LENT 1, B

Mark1:9-14

Today, we almost begin the Gospel of Mark all over again. First, a few reminders: Mark’s Gospel was the earliest Gospel written, most likely before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; it is the shortest and the one most like a newspaper report.

The opening 8 verses of the Gospel tell the story of John the Baptiser. Jesus is introduced in verse 9, the beginning of the reading you just heard. So in Mark we hear no birth stories, we don’t know anything about Mary and Joseph, we know nothing of the life of Jesus before this moment. All we know is that Jesus comes from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the Jordan.

Mark is sort of the Hemingway of the Bible. Just look at today’s lesson. In just six sentences he tells us about the baptism of Jesus, about Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness with the wild beasts and angels, and about the beginning of his ministry.

What are we to make of such momentous events told in so little detail and in such a short time frame? What dawned on me this week was that this is a call story – about Jesus being called to his ministry. It is also a story about identity – about Jesus recognizing his own identity and taking his place in the world as that person. It is also a story about transformation – the transformation of Jesus from whatever he was before into the Messiah/prophet/teacher he became.

In one of Marcus Borg’s books I remember a statement he made to the effect that transformation is at the heart of the Christian life. In Convictions he says, “Jesus’s message was not about ‘how to get to heaven.’ It was about the ‘kingdom of God.’ . . That kingdom is not about heaven. IT’s for the earth, as the best known prayer affirms: “your kingdom come on earth.’” (p. 62) He goes on to affirm that Christianity and salvation are about transformation this side of death. ( p.75)

It struck me that this is exactly what today’s Gospel tells us – in particular about the transformation Jesus himself experiences before beginning his ministry. What also struck me is how it resembles the transformation most of us experience in growing up.

His baptism, like our own, is the beginning. It marks our own assent to being a child of God. The spirit driving Jesus into the wilderness reminds me of the basic task of growing up, of separation from family that happens when we go away to school or to work. The wilderness is a place where we are tempted, certainly, but also where we can try out different identities, experiment with being different sorts of people, seeking the path we want to follow going forward.

In days gone by, it was presumed that the result of going through such an “identity crisis” would be setting out on the path to the rest of your life. We generally know now that often people experience more than one such crisis. Maybe they chose the wrong one the first time around.

I remember a young man who lived in our attic for a year while he interned with a Lutheran church in our community. He had always wanted to be a Pastor and his home church had supported him during seminary. Half way through his intern year, after two years of seminary, he found he couldn’t stomach the thought of pastoring a church. Seminary had not prepared him for the reality of Council meetings, committee meetings, negotiating rows between women’s circles, or soothing ruffled feathers amongst the kitchen crew. He loved preaching and pastoral work, but was shocked and upset by the realities of a pastor’s life.

This was a classic identity crisis, one that forced a complete revision of his life plan, and was more painful than most because it was the only plan he had ever had. With the help of the wonderful pastor he was interning with, he eventually gave up seminary. To support himself in the meanwhile he attended bartender’s school, got a job at a Ground Round restaurant and in about 3 months had a management job there. (Evidently it’s not usual for a bartender to be honest – skimming goes with the territory, so they grabbed him quickly!). I don’t know what ultimately happened to him, but he was clearly seeking a new identity.

I think the transformation at the heart of our Christian identity is also one that may happen more than once. We were probably baptized as babies. We said yes to that baptism in confirmation. Then we continued in high school, and many of us, like Marcus Borg, began to have our doubts. Then we go off to school or work – our time in the wilderness, more or less. Certainly some folks retain the religious beliefs and postures of their parents. Others have to work at it to revise or revisit or revitalize their world view. Some leave church forever; some become spiritual but not religious; some return to church with an altered perception of what church means; some return to an old habit and a comfortable place.

Some experience transformation more than once. Then it is easier to see life as a series of such transformations as one grows into their life in Christ. This time of year we approach and experience again the death and resurrection of Jesus – surely the greatest imaginable transformation at the heart of our religion. In her sermon on Ash Wednesday, Sam suggested a whole series of metaphorical understandings of such transformations from death to life. When we ‘give up’ something for Lent it is a small death, but one that is intended to bring new life.

When an addict ‘gives up’ their addiction, they find new life. When someone experiences cancer and then is healed, their life is changed. When a person suffering a mental illness is healed or mended by medication, they find a new life.

The ministry of Jesus can be seen as making possible a whole series of transformations in the lives of others: healing people, eating with sinners, casting out demons, raising people from death. The experience of dying to some part of our lives and rising to new life means changing our identity, whether in small or large ways. There are too many such stories in the bible to even mention.

