Moving On

Gentle readers: I have decided to move to a new blog on WordPress. It will still have my thoughts/homilies on the Sunday lessons, but perhaps not as frequently, as I will not be preaching every week. Who knows? I might even post something lighter, or shorter, or more colorful. One can always hope.

I thank you for your faithfulness in coming here. Should you want to follow me as I move on, feel free to check out (and maybe even bookmark!) the new site: www.treefields.wordpress.com. Blessings to you!

Leaving Church

[Note: This is the text of my last sermon at my current parish.]

A retired priest and I were talking this past week about what it’s like to leave a parish. As a former Methodist minister, he has a lot of experience with that. In the Methodist system it is expected that the pastor will leave after three years or so, and congregations are used to it. That is not and never has been part of the Episcopal Church. Most Episcopal parishes hope that their clergy will be around for a while, especially if they like them. So neither you nor I expected that I would leave this chucrh after three years. I won’t pretend that this isn’t hard. Even those who have been through this many times before say that it isn’t easy.

Today’s lectionary readings aren’t much help. As hard as leaving is, I really don’t think it’s like taking up a cross to follow Jesus. I have no doubt that you will get through this, especially with the capable leadership of your wardens and vestry. Jesus will still be in your midst when you gather on Sunday morning. There will still be a priest to bring Jesus to you in bread and wine. What comes next is another part of your journey, a journey you will continue to take with Jesus and one another.

Mark’s Gospel is all about a journey. One of his most frequent expressions is “on the way.” It was on the way that Jesus asked his disciples about himself. “Who do people say that I am?” They gave him a variety of answers. “But who do you say that I am?” he then asked. Peter spoke for them all. “You are the Messiah,” he said. Peter got it. Well, sort of. As soon as Jesus started telling them what it meant to be the Messiah, it all sounded wrong. Everybody got scared. So Peter took Jesus aside and told him he was wrong. Jesus threw it right back. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said.

Now if I were Peter – and it’s a good thing to imagine oneself in these Bible passages – if I were Peter, I would have been pretty pleased with myself for getting the Messiah part right. So I’d be really put out when Jesus called me Satan. Some commentators say that Jesus wasn’t really talking about Peter as Satan but rather fighting the temptation to avoid the cross. Do you really think that’s what went through Peter’s head? “Oh, well, I realize that he’s not really calling me Satan, it’s just a figure of speech and he doesn’t really mean it.” No. Peter would be hurt and silenced.

Peter thought he got it, but he didn’t. He thought he had figured out which way this road was going to go, where the journey would end, but Jesus had something else in mind. And when Jesus laid out the map, Peter got so scared that he tried to change the route. Jesus wouldn’t have any of it, and told him so.

If someone had told me three years ago that I would be dean of a cathedral, I would have laughed and silently wondered what they had been drinking. The fact is, we don’t really know what lies ahead on this journey. The disciples had Jesus around to tell them, and even they didn’t get it. All they knew was that there was something very different about this man who talked like God, and they couldn’t help but follow him, wherever he led them. That is just as true for our journey of faith as theirs. If we follow Jesus, we know that we are on the right path.

Peter’s experience tells us something else as well. We need to embrace the pain and grief of separation. We need to embrace it not because it feels good, but because it’s real. Jesus taught us that God is fundamentally relational, the Three in One, and that we are created to be relational as well. If we didn’t love one another, this wouldn’t be as hard. If we didn’t love one another, we wouldn’t be the persons that God calls us to be. So it’s okay to feel the sadness that comes with love.

I didn’t ask my priest friend whether he prefers the Methodist or the Episcopal system. (I already knew the answer.) Both have their advantages and disadvantages. When the priest isn’t working out, the Methodist approach sounds better. When the pastor is a good one, the parish would like him or her to stick around for a while. The reality is that a congregation learns from every clergyperson, whether good or ill. The most important thing for any priest or parish is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus rather than the road ahead, trusting that Jesus will show the way. That is the only way we will know that we are on the right path. My prayer for all of you is that you continue to find Jesus in your midst, and to follow him wherever he leads you. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you forever.

[Pentecost 16: Mark 8:27-38.]

Throwing Food to the Dogs

I’m in the process of packing up my office, getting ready for the next part of my priestly journey. Among the books I found when I moved in was a real treasure: Lectures on Preaching by Phillips Brooks. Nowadays if Brooks is remembered at all, he’s known as the author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” In his time, though, he was considered one of the greatest preachers of the century. In 1877, when he was only 42, he was invited to give the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale University. The book contains those lectures, which are as fresh today as then.

In his chapter on “The Congregation,” Brooks speaks of “some people who as mere strangers have wandered in and taken their seats among the people who are always there…They are to the congregation what the few people who came into contact with Jesus who were not Jews – such as the Syrophenician woman, and the Centurion, and the Greeks, who asked to see him – were to Christ’s disciples. They kept men’s [sic] conception of His ministry from closing in tightly on the Jewish people. This is the danger of the country parish, where you know everybody who comes into the church. You forget the mission to the world.”

The Syrophoenician woman shows up in Sunday’s Gospel reading from Mark. (In Matthew she is Canaanite, an easier reading for the deacon.) She is rebuffed by Jesus when she asks for help for her daughter. He tells her that it is not fair to throw the food of the children (of Israel) to the dogs (the Gentiles). She responds by saying that even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs. “For that saying,” Jesus relents and heals her daughter.

One might think that Jesus himself needed just what Phillips Brooks described: someone to keep his ministry from closing in tightly on the Jewish people. Perhaps Jesus needed to figure out what he was doing as he went along, learning the Messiah business by living it. From that point of view, the Syrophoenician woman taught Jesus that he was supposed to pay attention to Gentiles, as well as Jews.

I find that explanation unsatisfying. For one thing, I think Jesus knew what he was doing all along. For another, he deliberately traveled into Gentile country and spent time there before going back to Galilee. But why did he treat the woman so rudely if he already knew that he was going to heal her daughter? Was he just testing her? Was that fair?

Jesus’ disciples must have been pretty edgy when they stepped out of familiar territory. The food wasn’t kosher, nothing was ritually clean, and everyone looked and sounded strange. Imagine a group of white Iowans walking through a black neighborhood in Chicago, and you can understand how out of place the disciples felt. So when a local woman asked for help, Jesus must have voiced exactly what the disciples were thinking. Leave us alone. Stick with your own kind. Remarkably, the woman not only persisted, but turned Jesus’ words back at him. Now she’ll really get it, the disciples must have thought. Instead, Jesus offered words of comfort, of healing. Can you imagine what effect that must have had on them? Previously he had told them that there were no foods that were unclean – and now there are no people who are unclean. Just in case they missed the point, Jesus healed a Gentile man who couldn’t hear or speak. It was enough to make one look for another church!

