Sermon Notes Proper 28c

Isaiah 65:17-25  “The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind”  and offers a vivid description of what was normal:  precarity; death; calamity.    God will create “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”

It’s an opportunity to discuss memory – how it prefigures and affects how we live into the future, our hopes and desires.  Can we ever see things anew?  I may spend time reflecting on precarity itself.  God looks forward to a time without sorrow; and this means a mitigation of the everyday calamities in biblical culture.   One paradox is when we are so distant from precarity, we forget God.

Thessalonians is an exhortation within Christian community.  How might Christians work with one another?  Some Christians are lazy.  The exemplars live by example, seeing to do well through encouraging imitation – rather than, perhaps, by diktat.    I’m instinctively wary of the rigor of the command, but perhaps Paul reminds us of our obligation to each other.   They seek avoid idleness but to work so that they might not be a burden.  That said, what of people who are truly burdens?   Within a community we share the work; but we still serve others who are destitute.  We are still called to serve the poor; but we have high expectations of ourselves

“All will be thrown down.”  Jesus gets apocalyptic here.  He denies those who claim the world will end, and yet also giving instructions about what to do.  Luke clearly thought Jesus understood that the end of the world was impending.   This may be an opportunity to talk about transformation, and that we have nothing to fear.

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God Loves a Bully

Over the last few weeks, several teens over the last few weeks have committed suicide.  The pundits and the prophets have been reflecting about the problem of bullying.

To some, the current discussion seems different than the everyday cruelty of a group of teenagers or children testing out their power, their desire to determine who is in and who is out.  It may be how easy technology connects us to each other and makes harming others easy.  Give a teen ager a cellphone, a twitter account and Myspace and it’s hard to avoid the potential for taunting, teasing and emotional brutality.

Most of us have experienced fickle friendships, inconvenient infatuations, and the occasional betrayal, and  the disinvitation to a party.  It’s not just those who played Dungeons and Dragons and ran the math team; the awkward, poor and pudgy.   Even the talented find themselves harassed by the envious and resentful.

But bullying isn’t just a confined to high school or prisons.  A waitress related the story of a internet tycoon who threatened to have her fired waving around a couple dollars, declaring his superiority; the unemployed are taunted by those who shout at them, “can’t you just get a job?”

The teased are offered advice:  walk away; ignore the bully; say “thanks for sharing” and roll your eyes.   But when these become impossible, the victim becomes both enraged and powerless, at which point they turn upon themselves.
The heart of the Christian story is about bullying, although a more academic word could be “scapegoating.”    The victim takes the place of the rest of the class, who is terrified of breaking the rule of power the bully has.    One person bullies and the others follow.

And the consequence of standing up for oneself, or for others, is intrinsically risky.  It requires being strong enough to tell the truth; to resist manipulation; to take the side of someone who is defenseless.   That strength is learned, and it is fostered through love, the encouraging support of family and friends who can’t always be present.

Christians have themselves been bullies.   Our anti-semitism, gay-baiting and alliance with racial supremacists have enabled sorts of Christians to justify all sorts of cruelty.  And yet, it would take a certain kind of blindness not to see that how progroms, gay-bashing and lynching are analogous to the cross.   The cross signifies this:  we scapegoat people, and it does not have to be that way.  Any religion that denies the brutal fact of this all too human tendency also denies our own inclination and power to hurt others, if only to protect ourselves.

There are good reasons for us to turn away from the cross.   To be so humiliated, diminished, embarrassed is to suck the life out of someone; to render them ashamed and powerless.     This is one reason the cross was so offensive to imperial religion.  Jesus remained weak and powerless – all too human.  What kind of God is this?  A bullied one.  And nobody wants to be on that side.

His response, of course, was remarkable.   It was not to punish those who crucified him; rather, he instead said, “peace be with you.”   The mark of those who follow Christ would be fearlessness in standing against injustice; and reconciliation with those who killed him.  We need not be afraid of the bully; we may pity them.  Instead of fear, a transformation – and an offering of mercy.