New life often means reconnecting us to our community, but it also may mean turning our backs on old attachments – think of the disciples leaving their nets and their families, the addict who must give up his old buddies and find new friends, or Jesus himself who no longer sees his family of origin as his family. These changes are difficult and not everyone is willing to make them.

The Christian life is about life-long learning and life-long transformation – and that’s part of the good news. Because we’re not expected to “get it” the first time – surely the disciples didn’t either. Transformation is an on-going process. All we have to do is stay alert and pay attention to the learning that comes our way. Oh, yeah, and be willing to die a little to our old selves so that the new can take root.

Lent is the time to consider what we are ready to let go and what we might want to make new. Are we willing to change? Are we willing to become better disciples in spite of the change that requires? Remember that death, the last great adventure, the last great transformation, cannot be avoided. Lent give us a chance to practice, practice, practice. AMEN

ASH WEDNESDAY, B

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Ben Franklin said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Musician Steve Earle calls even this well known truism into question saying “They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. The truth is, you can not pay your taxes. I’ve done it, and there’s consequences, but it can be done. Death is you’re not going to get out of, and you kind of got to deal with it.” Death is that great leveler – the journey we will all take, some sooner, some later – but a path we all will travel. It is the ultimate uncomfortable, uneasy opportunity for a deep, honest look.

Ash Wednesday has been described as “the day that Christians get to attend their own funerals”. (Barbara Brown Taylor) You are dust, and to dust you shall return. The words echo the words of our funeral liturgy. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The day that Christians GET to attend their own funerals. Not “have to”. “Get to”. If you knew your funeral, your final funeral, were scheduled in that great cosmic calendar for tomorrow, or next week, or next year, what would you be doing differently? Ash Wednesday proffers an invitation to Holy Lent, a chance to die to some piece of self, and see what that means, how we are changed.

At the breakfast table this morning, the conversation centered on what, if anything, my daughters planned to give up for Lent. This has actually been a topic of conversation for some days. They just can’t quite decide what is “right”, and there was a sense of urgency about it today – a real sense of deadline. As they munched on their breakfasts, my eldest waffled and worried-”should I give up pasta again?” (the girl loves pasta) “Or maybe sweets? Or maybe…” As my youngest pushed yet another bite of pancake dripping with maple syrup into her mouth, “I guess it’s too late to give up pancakes now….”

How do you decide what to give up, how to give it up, whether to give it up? Should I give up pasta or pancakes? Should I give up gossip or angry words? Should I somehow give up the inertia that keeps me off my knees, or the fear that holds me away from what I don’t understand?

Today we recognize that we are the stuff of stars – the Creator made us from the dust of the universe – and that into the dust of the sacred Earth our bodies will return. We mark our own mortality on our foreheads, oddly freed by the knowledge of our mortality…to live.

To have life, there must be death. To serve God we must die a little to self.

Nancy Wood offers this:

You shall ask
What good are dead leaves
And I will tell you
they nourish the sore earth.
You shall ask
What reason is there for winter
And I will tell you
To bring about new leaves.
You shall ask
Why are the leaves so green
And I will tell you
Because they are rich with life.
You shall ask
Why must summer end
And I will tell you
So that the leaves can die.

How do I know what to give up? How do I know what destructive habit, or harmful thought process, or insidiously hurtful pattern must die so that my life can shoot forth new leaves, new life; that I might serve God and God’s creation?

Tonight when you leave here, go home and look in the mirror. Take in that sooty, earthy reminder marked on your forehead. Then look beyond the mark. Look into yourself, into your life. Remember, as Matthew points out today, the point is not to look or feel miserable, nor to look or feel pious. The point is to die into freedom, die into new life today, tomorrow, this Lent, post Easter; every day, all the time.

Think about this offering by Michael Coffee (2013)

“Ash Thursday”

He did the black solemn ritual
and got smeared and humbled though he
didn’t like it much with the flecks falling down
in his eyelashes and the soul’s grief exposed so

He got home and stared at his conundrummed face
for five minutes give or take in the bathroom mirror
it wrecked him to be so humiliated, so mortified
he washed away the ashen cross and dreamed of dying

He woke up Thursday and after peeing and scratching
looked in the mirror and there it was like a Mardi Gras drunken tattoo
his forehead graffitied, black, sooty,
haunting him he wore it all day like an un-bandaged wound

At bedtime that night he washed and slept like a storm-tossed boat
woke up to his sunrise reflection, his sleet eyes squinted
again it was back, his skin tagged with midnight streaks
and he walked the day mortal through to his marrow

After that first Ash Thursday and Ash Friday
and Ash Tomorrow, Ash Next Week
Ash March, Ash Autumn, Ash Solstices
never a day went by when he didn’t see it, let it have its way

Never a day went by thereafter that he didn’t
rise to bless himself with Wednesdays words:
remember you are dust and to dust you shall return
and every day then on he was his free earthy self until he died.