The New Testament repeatedly tells us how the first Christians had to reinterpret everything they had learned from the Jewish Bible in the light of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. God really meant it when he said to heal the sick and give food to the poor. God really meant it when he said that all humans are made in God’s image. God really meant it when he said that he desires all people to be reconciled to himself and to one another. But even Jesus couldn’t say all of that at once, because he knew it wouldn’t be understood. He had to lead his disciples to the truth at a pace that they could follow. Sometimes that meant taking a route that at first seemed to be going in a different direction.

We still often act as though God didn’t really mean it. But not this Sunday. This Sunday we will be feeding anyone and everyone who comes to the park across the street. No questions asked. No checking IDs or income. No comments about feeding the children first and then the dogs. No one will be told, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill” until they have been given a plate of food.

Will anyone fed this week show up in church next week? Maybe. If they do, may they be like the Syrophoenician woman. May they open up the church to the world, and the world to the church, so that all may experience the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

[Pentecost 15: James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37.]

Doers of the Word

Recently I heard a story that illustrates why clergy and church musicians are often the source of conflict in a parish. I have to say right away that our music director and I get along very well, in large part because of his professionalism and my own background in music. So this story is not about us, nor anyone else you know.

The priest in this story saw himself as the CEO, in control of everything in that church. His people skills were not the best. He created conflict but could not handle it. On one particular Sunday there was a guest organist, a distinguished music professor filling in for the regular person. Between the two services the priest and the organist had a cordial conversation for several minutes. Shortly afterwards the organist met with the choir to rehearse the next service. Before they began, a choir member said, “Father So-and-so said that you’re playing the hymns too fast. He wants you to slow down.” The organist was furious. Why hadn’t the priest said that to his face? Why have someone else say it? Once again, the priest had created needless conflict by his actions.

What we do reveals who we are inside. That’s the message we hear from both Jesus and James. Faith is not enough. What we do is as important as what we believe.

Martin Luther hated the letter of James. Luther was reacting to the Roman Catholic theology of his day, which said that we can earn our own salvation, even buy our way into it. Luther called this “works righteousness,” a term still used disparagingly by Lutherans. But that’s not what the letter is saying at all. First of all, James says quite rightly that all the good we do comes from God. We can rejoice when we do good, but we can’t take credit for it. The credit goes to God. Secondly, he says that it isn’t enough to just hear God’s word. Hearing has to be turned into action. He uses a lovely metaphor of looking in a mirror. As soon as one walks away from the mirror, the image is forgotten. That’s like someone who comes to church on Sunday to confess sins, then spends the rest of the week committing another whole list of sins to confess the next Sunday.

Jesus is more pointed in his condemnation. The religious leaders of his day had created a whole list of rules that they thought would lead to salvation. So they questioned why Jesus’ followers did not obey them. Jesus didn’t spare his words. He called them hypocrites, and proceeded to overturn all of their carefully regulated rituals for eating. “Don’t worry about what you eat or how you eat it,” he told the crowd. “Worry about what comes out of your mouth, not what goes into it. What comes out of your mouth reveals who you really are.” Just in case they missed the point, he gave a long list of evil thoughts that come from the heart.

I’m always reluctant to talk politics from the pulpit, although in a presidential election year it’s hard not to. Don’t worry; I’m not going to promote either party. But I think today’s lessons are really political in nature, especially when so much religious language has become part of our political scene. Do those who speak in the name of religion bridle their tongues? Do they truly care for the orphans and widows, or do they do whatever will please the wealthy donors of whatever stripe? Do they protect those who are most vulnerable, or cater to those who are most valuable to themselves? We hear a lot of what those seeking political office believe. How do their actions reveal who they really are inside?

You’ll be happy to know that the priest in the opening story is no longer at that parish. He has taken his conflict-creating skills elsewhere. As far as I know, he still talks one way and acts another. That’s not the way of Jesus. Jesus says that what we do is just as important as what we believe, because it shows what is going on in our hearts. That’s why I’m glad our church is having its third annual community picnic next week. They are a loving group of people. They forgive those that get on their nerves. And they like to cook and eat. Next week they will take that love of Christ to the park across the street and feed anyone and everyone who comes. They won’t care if people have washed their hands, or even their bodies. They won’t mind if they come back for seconds. Democrats might even feed Republicans, and vice versa. That this will happen means that they have heard Jesus and invited him into their hearts. They are doers, not just hearers. James himself would be proud!

[Pentecost 14: James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.]

Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?

Somehow we have gotten the idea that the life of faith should be easy. I suppose that’s the result of living in a consumer culture. Some churches go right along with that idea. They use surveys and focus groups to determine just what combination of enticements will lure people into a building they don’t even call a church. Even I sometimes think that if only we had an espresso machine and really good food, people would prefer church to Starbucks.

We succumb to that outlook because there’s some truth in it. We know that people are consumers of religious services, and if they don’t like what our church provides they’ll go to another. We also live in a culture of entertainment where we expect to be passive participants. The “songs” should be musically simple and make us feel good. The “message” should make life easier.

For the most part, churches have many more people on the membership roll than attend each week. It’s easier to become a member than it is to get off the roster. But I have always been intrigued by churches that do just the opposite. They welcome anyone and everyone, but those who want to become members have more expected of them. They must commit time and money and be open to serious spiritual growth. As a result, there are fewer actual members than people attending. Such churches almost seem like New Testament communities.

This Sunday we finally hear the end of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. Each week Jesus has been speaking more and more bluntly, until at last his listeners can’t take it anymore. They don’t want hear about eating his flesh and drinking his blood any more than we would if we didn’t know the “code” to translate his words into communion bread and wine. Jesus was just plain offensive. It almost seemed like he didn’t care because he already knew who was going to walk away. He even asked the Twelve, “You don’t want to leave too, do you?” Simon Peter spoke for all of them. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Say whatever you want, Lord. Be as offensive as you wish. We don’t have any other choice but to stay here with you, because we know that eternal life comes from no one else. It’s true that Peter and the others would run away from the Cross, but that’s because they were afraid of death, not offended by what Jesus said.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Those are haunting words. I think about those words every time someone tells me that church starts too early on a day made for sleeping in. Or when an out-of-town sports event claims priority. Or when the lure of fresh coffee and the Sunday newspaper make it hard to get out of the house. I understand all of those temptations, because I once succumbed to them. None of them is a proper response to Peter’s question.

We can’t escape our culture. Even if we rebel against it, we are part of it. But we can challenge the assumption that church and life itself should be all about feeling good. Faith is difficult. Life is challenging. There’s no getting around that. Whatever happens, however, we have that knowledge, that rock, expressed by Peter:  we have come to believe and know that Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God. With that knowledge, we can face anything – even a church without an espresso machine.

[Pentecost 13: John 6:56-69.]

I Will Raise Them Up

Imagine that you were one of the first white settlers to travel to Iowa from the East in the early nineteenth century. You would have left friends and family and civilization behind in Philadelphia or New York City and headed west on horseback or covered wagon. It would take days just to get to the Appalachian Mountains, and then you’d have to struggle up and over them. The entire time you’d be traveling through forest. Occasionally a few clouds might be visible overhead. Most of the time, though, all you would see is the trail disappearing a few hundred feet in front of you. Then one day, weeks later, the land would start to open up, and suddenly you’d find yourself in the blinding sun. A sea of grass would stretch into the distance farther than you’ve ever seen before. You’d come to a river wider than any you’d ever seen and wonder how you were going to cross it.