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Fighting the War in Afghanistan

After WWI, my grandfather was placed in an area of the British Empire called “The Northern Frontier.”  It’s on the border of what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Then, as now, the empires – in this case Russia and England – were engaged in a rivalry known then as “The Great Game.”

The British had been suspicious that Russia would invade India through Afghanistan.  Russia wanted to dominate the continent the way Americans believed in “manifest destiny.” It resulted in a century long conflict between Russia and England that ended only during WWII.

My grandfather knew that the Tribal soldiers he encountered were some of the most fierce and courageous men he would ever fight.  He also knew of them as charitable hosts.

One evening he stumbled upon a camp.  There were several Afghan soldiers drinking tea around a fire; he was one.  They saw him and stood as he appeared out of thin air.  There was no question that if he pulled out his revolver, he would come out on the losing side.

Captain Ray (pronounced “Rai”) simply said, in Pashtun, “I’ve been hoping to find you.”  Best to treat the enemy as a friend.  Why don’t you sit down with us, they said.  Apparently, my grandfather apparently had a winning smile and a generous charism, so he spent the next couple days getting to know his enemies.

At the end, they led him safely back to his camp.  When the second world war ended, they would visit the house on Parliament Street with nuts and dates.  Apparently, they came by bicycle.  Enemies once, friends forever.

War offers a clarity that is exhilarating and profound – even sacred.  But it is the task of the gospel to shatter that clarity, to reveal the hidden interests, to expose war’s banality, to desacralize the chants and the cheers that send us into the battle.  The gospel reveals it all:  the marks of heroism, the reality of cowardice, the needless misery, the fruitlessness of honor and pride.  The gospel says, you’re really surprised that our friends are funding our enemies? You really think that the president will save us?  You really believe that this war will lead us mutual admiration and respectability?  Do you really think that the “best and the brightest” are made of a different character than the rest of us? You really think that if we leave we won’t still bear the consequences?  Really?  I’ve got news for you…

And this is the gospel truth:  as we demonize our enemies, we become more like them.  Yes – let us fight the glorious battle, but our armor of righteousness cannot be based on our moral superiority, but instead in our mutual humanity.

When we fight these wars, the gospel reminds us that we battle as sinners in need of redemption, not as heroes desperate for vindication.

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A Couple Thoughts on Belief

Greta Christina is a sex-positive writer and atheist.  I get sent her writings through the list-serve Alternet, which is a progressive news portal.

Greta represents, in my view, the casual atheism of well read, urbane liberals.    Smart and usually thoughtful, they rightly rail with passion about injustice, and are particularly attentive when it comes to the crimes of the church.  They see the abuse that happens in religious communities and they want it to stop.  Religion, for them, is deception, arrogance and power.

I will admit that, predictably, I find her understanding of religion and belief remarkably shallow.  She offers a monistic view of the system of explanation called SCIENCE, and literal, mechanical understanding of Truth.   For this reason, she is positively baffled by what she considers religious behavior.  Granted, I feel the same bafflement when watching most music videos. Continue reading “A Couple Thoughts on Belief” →

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Prolegomena to the Current Anglican Crisis

After a recent exchange on another blog, I’d like to address a few reasons why  reasserters and reappraisers do not understand each others’ arguments.  It seems to me that we see our current context with very different lenses, and thus our discussions easily veer off track.

What I’d like to offer are a series of broader issues, one that isn’t exhaustive,  that shape the conflict.  Perhaps by examining these descriptively, we can address our different prescriptions.

1.  A general crisis of authority.  Over the last 50 years, all our major institutions are not trusted by the laity.  There has been a crisis in the authority of scripture and the church.  This parallels a lack of trust in governments as well.

2. An alteration in the relationship between public and private.  Sex was once private, but is now ubiquitous, in part because it is used to sell products.  Public persons are not merely individuals representing institutions, but persons who’s private lives are also public.

3. The introduction of the market into institutions that had previously been sheltered from competition.  These include the church, social service organizations, and unions.

4. The immediacy of communication.  This undermines the virtues of reflection, prudence and even the Sabbath itself.  Videos and emails are exchanged quickly without consideration about their underlying meanings or the proper audience.   Although audiences are easily segmented, anyone can be a hearer, and may hear exactly the opposite of what the speaker intends.