So remember. Remember that you are dust. Remember and rejoice. God created us in the beginning, stays with us now and will never part from us. We are the stuff of stars, the stuff of earth. We are mortal, but we are of the stuff of life. Live in God.

TRANSFIGURATION, B

Mark 9:2-9

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany and by tradition is therefore Transfiguration Sunday. It was not too many years ago that I would have done anything to avoid preaching on this Sunday. Really – how can anyone make sense of this story? I would have felt compelled to either treat it as a literal miracle or some sort of metaphor, neither of which has much appeal.

But considering the season of Epiphany, the answer is obvious. What is happening here is an epiphany experience, at least for Peter, James, and John. They go up a high mountain with Jesus – one of the places where spiritual experiences are most likely to happen. And suddenly they see Jesus in a whole new way. This experience is marked by luminosity – the brightness of his white clothes, and by the appearance of Moses and Elijah. (How did they “know” it was Moses and Elijah?) Not in the usual way.

One of the marks of an epiphany experience is that you see and know things that you could not see or know in the usual way or in your usual life. There is no explaining it. What they hear God say is more understandable. “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Although we might be inclined to ask, How did they know it was God speaking?)

Now, lest you might think that people in Biblical times had epiphanies, but no one does anymore, let me introduce you to a new book by Marcus Borg, which was published last year. It’s called Convictions, and attempts to explain the development of his own spiritual life and the convictions that led him into his career as a Biblical scholar and student of the politics of Jesus’s day.

Borg grew up in a conventional, proper, Lutheran and Republican family in the Midwest. His story, like so many others, includes Sunday School, complete acceptance of the religion of that time and place, gathering doubts as he reached puberty and on into college.

He describes two classes that altered his way of thinking about religion and changed his career path. Then he describes a series of experiences that began in his early thirties. These were experiences not based on what he was thinking or triggered by anything that he could pinpoint. They mimic in many ways experiences I’ve had, but he does a much better job of describing it than I could do.

“I was driving through a sunlit rural Minnesota winter landscape alone in a nine-year-old MG two-seater roadster. The only sounds were the drone of the car and the wind through the thin canvas top… The light suddenly changed. It became yellowy and golden, and it suffused everything I saw… Everything glowed. Everything looked wondrous. I was amazed. I had never experienced anything lie that before…

At the same time, I felt a falling away of the subject-object distinction of ordinary everyday consciousness – that ‘dome’ of consciousness in which we experience ourselves as ‘in here’ and the world as ‘out there.’ I be came aware not just intellectually but experientially of the connectedness of everything. I ‘saw’ the connectedness, experienced it. My sense of being ‘in here’ while the world was ‘out there’ momentarily disappeared.

The experience lasted for maybe a minute and then faded, but it had been the richest minute of my life.” (pp 36-37)

It was only after several such incidents that Borg had a reason to study Christian mysticism, beginning with William James’s classic The Varieties of Religious Experience. From that and other sources Borg realized that his experiences had not been as unusual as he thought. There is a whole tradition, in Christianity and most other religions, of mystical experiences similar to his.

These experiences are what we have been calling epiphanies. Whether it’s something that suddenly makes you realize your best friend is lying to you, or it’s something that transforms what you are seeing/hearing/touching/feeling, epiphanies share certain characteristics:

• Ineffablilty. They are difficult, even impossible, to express in words.
• Transiency. They are brief. Your might say they happen in a flash.
• Passivity. You cannot make them happen by any effort of your own. They just come, or not.
• Noetic quality: They include a vivid sense of KNOWING – a nonverbal way of knowing, marked by a strong sense of seeing more clearly than before.

The disciples in today’s lesson experienced this sort of epiphany when they saw Jesus wearing radiant clothes and heard the voice of God declare, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

It’s important to note that it’s also highly likely that a person who experiences an epiphany, while undoubtedly remembering the experience, may not apprehend the meaning for some time after. Two years ago I preached about what the disciples made of this, why it was an important experience for them just prior to beginning the last trip to Jerusalem, and speculating about how it may or may not have informed their behavior in the turbulent weeks leading up to the crucifixion. How might they have thought of it when looking back from their old age?