Today if you drive across the same route, you get a little flavor of that journey, although it would be a lot faster. Much of the forest has become farmland, and instead of trails you’d be motoring on four-lane highways. But that last stretch on Route 34 from Monmouth is still a two-lane highway through some very flat and largely uninhabited land (except for Biggsville!). If you didn’t know where you were, you might think you’re nowhere. And then suddenly, Burlington appears in front of you. The wide river is still there, but this time there’s a bright new bridge to take you easily across.

When we travel now, we’re used to knowing where we’re going, and even what to expect when we get there. Travel has become so routine that interruptions or changes are experienced as a lot of hassle. Our expectations are not being met.

I think that complacent familiarity of travel is true of our spiritual journey as well. We think we know where we’re going and what is expected of us. But sometimes God has a different idea. We expect level ground when there’s a mountain ahead. We get used to plodding along, and then the trees part and we get a blinding vision of what lies ahead.

Sunday’s Gospel reading is that kind of journey. Jesus has been repeatedly saying that he is the bread of life, come down from heaven. Today he puts some teeth in that. Literally. When his listeners start arguing among themselves how he can give them his flesh to eat, Jesus makes it all concrete. He starts using a word that literally means chew or gnaw, not just eat. It’s a signal that this is not just all a metaphor, something “spiritual.” He’s talking about real food. He’s talking about the Eucharist, the one we celebrate every week that brings the Body and Blood of Jesus into us. Suddenly everyone is in a place they didn’t expect to be.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He has already said that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. Today he adds that he will raise them up on the last day. He will raise them up. This is not just an earthly journey. It has another, more profound dimension. The blinding light of God bursts in from above. In Jesus Christ, eternity has broken into the present moment.

God’s breaking into our lives happens every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The writer Annie Dillard famously compared churches to “children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT…We should all be wearing crash helmets,” she said. “Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” There is more power here than we know about. Jesus shows us a vision of the future, and we still have our eyes on the ground, looking for stones in the path.

I’m glad we no longer have to travel by horse and buggy. Like most people, I’m in a hurry to get there, wherever it is. I find I have to use cruise control so I don’t speed. I get so caught up in where I’m going that I overlook the journey itself. It’s only in the present moments of that journey, however, that eternity breaks in, that God comes to us. And when it does, it blinds us with its brilliance. We can see farther than we’ve ever seen before. It’s only a glimpse, but it’s there for us to see. And it comes to us week by week in the Eucharist. may we always be filled with that power so that we have the strength to continue on the journey, transformed by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

[Pentecost 12: John 6:51-58.]

Bread of Life

[Note: This is the text of the sermon for Sunday, August 12.]

This is the first time I have stood before you since I sent a letter saying that I have been called to be the Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Davenport. I told the vestry and staff in person, and the response I generally got was, “How wonderful for you! Oh, wait…that means you’ll be leaving. How sad for us!” I have to admit that my response is pretty much the same: excitement at the adventure which will soon begin, regret that it means leaving all of you. I have said before, and no doubt I will say again, that without my three years at Christ Church I could not even consider becoming the dean of a cathedral. I have learned a lot on our short journey together, and together we have made this a better place. I have always maintained that this was your parish before I came, and will be yours when I leave. I just didn’t expect to leave so soon!

Many of you have been coming to this church for a long time. At our staff meeting this week, Deacon George mentioned that he has worked with six different rectors. (I’m not sure whether he was bragging or complaining!) That kind of long-term commitment is one of the strengths of Christ Church. Another is the fact that it is an Episcopal church, one in which the liturgy carries a lot of the weight of worship. Who leads the service does matter; I know that many of you are attuned to the content and especially the length of the sermon, for instance. But even if the sermon is not to your liking, Jesus is still here. Jesus comes to us in the people around us. Most importantly, Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist that we celebrate every week.

At the moment we are smack in the middle of hearing the entire sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which is all about Eucharist. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Taken at face value, that sounds ridiculous. It surely did to some who knew Jesus when he was a boy, crawling around in the sawdust of Joseph’s carpentry shop. Typically, John refers to these scoffers as “the Jews,” his term for the religious leaders who rejected Jesus. Given that Jesus and his disciples were also Jews, it is clearly not intended as the ethnic term we use today.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus said. What does that mean? What does it mean when the priest asks God to sanctify bread and wine so they become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ? Anglicans wisely refuse to give a definite answer to that question. “Christ is really present in the bread and wine,” we say, without spelling out the details. We treat the elements reverently but we don’t worship them. We know Jesus is somehow present, and that’s enough explanation.

Trained as a scientist, I like definite answers and logical explanations. On the other hand, I know when I encounter mystery, something that is beyond science’s way of knowing. Jesus is both. There is the human element of his time on earth, something we can relate to through our own humanity. There is also the divine element drawing us toward the eternal. We eat bread and drink wine, but we also have something more, something greater, something that binds us to God and to one another.

That something, that Jesus, transcends you and me. It also connects us. When we come to the Eucharist, we are connected to all those who have come before us at Christ Church, and all those who will follow us. Even when I am no longer present, I will be with you here in the Eucharist, just as you will be with me at every Eucharist at Trinity Cathedral. It is the blessing that God has given us through Jesus Christ. Remember that blessing, that gift, in the midst of this time of transition that we are all about to enter.

[Pentecost 11: John 6:35, 41-51.]

Strangers and Aliens

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone.  Ephesians 2:19-20.

When we first moved to southeast Iowa, we were told by several people that we should expect to be considered outsiders for a long time, especially in the smaller communities. Someone said that you’re not considered a native unless your grandparents were born here. I thought that was an exaggeration until I started hearing about “newcomers” who had lived in the community for twenty or thirty years. Then there were Memorial Day pictures in the paper of local children putting flags by the graves of their great-grandparents. Clearly the descendants of those pioneers had not moved far! The strangest experience I had was meeting a retirement-age biologist at a local college. I expected the usual exchange of educational pedigrees and research interests. Instead she told me where she lived in the county, how long that property had been owned by her family, and how many generations had farmed there. It was months before I finally figured out that the most important thing to her was to tell me who her people were. Anything academic was definitely secondary.

Who are your people? To whom do you belong? In a culture where people move about often, where many marriages end in divorce and children grow up in “blended” families, those seem like odd questions. In southeast Iowa, and in other communities where people live and intermarry for generations, they are the first questions that come up when two people meet. Only after someone is placed in the relational constellation can the conversation progress to other matters. It doesn’t take long for me. As soon as I say that I’m not related to the Horns of New London, they know I’m an outsider and we move on to something else.

Don’t get me wrong. The people we have gotten to know are friendly and welcoming. But we haven’t gotten used to going to our local farmers’ market or one of the restaurants and have everyone turn to scrutinize us, trying to figure out who we are. I suppose that’s why we frequent the places that are used to having visitors, so we can “blend in.”

