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!