Like most of us, the disciples did not understand what the experience meant, but the experience was so vivid, so amazing, that they could not have forgotten it. In the few days that are left in this season of Epiphany, I hope you will look back on your own life to find your own experiences of epiphany and revisit whatever impact they had on you.

If you can’t find even one example, then just keep your eyes peeled. There’s no telling when or how they happen. And your understanding of them may well shift over time.

Just remember not to be afraid of such experiences. The light of God is not something to fear. We all carry it within us and hopefully we are sharing it with others. God is always with us and around us, so open your hands, your eyes, your ears, your hearts, and your minds to God’s presence and to God’s blessings. AMEN

EPIPHANY 3, B,

Mark 1:14-20

"As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him."

This portion of Mark’s Gospel story is so stark in its simplicity that it has leaves me saying – "Wait a minute!! Are you serious? There must be more to it than this!" It’s hard for me to imagine someone dropping what they’re doing and walking off.

Close your eyes for a minute. Visualize yourself at some point in a typical work day: at your desk, at the sink, in front of a classroom, waiting on a customer, reading in your favorite chair. There’s a knock at the door. When you answer it or look up, there’s a man standing there, dressed much the same as yourself, a stranger perhaps, or someone you know by sight. He looks into your eyes, says, "Follow me," then turns on his heels and walks away. What do you do?

Now open your eyes and consider. What would it take for you to walk after him right then and there – no questions asked, no appointments cancelled, no spouses or families notified, no projects finished, a customer left standing, or, heaven forbid, dirty dishes in the sink and the front door standing open? Can you imagine anything that would make you do what the disciples did?

If this were an Advent Gospel we could look at it as another example of the lessons in the "Watch out! You never know when the Lord will show up" genre. But this is the season of Epiphany and in this story the Lord not only shows up, he calls people to a new life and a new life’s work.

The only way this story makes sense to me is as an Epiphany story. By that I mean, the only explanation of the disciples behavior is that when Jesus came to them on the seashore, they had an Epiphany experience.

In terms of personal experience I think of an Epiphany as one of those "ah-ha!!" moments, when you have a flash of insight, or suddenly understand a problem or its solution. Remember Archimedes sitting down in his bathtub and shouting "Eureka", which means I have found it, when he understood in a flash the concept of the displacement of water? That’s an Epiphany moment.

Most break-throughs, whether intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, happen in this way. I know that you have all experienced moments like this when you finally "get" it; something goes "click" and everything falls into place. And I say finally, because I often realize, after the Ah-ha moment, that the answer, solution, insight, or whatever, was pretty obvious, but I hadn’t been able to see it. Once I do see it, my view of the world around me is changed forever – maybe not in big, significant ways, but changed nonetheless.

I think that’s what happened to the disciples on the shore of Galilee that day. In this instance, the Epiphany was a big one, a significant one. To a greater or lesser degree they saw Jesus for who he really was. The experience was powerful enough to make them leave their work and follow — without questions, without conditions.

It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? We have heard about cult leaders who through the power of their personality can draw people into total obedience. I believe that Jesus had such a powerful effect on people because he manifested the incredible love of God for everyone he met.

Have you ever tried to describe your own Epiphany experience to another person? I have tried and it seldom works. It often sounds kind of hokey — especially to 20th Century ears. The writer of the Gospel doesn’t attempt any explanation, which I think makes the story more powerful than additional words could. This was a life-changing experience and the best way to describe that is to describe the new life, which is exactly what the Gospel proceeds to do.

Another aspect of Epiphany experiences is probably as hard to describe or talk about as the experience itself. What I’ve noticed about those "Ah-ha" moments is that it’s often impossible to explain in any logical way where they came from or why they occurred. You usually know they happened, but can’t say why or how.

Let me take a simple example. You’re at a party. You see John hand Susan a drink and almost in a flash you know there’s something more than friendship between them. After the party you tell your spouse what you "saw". What’s the response ?? "Well, what did you actually see? Did John hold her hand? No. Did he whisper in her ear? No. etc. You cannot prove or justify your knowledge, but still you know. You are certain. What is often called intuition or female intuition in our culture and is often disparaged because it does not lend itself to scientific inquiry, in older cultures was called insight or vision and was honored as a gift from the creator.

Many of the poets of the early 20th Century struggled with understanding the Epiphany experience. Most of us think of T.S. Eliot as the author of The Wasteland, but there is a whole body of Eliot work written after he became an Anglican. In the Four Quartets, he deals with a series of Epiphany moments, which he describes as the intersection of the timeless with time.