The need to belong is a very human one. It is just as human is to look askance, or even reject, those who belong to some other group. At the time of the apostle Paul, Jews had nothing to do with non-Jews, and vice versa. They did not eat together, they did not intermarry, and they did not do anything beyond interacting to the extent necessary for people living in the same town. The Jews had their own laws, their own diet, and the males even had the physical mark of circumcision to differentiate them from all other peoples.

Into this absolute distinction stepped Jesus Christ, a Jew who ate with Gentiles and sinners. His radical acceptance of all brought him into conflict with both Jewish and Gentiles authorities, who eventually saw to it that he was put to death. Paradoxically, that violent death and subsequent resurrection created the groundwork for peace and reconciliation among all who were strangers and aliens from one another. Jesus became the cornerstone – or better yet, the keystone, the one stone at the top of an arch that keeps the two opposing sides from collapsing. 

Who are your people? To whom do you belong? For us, the answer is clear: we are Christians. We belong to Jesus Christ. In him all differences are taken up and reconciled. In him we stand as one, whoever we are, whatever we look like, wherever our parents or our grandparents were born. In Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens, but brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers of one another. We are the household of God. And on Sundays when we have a baptism, that is what we celebrate, welcoming one more person into that household.

[Pentecost 8: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.]

Listen to this post as actually preached.

Blogging

Last week R and I went to the 2012 Global Conference of Chaplains in Higher Education. It was continuing ed for both of us, perhaps more obviously for her than me. I did learn a lot about interfaith work. I also attended a paper presentation on faith formation in a digital age given by Fr.Chris Valka, CSB, a priest in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He talked about the elements of a digital presence: website, blogs and podcasts, Facebook and Twitter. We do all of those except Twitter at my church. We even launched a revamped website recently.

I was especially struck by Fr. Valka’s remarks on blogs. Here they are, with my parenthetical comments.

•  Blogs are personal and vulnerable. They are about relationship and emotion. (Mine tends to be more about ideas, perhaps in part because they are homilies-in-waiting. Besides, I like ideas.)
• The ideal entry is 200-400 words. (Oops. Mine are more like 700. On the other hand, one of my favorite bloggers, Lori Erickson, posts 500-700 words.)
• Pictures are a must in every post. (Oops, again. Lori, at least, has pictures.)
• Update every 2-4 days. (How about once a week?)
• Wordpress provides the best analytics. (Sorry, Blogspot!)

I know that this blog could be more inviting. It is pretty bare bones. On the other hand, I like simplicity. I have enough plant photos for a decade of blogs, but do you really want to look at the fleur du jour every time you check here? On the other hand, having to post a picture would get me out with my camera more…and then I’d need a better camera to take even better pictures. I like where this is going!

When the Morning Stars Sang Together

Between the parsonage in which I grew up and the church where my dad was the pastor there was a yard, perhaps fifty feet wide and the length of the church. It was big enough to have a few shade trees that made it hard to grow grass underneath. The fact that my brothers and I considered it a ball field helped neither the grass nor the integrity of the church windows. It was surrounded by concrete and asphalt and houses with little strips of lawn that could be mowed in a few minutes. For me it was an oasis, my first enduring encounter with the natural world. I learned the name of every tree and valiantly grew puny radishes in their shade. The sunniest spot, just outside our back door, was reserved for my mother’s tomato plants.

My first awareness of God as Creator came from spending hours outside in that yard, just as my first language about God came from my father’s mouth in the church next door. I’m not sure that I saw much difference between them; words and experience added up to the same thing. Or perhaps not. There was always something beyond those words, something inexpressible. I saw it in the way my dad sometimes could not speak about what he felt so deeply. I saw it when the sun shone through the sycamore leaves, way up where the bark was fresh and white.

Now I live where I’m surrounded by the created world. From our house I can see deer standing at the edge of the woods a half mile away. I can watch the sun come up on the horizon precisely when it is supposed to. Prairie flowers go through their progression from daisy fleabane to wild parsnip to sunflower to goldenrod. Meadowlarks and bluebirds sit on the power line. I am as far from being in a big city as I can get.

And yet I am no more in the midst of creation than when I was playing ball under that big sycamore, hoping I wouldn’t foul the ball into a window. Instead of puny radishes I grow bright geraniums. I no longer have to know the name of every weed (although I do). The One who created all this still sustains me, still provides moments of inexpressible joy when the bluebird sings or the setting sun glows on the distant woods. It is then that I give thanks for creation, for the privilege of having been born into this beautiful world. It is then that I know why the morning stars sang together and the heavenly beings shouted for joy when God created the world. It is truly a gift of grace. May this glory of the Lord endure forever, and may the Lord always rejoice in all his works.

[Pentecost 4: Job 38:1-11; Mark 4:35-41; and Psalm 104:32 for the last sentence.]

Things Are Not As They Seem

Things are not as they seem. That’s the message we get from all three of Sunday’s lessons. What appears to be the case on the surface really isn’t; it’s the meaning inside, the hidden meaning, that counts.

The first reading describes how the prophet Samuel found the one destined to become a legendary king of Israel. The beginning is not very auspicious. Afraid of the jealousy of the current King Saul, Samuel has to use subterfuge when visiting Bethlehem to look for the new king. (Already things are not what they seem to be.) Samuel knew that the chosen one will be a son of Jesse. The eldest, Eliab, must have been tall and good-looking, for Samuel immediately thought, “Here he is!” But God chastised his quick judgment based on appearance. “The Lord does not see as mortals see,” God reminded Samuel, “they look on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” So Samuel worked his way through seven sons, without success. Finally Jesse had to call the youngest from tending the sheep. Only after that one is anointed as the next king is his name revealed: David. He was not only handsome; God knew he had a good heart.

The Apostle Paul, too, knew that things are not as they seem. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” he wrote. We hope for what we cannot see. The new life in Jesus Christ is hidden, not so apparent to outsiders. Paul even echoed Samuel when he spoke of “those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.” Yet he emphatically stated that because of Jesus Christ, everything has changed even though it may not look that way. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Sunday’s parable told by Jesus really emphasizes that things are not as they seem. He used the example of a tiny mustard seed which no one would expect to grow almost ten feet tall. It’s a bit of a stretch to talk about birds nesting in its branches (Matthew and Luke stretched it even further, calling the mustard a tree), but the point is made – what started out really small became really big, bigger than anyone could have predicted by looking at the size of the seed. As we would say, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.”

What are we to draw from these readings? The story about David is obvious: don’t judge people by their outward appearance. We know that, but we don’t practice it very well. We judge people by how they are dressed and whether they’re showered and shaved. We make false judgments based on appearance all the time. Sometimes that judgment is quite unjust. In many places, including the town where I work, a black man is much more likely to be stopped by police than a white man, especially at night, simply because he is black.