5. The reconceptualization of place.  Cyberspace dictates the rules of civil engagement.  Geography has less of a hold on identity.  Much of our battle happens in cyberspace, and not in person.  However, it is still physical persons who make decisions and operate institutions.

6. The social engagement of more Americans with non-Christians.  This directly impacts how the average lay person thinks of heaven, hell and the uniqueness of Christian doctrine.

7. The diminishing consequences of sex outside of marriage.

8. The effect of capital upon churches and the liberation of desire for the sake of profit.

9.  Our lives and ideologies are generally fragmented, and we put them back together again sometimes in haphazard ways.

Until we can get an accurate description of our cultural context, it will be a challenge for us to even understand our proscriptions.

By and large, the progressive church has accepted the impact of liberal capitalism into the sphere of social relationships.  Some have some antagonism toward neo-liberal / libertarian economic policies, but by and large it accepts the colonial, bourgeois, world-view.   I am saying this as a description.

The conservatives generally accept, however, the place of the US as an empire, but are unwilling to adapt a pre-modern understanding of cosmology and the role of the church.

There seems to a be some link between social conservatism, political conservatism and theological conservatism, but I don’t think the links are intellectually necessary.   One can be a theological conservative and an economic progressive; a theological liberal and a libertarian or neo-conservative.  I can say that I share a cultural identity (bourgeois, private college, suburban/urban, Yankee) with people who call themselves “liberal.”  What that means on a daily basis changes.

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Keeping the Word

Yesterday Jesus said in the Gospel (John 14:23) that “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  It’s one of those conditional statements that bugs me.  If you don’t love Jesus you won’t, but if you do you will.

When I think of promises, I also think of contracts and laws.  Contracts as in written agreements with the power of force; laws as in cosmic natural laws such as gravity.  Law makes the world ordered; as do promises.  They allow us to plan, to have expectations.  We have subconscious promises, ones we don’t articulate, but are present in our assumptions and habits.

We can see all sorts of ways people break promises.  People leave their marriages.  Governments lie about war.  Police are on the take, extorting criminals rather than turning them in (I just saw the movie Serpico).  Churches can’t extricate the criminals within their orders.

Often people’s words do not fit their actions.  Perhaps that’s the truly religious person:  one who’s words always match their actions.  And maybe that’s why truly religious people are silent.

Some philosophers have argued that hypocrisy is wherever you look for it.  It’s the nature of public life that our public proclamations don’t match our private lives.  A male politician might be great about supporting women’s issues, but be vile to their spouses.  Johnson was a racist, but the president who did the most to change institutionalized racism.

And the brokenness we experience in the natural world happen when different cosmic laws engage.  When someone falls to their death, we wish, perhaps, that gravity might not take hold.  But then, what would happen if we could not rely on such certainty.

Perhaps the point here is that we make promises not denying that they get broken, but in spite of them.  We are given, because we have faith in God’s deep promise – that we know through his cross and resurrection – the power to continue building trust, to continuing uttering words, to continue acting, even though our everyday confidence is a little less arrogant, a little more modest, and little more humble.  We might find ourselves in positions where we do break our promises.  But if we love one another, if we maintain our honesty, if we do not flee from the consequences, and if we accept our flaws with generosity, and trust that we can each do better, we may still taste how God continues to have confidence in us.

In the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan makes a promise to the Witch.  But the altar is broken due to the deeper promise, one based on sacrifice, which is known in the world.  By raising it, God reveals his trump card.  We can trust in Jesus.

But what does this obscure code mean?  I suspect it means something like this:  we don’t give up.  We don’t give up on one another.  We don’t give up on our families; we don’t give up on our communities; we don’t give up on our governments or our churches.  In spite of our diminished expectations we find ways to move, to act, with the confidence we have.   Whatever promises are broken shall always be trumped by the promise we believe God has made in us.  And when our words match our actions, it may not merely be silence, but also the expression of our vitality; the simple witness that He Is.

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Easter 4 Year C

Easter 4 Year C

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

After reading this week’s lectionary, I’m considering “how to build a church 101” sermon.  Or a “how not to build a church 101” if I can get some laughs out of it.

