the country. And before we react smugly towards the French, we need to remember that we are enacting the same kind of blockade and have demanded financial compensation for the 1959 revolution in Cuba. Rightly or wrongly, the poverty of Haiti is of human origin not divine.

And yet, it’s natural when an earthquake of this magnitude hits to ask how God can allow it. If we don’t believe in God, we see it as a random, unfortunate event of plate tectonics. If we are more deist, perhaps we envision God having created the earth and then left it to its own devices. But if we believe in a God who can and has intervened in history, where is God in Port-au-Prince? Once again we are haunted by the question where is God?

After the 2004 tsunami, a colleague of mine from the University of Virginia, David B. Hart wrote in the Wall Street Journal about theodicy and the Christian understanding of God and evil. This later became his book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsumani? In the Journal article he wrote the following:

The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all. Perhaps no doctrine is more insufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to “powers” and “principalities”–spiritual and terrestrial–alien to God. In the Gospel of John, especially, the incarnate God enters a world at once his own and yet hostile to him—”He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”–and his appearance within “this cosmos” is both an act of judgment and a rescue of the beauties of creation from the torments of fallen nature.

Whatever one makes of this story, it is no bland cosmic optimism. Yes, at the heart of the gospel is an ineradicable triumphalism, a conviction that the victory over evil and death has been won; but it is also a victory yet to come. As Paul says, all creation groans in anguished anticipation of the day when God’s glory will transfigure all things. For now, we live amid a strife of darkness and light.

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering–when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children’s–no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms–knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against “fate,” and that must do so until the end of days.

[From http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097].

I think David is right in addressing the fallen-ness of our world and proclaiming God’s victory over all the forces that fight against God. God will help us to recreate Haiti as it should be. But I can easily envision God asking us this question, Where were we? Why have we allowed the poverty in Haiti where people buy and eat mud cookies to fill their stomachs? Why haven’t we done something to end this misery? If any good comes out of this disaster it will be to rebuild the nation so that it can sustain and feed itself. Neither the devil nor God caused this disaster. But we are responsible for how we will react to our neighbors in need. In Christ’s Name, Amen.

First Sunday after the Epiphany

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Our Baptism into Jesus Christ

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin: Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness and holiness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen [BCP, 254].

I know sometimes that my mind works in strange ways, so please forgive this bizarre opening. When I read the Gospel this week, I couldn’t believe that John the Baptist was back. It was like a bad movie sequel: just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, John returns with a vengeance. He’s back and he’s mad. And immediately I thought of the movie Jaws. Now there are some of us who can remember the summer of 1975 and that movie and who ever since haven’t gotten into the ocean and not thought about that great white shark. And this sense of entering the water with fear and trepidation is actually appropriate for what is happening with the baptism of Jesus today. Because the focus today is not on John but on Jesus. On this first Sunday after the Epiphany, we focus on the clearest epiphany or manifestation of the triune God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For here for the first time at one time, we see the Son of God, Jesus, being baptized, the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove and the voice of the Father declaring his pleasure in the Son with whom He is well pleased. But this epiphany, like most epiphanies, only makes sense after the fact. After the Church had wrestled for two or three centuries to understand who Jesus was and is, fully God and fully human. In hindsight, we can see this as a Trinitarian moment. But I want us to look at this moment from Jesus’ perspective. How did he view entering into the water? With gladness, indifference or trepidation?

I think it was probably two out of the three. I think Jesus was glad to be baptized. He was ready to begin his ministry in Galilee and to share the good news about God’s kingdom with us. But I also think or imagine that he felt some trepidation, because entering into the water is actually the first step towards the cross on Calvary. Jesus, who is without sin, enters into the water in order to take on our sinful condition. He doesn’t need to be baptized, but chooses to be baptized as he fully identifies with our human condition. I want to suggest that his baptism is not a serene, idyllic moment, but rather a moment of high drama and tension. Here is God, the creator and author of all life, choosing to die on our behalf. Here is the light of the world entering into the darkness and chaos of all that separates us from God. From a human perspective, I believe that Jesus entered into the water of the river Jordan with the same fear and trepidation that he showed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed for the strength to die on the cross for us. If there was another way he wanted it, but above all he wanted to do the will of God. By entering into the water, Jesus sanctifies our fear of death. We don’t have to fear because we know that Jesus is with us in our moments of fear. Jesus is even with us when we sin, when we are separated from God. Because there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God. When Jesus enters the water he is entering into our fallen world in order to restore us to the love of God. By his baptism, Jesus offers us forgiveness of our sins for he is forgiveness itself.

Last week, I read from the Journals of Alexander Schmemann, today I want to share what he wrote about baptism in an essay entitled Of Water and the Holy Spirit:

The sacrament of forgiveness is baptism, not because it operates a juridical removal of guilt, but because it is baptism into Jesus Christ, who is Forgiveness. The sin of all sins—the truly “original sin”—is not a transgression of rules, but, first of all, the deviation of man’s love and his alienation from God. That man prefers something—the world, himself—to God, this is the only real sin, and in it all sins become natural, inevitable. This sin destroys the true life of man. It deviates life’s course from its only meaning and direction. And in Christ this sin is forgiven, not in the sense that God now has “forgotten’ it and pays no attention to it, but because in Christ man has returned to God, and has returned to God because he has love Him and found in Him the only true object of love and life. And God has accepted man and—in Christ—reconciled him with Himself. Repentance is thus the return of our love, of our life, to God, and this return is possible in Christ because He reveals to us the true Life and makes us aware of our exile and condemnation. To believe in Christ is to repent—to change radically the very “mind” of our life, to see it as sin and death. And to believe in Him is to accept the joyful revelation that in Him forgiveness and reconciliation have been given. In baptism both repentance and forgiveness find their fulfillment

From: For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy [NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1973] 78.

Through his baptism, Jesus offers us a new way of living. We are no longer separated from God and nothing can keep us from the love of God for us. Whenever we are afraid, whenever we fear the sharks in the water, evil in our lives, we can hold on to our own baptism which is a participation in Jesus’ own baptism. In our baptism we too hear God declare God’s love for us, that we are beloved children of God. No matter how far we may wander away from God, God remains with us, waiting for us to remember our baptism, our life in Jesus Christ. Amen.