Paul and Jesus talk less about quick judgment and more about the kingdom of God. Both assert that the kingdom is already here. It grows whether we like it or not, whether we are part of it or not. For Paul, especially, it means that everything has changed in spite of the fact that everything looks the same. Yes, we still grow old and die. Yes, the rich still get richer and the poor get poorer. The paradox of Christian faith is our conviction that Jesus Christ has changed that reality. It is no longer the future. The reign of God has already broken in. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promise of new creation for all.

And in the meantime? We can work with that new creation or against it. We can judge less by appearance and instead search for the face of Christ in everyone we encounter. We can strive for justice and peace among all people. We can walk by faith, not by sight. We can hope for what we cannot see, looking toward that day when we will know fully, even as we are fully known by God. That is the Christian hope, the hope that sustains us, that things are not as they seem.

[Pentecost 3: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34.]

They Don't Get It

One of the most consistent characteristics of people in the Bible is thick-headedness. They don’t get it. Again and again people misunderstand what God is trying to do, and repeatedly they have to be told that they’re on the wrong track. As a result, the Bible is full of questions – not pat answers to every problem, as some would have us believe.
 

I take heart in that. I think life is also full of questions, not answers, and I’m relieved when I see Bible people muddling about the same way that I sometimes do. It’s reassuring when they don’t get it. It’s true to life.

 I do admit that sometimes it’s not quite so evident that the biblical questions are the same as our questions. Take Sunday’s reading from the first book of Samuel, for example. After all the celebrations we’ve seen of Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, it’s rather odd to encounter a long rant from Samuel about how bad kings are. Even God appears to whine about his being rejected because the people want a king. Of course, Samuel wasn’t thinking about Queen Elizabeth. This was written after the reign of King Solomon, he of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines and thirty thousand laborers and twelve thousand horses. No wonder Samuel spent so much energy warning the people of Israel about what was to come! He knew that with all that wealth, God would fade into the background. We see that even today – motorboats and golf courses and a big deck with a swimming pool make us forget that everything, including life itself, is a gift from God.

 
Even the people around Jesus didn’t get it. In Sunday’s reading, the religious leaders accuse Jesus of being in league with the devil rather than God. Jesus’ family thinks he’s out of his mind. They’d like him to live a nice, stable life as the village carpenter, building houses and marrying someone with a better reputation than Mary Magdalene. Instead, Jesus is surrounded by low-life types and pays no attention to proper mealtimes. Worse yet, he rejects the whole kit and caboodle of relatives and claims that the low-lifes are his family.
 
The one person who really did seem to get it was Paul the Apostle, but even he was on the wrong track for the first part of his life. The chief problem with Paul is that when he finally did get it, he was so smart that nobody could understand what he was talking about.
 
So if the ones around Jesus didn’t get it, and we still don’t get it, where does that leave us? In the dark? I don’t think so. Just because we are full of questions doesn’t mean that there aren’t answers. It means that the answers aren’t simple. And the whole point of Jesus Christ coming to earth was to provide a light to shine in that darkness.
 
For some reason, even though we humans intrinsically know that the light of Christ is where joy and life and answers are, we still choose to walk toward the darkness and the obscurity it brings. We think that we will be better off with something other than God leading us, whether a king or wealth or anything else we can idolize. We have questions because we cannot see with God’s eyes and God’s understanding. We yearn for the answers that only God can provide, but paradoxically seek them from sources other than God.
 
That’s why we have the Bible. It’s a witness to the questioning, a witness to the continued attempts by God to draw us toward him. Yes, it is something that was written long ago about people who lived very different lives from us. Yet humanity has not changed that much. We still wander off; we still fail to seek the God who is seeking us. We still yearn for answers. We still spend our lives forgetting and relearning that our hearts will be restless until they rest in God.
 
And so we continue on the journey, sometimes walking away from God, sometimes walking toward him. A lot of the time we don’t get it. But then there are those moments of sheer grace when God penetrates our thick heads and light flows in. Those are the moments to live for. May we always be open to that grace and that light. May we continue to question and to be restless, until that day when we, too, can rest our hearts in God.
 

[Pentecost 3: 1 Samuel 8:4-20; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35.]

Here Am I – Send Me

What is it like to encounter God? “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews. “He walks with me and he talks with me,” says a popular hymn text. Which is it – utter terror or buddy Jesus? A lot has to do with one’s course of life and frame of mind. The Hebrews author is describing someone who willfully persists in sin. The hymn text has a resurrection setting “in the garden.” As usual, there’s truth in both; the presence of God brings terror as well as joy.

Isaiah’s encounter with God comes under the fearful category. A king of Judah who had reigned over fifty years had just died, and no one knew what would come next. To the north, chaos had overtaken Israel. In the midst of this uncertainty, Isaiah was serving in the temple. There he had a vision. He saw himself in God’s throne room, where fiery seraphim flew about and everything was shaking. Smoke filled the place. Isaiah knew that he could not see God and live, so he cried out in fear. One of the seraphim then took a live coal and seared his lips, cleansing them from all the sinful words he had spoken. Then when God called for a prophet, Isaiah was able to say: “Here am I; send me!”

Nicodemus’ encounter with God was more straightforward but still disturbing. He met God in human form as Jesus Christ, although he didn’t know it. He realized that there was something unusual about Jesus but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. His fellow Jewish leaders were skeptical, so Nicodemus visited Jesus at night when he wouldn’t be seen. The interview didn’t go very well. Right from the start Nicodemus got lost in Jesus’ words, taking him literally rather than figuratively. It didn’t help when Jesus used a word that could mean spirit or wind or breath, and Nicodemus consistently choose the wrong meaning. He left confused and chastised yet well aware that there was something greater here than he could comprehend.

The Apostle Paul was knocked off his feet when he encountered the resurrected Christ on a Damascus road. It took him three days of nothing but blind thinking to get his big head turned around toward God. Three days for the Spirit of God to penetrate his stubborn wrong-headedness until it finally tapped the depth of spirit within him. When Spirit talked to spirit, Paul could say at last, “Abba! Father!”

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. It is sometimes described disparagingly as a celebration of a doctrine, but I think of it as celebrating three ways of encountering God, three ways of knowing God. All of them are necessary. Isaiah’s encounter with the powerful, transcendent, and holy God magnifies our smallness and sinfulness. Nicodemus’ encounter with the God-in-flesh challenges us to think and grow in ways we could not have imagined. Paul’s encounter with the Spirit of God shows us depths we did not know existed, places closed to us because of our own blindness.

Encounters with God are life-changing. Isaiah became one of the greatest prophets. Nicodemus the Pharisee helped bury Jesus. And Paul changed the face of Christianity. Three encounters in three ways – yet one response, summed up by Isaiah: Here am I; send me. In whatever way we encounter God, Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, that is the response God waits for. It is as simple as that. Here am I; send me.

[Trinity Sunday: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17.]

Listen to this blog as preached.

Filled with the Holy Spirit

For reasons I’ve never quite understood, some people find the Day of Pentecost threatening. Perhaps there’s an association with Pentecostal churches, ones that aim to generate high emotion with hand waving and speaking in tongues – things that horrify most calm, rational Episcopalians.