“Ignore the people around you,”  “use Schoenberg for a mass setting.”

In the first passage we read – from Acts of the Apostles – the disciples accomplish amazing wonders, including healing of a bedridden paralytic and the raising of Dorcas, of the unfortunate name, from the dead.  Transformation is promised and delivered.   Upon seeing the successes of the church, people believe.  They believe in the power.   Who needs health insurance when you’ve got Jesus!

From this pericope I might discuss power.  I believe that Christians are too shy about talking about power.   The assumption: “power corrupts.”   I’d spend some time looking at different sorts of power – physical power; spiritual power; monetary power.   I’d assess the chaotic nature of power, and the power required to create order.

Power from people with the best intentions can have terrible results; and power from individuals who are manipulative and self-interested may result in wonderful changes for the common good.  But I believe, generally, that power is inextricably linked with life itself.  God is a God of power.  Dim, vague and vascillating (as Whitehead once said), perhaps, but present nonetheless.

In the second reading, I imagine the Christians, in the midst of the apocalypse, declaring God’s glory.   It seems defiant, the chant of a team that’s been the underdog for so long on the verge of victory. God wins.    They’re Cubs fans.  Trusting in the power of the underdog above the power of… money and commerce.

Continue reading “Easter 4 Year C” →

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“I just want to know what it means!”

Perry Robinson, a philosopher in the Orthodox Church, wrote an interesting article Why I am Not an Episcopalian. It’s a fairly sharp response to an Episcopalian struggling with the trinity.

I sure hope that God will not judge me on my theology.  My faith is strong.  My belief system probably needs a little tinkering.   But I’ll still sing what the church says.

The general article, however, repeats the same tired analysis of why TEC is in such bad shape.  Admittedly, he’s amusing:  “TEC – “Don’t believe in that crap?  Neither do we” with KJS is in one photo.   But it is finally unenlightening (although true).

Yes, your average Episcopal priest isn’t a great expert in theology.   I wish more were familiar with the broad panentheism in the Orthodox tradition, and the deeper expressions of recent Catholic theology.  I wish priests were better able at explaining the relevance of the living God known through the Trinity.   When an Episcopal priest denies the atonement, discards the sacrificial language of the Eucharist, or explicitly avoids the readings of Revelation, I’m disturbed.  But Perry misreads the past and seems oblivious to our current context.  Bad theology didn’t simply drop into the Episcopal Church and cause it to go to hell. Continue reading ““I just want to know what it means!”” →

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Easter!

Have you ever had a big goal for yourself? Perhaps its writing a novel, painting your house, or jumping out of an airplane? Or learning to play Satie or Chopin on the piano? Become debt free?

About 17 years ago I decided someday I would train and race a triathlon. I didn’t know when. But someday I would. In 2007 I realized that dream. I finished last in my age group, but I finished. I decided to take that journey again, so I’m training for one in July.

I think that it took a long time because deep down, I didn’t believe I could. I wonder if I was afraid of failing.

This Sunday, like most “low Sundays” is when we read about “Doubting Thomas.” I imagine Mr. Thomas as the reserved, skeptical pessimist who always knows all the facts. He’s the person you turn to when you need an honest opinion, the reasons not to take a desired course of action. He’s practical. He’s smart. But he’s not enthusiastic or idealistic.

But Thomas, though he doubted, was not afraid. There are always good reasons to know all the facts, to be realistic, to understand that actions have consequences. But finally, he stood up and recognized what he needed to.

We face “doubting Thomases” in our own life all the time. We have tons of reasons not to take risks, demand the best, or think big. After all, we’ve got phones to answer, laundry to do and twitters to tweet. Our daily distractions inhibit us from asking ourselves, what orients our life? What is the one grand thing that will give us meaning, that directs us to attempt what seems impossible?

The other evening, one of our parishioners boldly prayed for World Peace. I thought that this was quite audacious. It reminds me of the concept “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (pronounced BEE-hag). In our personal life it might be getting rid of all our debt; it might be cleaning out our house so that it is free of clutter; it might be just being able to sell everything and take that trip to Antarctica. It could be changing the lives of young people in our community.