That first Pentecost described in the Acts of the Apostles is not quite so abandoned as the Pentecostal churches would have it. The writer of Acts is almost at a loss of words to describe the event, relying on images of tongues of fire and languages from every corner of the known world. Yet it’s also clear that this was not an incoherent frenzy; the hearers understood what the disciples said. The preaching about God’s deeds of power moved the listeners to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ.

Remarkably, Peter’s preaching connected that good news to all of creation. Peter quoted the prophet Joel, an unusual source. The book of Joel begins with a detailed account of a devastating locust plague (using an astonishing number of Hebrew words for various kinds of locusts). In the section quoted by Peter, however, Joel has extended that local disaster to cosmic significance, to the final judgment of God. It is from Joel’s vision of the last days that Peter draws, a time when God will pour the Spirit upon everyone, sons and daughters, old and young. Not only humans, but all creation will be a witness in those days, heaven above and earth below, with fire and smoke and eclipses of sun and moon. (The last especially resonates in a week when there was a “ring of fire” eclipse of the sun.)

The Apostle Paul picks up on this witness of the natural world. Paul knows that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. What struggles to be born? The final, total redemption of the world, the renewal of all that is. The first fruit of that redemption is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the hope God has given to us, the hope that one day we, too, will experience new life.

In the meantime we are here, and here is not always a good place to be. I am especially mindful of that right now, with the recent deaths of four young people on the Mississippi River. It was just last Sunday, while we were in church, that they were finally pulled out of the water. Our hearts and our prayers go out to their families and friends.

At such a time we hear the words of Paul speaking to the depths of our groaning, the groaning of all creation. Paul says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words. Jesus calls that Spirit the Advocate, the Comforter, the very Spirit coming forth from the depth of God to speak to our depth, connecting creation to Creator. That is the promise given to us by Jesus Christ. That is our hope.

And that is why Pentecost is not a threat. The tongues resting on the disciples are only the outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grace, a grace that comes to all of us through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. That grace, that Spirit, is our hope, the hope in which we are saved. Let us wait for that hope with trust, with patience, with joy.

[The Day of Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15.]

In The World

Several items in the news recently caught my attention, all of them involving large sums of money. One was the loss of $2 billion by the investment bank JPMorgan Chase. Another was the initial public stock offering of Facebook, expected to raise $100 billion. That would instantly make Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, worth more than $18 billion. In one day he would make more money than most African countries see in a year. If he were generous, he could give most of it to the State of California, which is over $15 billion in debt.

The JPMorgan Chase story falls under the category of “not again!” The chief investment officer bet that the European debt crisis would go one way, and it went another. Boom! The company lost billions, and she lost her $14 million-a-year job. “We made a terrible mistake,” the CEO said, adding that the bank was “sloppy” and “stupid.” Try using those excuses if you ever get audited by the IRS!

Such stories make us shake our heads at the greed of people. Secretly, though, I think many are envious of those who have so much money. Why else would state lotteries be so popular? The bigger the jackpot the more people buy tickets, ignoring the fact that the more tickets purchased, the lower the likelihood of winning. “Well, you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket!” And if you do win, what then? You discover all sorts of friends and relatives you never knew you had.

Jesus didn’t deal with lotteries or stock offerings or JPMorgan Chase. We don’t really know how he might treat investment bankers, although once he chased after moneychangers with a whip of cords. He never did have a lot of good things to say about the rich, especially those who ignored the poor. In fact, when you come right down to it, Jesus said a lot of things about money that would make us uncomfortable if we took them to heart.

Jesus always had a different way of looking at things. That’s because he saw with God’s eyes. In the Gospel of John he expressed this by making a clear distinction between himself and “the world.” He extended that distinction to his followers. “They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world,” he said. This was not an invitation to withdraw from the world, to wait comfortably for pie in the sky by and by. Rather, it was recognition that the life of Christians should be different.

One way this played out was in choosing leaders, as shown in the Acts of the Apostles. With the death of Judas Iscariot, there was an opening in the Twelve. Until Pentecost that number had to be preserved, so two men were put forth: Joseph/Barsabbas/Justus, a man of many names, and Matthias. After prayer, lots were cast and Matthias was chosen. (I always wondered what happened to the other. Did he, like vestry candidates who aren’t voted in, just melt away?)

This is a rather different method for selecting a leader than the long interviews job candidates usually receive. Should we return to choosing people by lot? Oddly enough, even churches that say they interpret the Bible literally don’t cast lots; perhaps it sounds too much like gambling. Or perhaps they realize that casting lots is only a means. The real focus should be on the process, on grounding decisions in prayer.

This Sunday we are in that peculiar time between the ascension of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It’s a time when again we hear Jesus tell us what would happen: the Holy Spirit will come and witness to the truth already given to the disciples. Jesus will be gone in body, yet the Spirit will come to guide and empower the church. That Spirit will enable the disciples, and enable us, to be in the world but not of it. The choice of Matthias through prayerful discernment reminds us of what that kind of life should be like.

What a contrast this is to the ways of the world! There is no discernment at JPMorgan Chase, only the desire to make as much money as possible. Everyone wants to be part of the Facebook cash cow. The desire for what is not of God resides in us, too. That is why Jesus also prayed to the Father, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Evil, however we understand it, is always present to tempt us away from God.

Unlike the Amish, we do not separate ourselves from the world, but rather engage it. At the same time, we are witnesses to another way of life, a way that puts people first rather than money. That way leads through the cross and beyond it, to resurrection, to the very presence of God. It is a lifelong journey, one with twists and turns, missteps and joy-filled clarity. We have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit will come to lead us on the way. May we always follow where the Spirit leads, so that our hearts and minds may ascend to where Jesus is, and with him dwell in the presence of God.

 [Easter 7, the Sunday after the Ascension: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19.]

Abide in My Love

At this week’s staff meeting we talked briefly about Gregory of Nazianzus, whose feast day it was. I happen to like Gregory because I once preached a seminary sermon on his explanation of the Trinity. I really like his defense of why he ran away right after his father (a bishop) ordained him a priest. Gregory was overwhelmed by the responsibility and did not feel worthy of the office. I can relate to that. Indeed, “What am I doing here?” should be a question asked by anyone on track for ordination.

Feeling unworthy is not limited to clergy. It is a common human condition. For some it is a consequence of not being part of the dominant culture (i.e., not being a white male). Others grow up hearing they are not good enough, often in comparison to a sibling. Some religious traditions even emphasize unworthiness by teaching the total depravity of humankind or reinforcing guilt in order to fill the offering plate.

In the New Testament, “worthy” never has the moral quality we usually give to it. It has nothing to do with merit. Instead, worth is associated with receiving the good news of Jesus Christ and doing something with it. Christianity is not about worth or merit; the Christian life is all about grace. None of us is worthy of God’s attention, but that’s not the point. God loves us anyway and is ready to fill our lives with grace.

Perhaps that’s why John the Evangelist rarely uses the word “worthy.” Instead, he uses “love” over and over again. “As the Father has loved me, even so I have loved you,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel. “Abide in my love.” John is trying to communicate his own experience of Jesus Christ, one that lies beyond human words or comprehension. He is trying to explain who God is, an eternal relationship of love into which we are invited.

The closest analogy we have on earth is the love of parent for child. Through a godly coincidence, Sunday’s readings will come on Mother’s Day. Both mothers and fathers know what it is to love a child, even when that child makes poor decisions and suffers the consequences. Yet not all adults become parents, and not all parents are able to show love to their children. If no one loves a child, that child will never be able to form loving human relationships as an adult.

Gregory of Nazianzus understood all of this. After he ran away, he began to realize that none of us is worthy, none of us is able to do what God calls us to do. But that’s not what God asks. God asks for love, not worthiness, a return of that love which God first showed to us through other human beings. And God asks for faith, for trust that God’s grace will be sufficient for all that we are called to do.

It all happens because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in relationship with one another as though in an eternal dance. They are the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love flowing between them. It is within that love that Jesus commands us to abide. Living there, embraced by joy, how can our own joy be anything but complete?

[Easter 6: Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17.]

Listen to this as preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter.

Pruned to Bear Fruit

Last week I talked about pets. This week I get to talk about plants. If I talk about rocks next week, we will have covered all of creation: animal, vegetable, and mineral. Of course, if you know that next week will be about rocks, you will probably skip this blog, so maybe I’d just better stick with pets and plants.

Sunday’s Gospel is about vines, grapevines in particular. Jesus obviously knew how to grow grapes. In a natural environment, grapevines grab onto tree branches and grow upwards until they can spread out all over the forest canopy. That’s good for them, but not the trees, nor anyone who wants to gather grapes and make wine. The ancients used to let the vines sprawl all over the ground, but that’s a problem, too, because rodents can eat the grapes and the uneaten ones will rot. So it wasn’t long before someone figured out how to grow grapes on a trellis. It was also discovered that if their wild growth was pruned back every year, the vines would bear better fruit.

That’s the basic idea behind the Gospel images of grapevines. The most delicate job is pruning, so it’s not surprising that God is the one who does it. Jesus himself is the vine, and we are the ones who get pruned. But what does that mean? Clearly it does not mean that we are cut off; Jesus implies that we remain connected to the vine. The Greek word “to prune” is usually translated “to make clean,” literally to create a place that has been swept. With grapevines, this means cutting the branches back to just a couple of buds, so that the vine’s energy is focused on a few big clusters of fruit rather than a lot of spindly ones. Applying that sense to us, God works to remove whatever is unnecessary in our lives, the overgrowth which saps so much energy that we are not able to bear much faith-filled fruit.

This almost sounds like a Gospel reading for Lent, as it calls for a disciplined life, one that is focused on God, on prayer, and especially on simplicity. The more we have and the more we do, the more God gets crowded out. Working toward a simpler life is a good idea any time, not just during Lent. It’s like charity appeals that suggest giving up one fast food meal a week and sending that money to a worthy cause. We can choose to reorient our time as well. God calls us to be good stewards of all that we have been given.

Yet Jesus is talking about more than just a simpler life, pruning away what is unneeded. He especially focuses on the connection between vine and branches. “Abide in me as I in you,” he says. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” The word used for “to abide” is multivalent. Often it means to remain or stay in place, but also has the sense of endure, hold out, to stand fast against opposition. In the New Testament it contrasts the permanence of God with human changeableness, as in “God’s word abides forever.” John’s Gospel makes this use even more personal. Christ abides in us and we in Christ. It is only by remaining connected to the Word of God that we can produce the fruits of the Spirit.

Branches receive water and minerals when they abide in the grapevine. When we abide in Christ, we also receive nourishment from God. “Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them,” John writes. The essence of God is love, an enduring, eternal relationship. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are sometimes described as the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love between them. It is into this relationship that we are welcomed when we abide in Jesus. It is out of this relationship of pure love that we produce the fruits of the Spirit.

What are those fruits? I always come back to the Apostle Paul’s list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Most of these describe how we should treat one another. Jesus is clear about that, too. It is our relationships with other humans that reveal our relationship with God.

Next week we will read again about abiding in God’s love (not about rocks). It’s a message we need to hear often, that we are loved by God and called to extend that love to all whom we encounter. It’s a lifelong task, really. There’s always some wild growth that seems to come out of nowhere and demand our energy. There’s always a need for pruning. Yet if we abide in Christ, the love of God will continue to flow through us and bear fruit.  “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jesus says. “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” May we always abide in that love.

[Easter 5: Acts 8: 26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8. Paul’s fruits of the Spirit are found in Galatians 5:22-23.]

Listen to this as preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter.

Dog Whisperer

I’ve noticed that pet people fall into two types. There are dog-lovers and there are cat-lovers. Of course, there are also people who like all animals and those who like none, but by and large, pet owners fall into one of those two groups. I’ve also noticed that dog and cat owners don’t think much of one another’s pets.

Cat owners like the independence of cats and their ability to take care of themselves. They can’t empty their litter boxes, but just the fact that they use them means that cat owners can be gone all day or even a few days without having to worry. Cats are curious and playful but only with the right sort of people. If they don’t like you, they vanish.

Dogs, on the other hand, are clearly pack animals. They like company. Dogs are very attuned to their owners, recognizing not only their voice, but the sound of their car, and any sound that has anything to do with food. Once when our dog Maggie was still around, R asked me for a plastic sandwich bag. As soon as she said, “I need a Baggie!” the dog came running to see what was in it for her.

The pack mentality of dogs and their devotion to their owner is the closest modern example I can think of to the biblical use of sheep and shepherd. It’s not perfect, of course. Unlike sheep, most dogs won’t run away from a stranger; they’ll bark at them. And somehow to imagine Jesus saying “I am the good dog whisperer” just doesn’t work as well as “I am the good shepherd.” Yet any worthwhile dog owner would do anything to protect their pet, including putting oneself in danger if the dog were threatened. So perhaps we can get some idea of what Jesus means.

At the center of Jesus’ discourse on the good shepherd is a remarkable statement: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” There’s more here than a pet simply knowing the master’s voice. As Christians we believe that Jesus was more than a great spiritual leader, someone unusually attuned to God. We believe that Jesus is God, God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, born in human flesh. So when Jesus says that he knows the Father and the Father knows him, it is a very intimate knowing, a union of wills and desires. What is astounding is that Jesus equates that kind of knowing with what occurs between him and his own – between Jesus and believers, between Jesus and us.

That does not sound like our lived experience. If it were, we would not yearn to know Jesus better, to be more connected with God. When loss or disaster strikes, we may even feel the absence of God, not God’s presence. We know how far we miss the mark of who God calls us to be. Yet Jesus says that we know him as well he and God know one another. How can that be?