Or it could mean a change for our church: that our parish seek to become the premier place for innovative, justice oriented Christian worship in the Northeast! Perhaps that we seek to be a place of best practices – not merely seek to survive. It could mean that we strive to have the most powerful, eclectic music program in the region. But it is these sort of goals- those beyond our reach, those that require 10-30 years of work – that can give us a sense of mission and calling.

Now I know you have doubts. Of course you do. Some big goals might be a bit beyond our reach. I’m not going to win a world-series ring, or become an olympic swimmer, or the chief neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. St. Barts isn’t seeking to replace the Vatican.

But I submit to you, that the resurrection is our time to consider what our big hairy and audacious goal is for St. Barts. I know you will have doubts. Living them out might get hairy. But I will tell you – if we truly want it, it lies before us.

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Sermon for a Vigil to Witness the Lives of Undocumented Workers

The other day a congregational pastor friend and I hosted a dinner for our softball team.  It was our first year as a team and we decided to celebrate with a pig roast.  We decided to roast a whole pig in part for amusement, but also for the more serious reason of shortening the distance from farm to table.

We didn’t hunt the pig down, of course.  The closest thing to hunting we do is going to the grocery store, and I generally leave my spear and hunting cap at home.   Although we did cut the meat directly from the pig, I’m sure we missed something by not slaughtering the pig ourselves.

One of the blessings of our commercial economy, and its sophisticated system of coordination, is that we can get lots of what we want for very little.  We don’t spend a lot on food; we have many objects which make our life comfortable for cheap.  But the system is so complex that all the little agreements and exchanges that bring things into our lives and food onto our table become invisible.   A child knows that milk comes from a store; they are less likely to know that it came from Bessie, who lives on an Amish Farm or in an industrial dairy farm.

All along the way are persons and agreements that are rendered invisible and easy to ignore.   It makes it easy for products to get made, to be sold, and to buy.   We don’t think about how products become the things we buy, perhaps because we’re busy and careless, our lives are fragmented and we don’t have time to see.

Some of us, in the midst of having to pay attention to everything all the time – might even enjoy invisibility.   But invisibility is often the first step to  diminishing the humanity of another person, implicitly indicating they are unnecessary even though our entire system requires the work of people we have not seen and do not know.  They are, in many ways, offering their lives to us.

So we have this vigil.  Let us recognize here, this small gathering, that we don’t know how we’ll transform policy or  the souls of the farmers who employ our friends.  But as we light these candles and bear witness her we are simply saying:  we see you.  You are not invisible to us.   When Jesus is crucified the church demands us to look:  do you see Him?  Look.  Just look.    This is what was required for the sake of your peace.  Let it not be invisible any more.  Let it be seen and known by you.

As the church we are called to see what had once been invisible; a system where we are all willing participants, complicit and cooperative, in violence.  But we do not end there.  Elaine  Scarry writes that the body under torture is voiceless.  The  pain cannot truly be known by another person.  Through the constant imposition of pain, and the tortured becomes separated from his or her own physicality, dissembled and diminished.

And our responsibility as a church is to offer that voice.

We may not get it right.  We may not have the perfect policy answer.  We tread with great humility in the atriums of power that can impose their will for the sake of either profit or justice.   But we can say something.  And through this voice,  we reassemble the body, and it looks a lot like a body with whom we should be familiar.

We may not always know what to say.  Perhaps we just begin with a gesture – pointing to what had once been invisible.  Or may be just say “I am.”  The first step of becoming visible.  “I am.  I exist.  I am how food gets on your table.  I am here.”   This is the voice of the voiceless.

It may give us life as well.  It is as the Father says to us, “I am.  Here.  With You.”  This is what we say this evening.   “I am.  Here.  With You.”  It may not alter the world in its entirety – that, perhaps, is for God.  But we by seeing them, by hearing them; by giving them a voice, we offer a little  space, breathings space, the possibility of salvation.  “I am. Here.” they say.  And as the Father says, as the Son says also, “I see you.  I am here.  With you.”

Amen

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