The Apostle Paul provided a clue to this paradox in his wonderful hymn on love in the first letter to the Corinthians. “Now I know only in part,” Paul wrote, “then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Paul realized that we are already fully known by Christ. When we are sealed as Christ’s own at baptism, the Holy Spirit enters into us with the perfect knowledge of God, hidden in our hearts. Because it is there, we yearn to see it more fully. Yet in this life it is as though we are looking through a dirty window. We know that there is a beautiful view out there, but the dusty willfulness of sin keeps us from seeing clearly. Still, our hearts remain a witness to that beauty, to that presence of God within. As John wrote in his letter, “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action....And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether we call Jesus the good shepherd or the good dog whisperer. Besides, we don’t really want to think of ourselves as either sheep or dogs, do we? What is important is that we listen for that voice. We hear it in silence; we see it speaking through others. It is the voice of Jesus that abides in us, calling to us in our hearts. We hear and know it. Let us ever run toward it, so that we may bear its fruit in truth and action.

[4 Easter: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18.]

Listen to this blog as preached on the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

There's Work To Do

The mall’s Easter Bunny has put his costume back into storage. All of the plastic eggs have been gathered up from Easter egg hunts, their candy long gone. Stores are gearing up for Mother’s Day and graduation parties. Can Christmas shopping be far behind?

In the church, meanwhile, it’s still the Day of Resurrection. Every Sunday is a feast of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the prayer book says, but the first two Sundays after Easter take us right back to that day itself. This week two disciples have rushed back from their walk to Emmaus on which they encountered the risen Christ. As they breathlessly tell their story to the others, suddenly Jesus is right there in their midst. This time no bread-breaking is necessary for everyone to recognize him. They’re terrified, of course; how else does one respond when seeing someone known to be dead? They think he’s a spirit.

But Jesus is real flesh and bone. Resurrected flesh and bone, to be sure, but real just the same. He shows them his wounds and invites them to touch him. They are so overwhelmed and overjoyed that they still can’t get their heads wrapped around the fact that he’s actually there. So to prove he’s real, Jesus asks for a bite to eat, then nibbles on some broiled fish. Finally their internal questioning subsides and they are ready to hear him out.

What Jesus says is that this is all part of the plan. The Messiah is supposed to suffer and die and rise on the third day. He’s been telling them that all along, and they still don’t get it. So he opens their minds (a wonderful image) and lays out the scriptures before them. They are to spread the message so that all repent of what they have done, turn back around to God, and let God forgive them. “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus says. Tell everyone!

Peter and John do just that. Peter heals a lame man and then preaches to the crowd that assembled to see the sight. He tells them exactly what Jesus had poured into his open mind, clear through the part about repentance and turning to God. John is more subtle. “See what love the Father has given us,” he writes, “that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” John, too, knows that this fish-eating resurrected Christ has changed everything. That fact should change us as well. There’s still a lot that needs explaining, but “what we do know is this….we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

Several themes come through loud and clear in all of the Easter stories. One is that this is all part of God’s plan. Another is that Jesus will arrive in the midst of fear and say, “Peace to you.” Those two messages we hear. Yet a third is just as insistent: “You are witnesses of these things.” It’s all fine and dandy that God loves us and that we don’t have to be afraid. But there’s no complacency in the Easter message. There’s work to do. It’s not a sit back and bask in the warmth of God’s love like being full of Easter ham and chocolate bunny. It’s more like Christ is risen, now get out there!

That’s the most threatening part of the Easter message. Work is hard enough, but when the work involves talking about Jesus, we’d just as soon eat that chocolate bunny, thank you. It’s especially hard in a culture that associates “Christian” with judgment, with condemnation of others in the name of God.

Yet we don’t have to stand in a crowd and proclaim Jesus like Peter did. We can do it ways other than words. In fact, Jesus provides us a list in Matthew 25 – feed the hungry, water the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit prisoners. Those things witness to the risen Christ just as much as preaching Jesus. And it’s also why we hear about Easter again and again. There’s too much to do to fit into one hour a week. In fact, we spend all of our lives living into the meaning of that one day. That’s the wonder, the glory, the richness of the resurrection. So get going! There’s work to do!

[3 Easter: Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48.]

Peace Be With You

Twenty years ago I preached for the first time, on the Second Sunday of Easter. It was a remarkable experience. In that parish it was unusual for a layperson to be given the pulpit, and I didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect. At coffee hour afterwards one of the stiffer members of the congregation approached me and I prepared to weather some criticism. Instead he simply said, “That was a good sermon – although it was seventeen minutes long.”

I still have that sermon. It was about Thomas, of course; he appears every year on the Second Sunday of Easter, the so-called “Low Sunday” (as though Easter is exhausting, not energizing). But it was also about the community in which the sermon was preached. Thomas’ faith was given to him in company with the other disciples; so too our personal relationship with Christ comes to us within a community. That particular parish, I noted, had a wide range of viewpoints (and probably still does), all of which were important to our collective understanding of who Jesus revealed God to be.

It’s often said that clergy preach to themselves. It’s true that twenty years ago I was caught up in the idea of Christian community. I still am, but in a different way. Perhaps that’s because one of the functions of preaching is to urge people to continue to grow in Christ, and each parish requires a different kind of urging. That first parish was struggling with decisions made by the national church which some people lauded and others rejected. In that context it was important to emphasize the importance of everyone’s views.

Now I would do the same thing in a different way. I tend to describe the Episcopal Church as a big tent that is able to hold a wide variety of ways of understanding faith. Sometimes a group in one corner of the tent discovers a group in another corner that they really don’t like. That’s when conflict begins. The leader’s role is to manage the conflict so that it becomes a means of growth rather than a cause for rejection. The goal is to have both sides accept the presence of the other while still disagreeing.

Thomas provides a model for that. For whatever reason, he wasn’t present on Easter Day when Jesus appeared to the disciples. So he does not share their experience of fear turned to joy, of being sent by the One who was sent from God. The disciples try to convince him, but he won’t be convinced unless he sees for himself. Sure enough, a week later, Jesus reappears. This time they are all together, and Thomas gets what he asks for and more, when Jesus says “Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas could have rejected the witness of the other disciples. He could have decided that they were all misled and left. Instead, he stayed with them and became a model for all who are tempted to walk away. “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus asks. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That community of disciples would not have existed unless it first had been called together by Jesus. It continued to exist because of the presence of Christ, a presence that initially came through the resurrection appearances, then through the gift of the Holy Spirit in word and Sacrament. In the midst of all of the fear and turmoil created by his betrayal, abandonment, and death, Jesus came to them and said “Peace be with you.” In the same way Jesus comes to us in the midst of our own trials, our own conflict, and says “Peace be with you.” It is not a peace such as the world gives, a capitulation of one side to the power of the other. Rather, it is the kind of peace where people who strongly disagree with one another can sit and worship together. It’s a peace that creates a big tent in which all are welcome. It’s a peace that reflects the unmerited love of God for a world redeemed by the death and resurrection of the Son of God. As William Alexander has written,
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing – the marvelous peace of God.

[Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31. Alexander’s poem is set to the tune Georgetown in Hymn 661 of The Hymnal 1982.]

Listen to this as preached on the Second Sunday of Easter.