Another way to think of this: we live in a temporal world, measured out in hours, seasons, lifetimes. This is the world of scientific inquiry, of things that are knowable through the 5 senses. But there is also a spiritual world, a timeless, infinite realm that is not knowable in the same way. Yet every now and then we get a glimpse of it, some sense of its reality.

Eliot says that actually apprehending the point or moment when the timeless intersects with time is the occupation of the saint:

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,…

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

Here the impossible union

Of spheres of existence is actual, . . .

What the disciples saw that day was some glimpse of the Incarnate Jesus. When he said "Follow me", they dropped what they were doing and obeyed. I’m afraid I would have said, "You’ve got the wrong boat. You must be looking for Marcus. He’s just down the beach."

I believe Jesus calls us all to his service, but luckily most of us are called to serve where we are and we have years, not just moments, to apprehend the Incarnation and to obey his call to a transformed life.

Let us pray:

Dear God, open our eyes and ears, our hearts and minds to your call. Give us the courage to respond like Samuel did, "Here I am, Lord." Give us the will to do the work you have given us to do, like the disciples did. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen

EPIPHANY 1, B

Genesis 1:1-5

Mark 1:4-11

Finally, we are back to reading this year’s Gospel. Please note that what we just heard is from the FIRST chapter of Mark, verses 4-11. In other words, the first thing that actually happens in Mark’s Gospel is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the wilderness.

As you know, Mark was written earlier than any of the other Gospels in the canon. It contains no birth stories. The implication is that Jesus was a normal human being. The big question in Mark is this: was he the Messiah?

It was probably from this Gospel that the idea of baptism being the point at which God adopts us as his children first arose due to God’s pronouncement to Jesus. Proponents of this view were called adoptionists.

Matthew and Luke both included birth stories in their Gospels, ones that look much like the stories common in the ancient world about the birth of famous men. At that time, they were not understood to be literally true, but as predictors of the success of the child being born. They also include stories of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.

John’s Gospel, probably the latest one written is so different. The birth story is replaced by an extensive theological statement: In the beginning was the Word, etc. This statement essentially claims that Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, existed before the world was created. By implication then, Jesus was fully divine. It’s no wonder that the Council of Nicea wound up claiming that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. It was the only way to keep the churches in the same tent.

John also doesn’t really tell a baptismal story, maybe in order to downplay the role of John the Baptist, changing John’s role to that of signpost. Remember we read this several weeks before Christmas. There was also the sense that if Jesus was divine (and therefore perfect?) he didn’t need the Baptist’s forgiveness of sins.

Reading through some commentaries this week revealed many points of discussion and disagreement about what Christian baptism is all about. I found it about as interesting as the arguments some centuries ago about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

So that leaves me with talking about what I really believe about baptism. In order to do this I have to take you back to the golden olden days of the 50’s when I was growing up. Back then there were several related things I learned or noticed.

• Most folks believed you had to be baptized to be saved or to go to heaven, which made baby baptism really important!
• Being baptized is what made you a Christian.
• God created everything.
• God is love.

So being the sort of child I was, I asked myself, what happens to children who die without being baptized? What happens to Jewish people who die? Didn’t God create these people too? Didn’t God see that they were good? If God is love, how could God send these people to hell?

Notice that the first reading today from Genesis is about God creating all things and finding they were good. If you do no other reading this week, go back and read the first creation story. Consider the implications.

At various times since the 50’s I’ve struggled with such questions more than once, and this is what I’ve come to believe:

• God created the world we live in and all that is in it. The scientific explanation of how this happened is not a problem at all.
• Every child born is a child of God, bearing the spark of life and the holy spirit within themselves.
• God loves the creation and therefore loves all God’s children.
• This love is given freely and never revoked.
• As Christians, baptism is our acknowledgement of that love and our relationship to God. We are saying “Yes, God, we know you as our creator and we will dedicate our lives to you.”
• Other religions have other rituals, but the great religions all have the golden rule at their heart.
• Our rules are based on the teaching of Jesus: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. These are what we affirm in our baptismal covenant.

When I hear someone imply that we are right and others are wrong, in the sense that the others will not be saved or are going to hell, I want to ask, “What kind of a God do you believe in?” Considering how oft we go astray, I can certainly understand a God who weeps or a God who rails or even a God of wrath, but I cannot accept a God of vengeance, a God of violence. I cannot worship a God that’s just like us, both loving and hateful, kind and cruel, honest and deceitful, etc. I want to be held to a higher standard, even though I will never attain it.

And what makes that possible is believing that God is love and that love saves us. Love gives us a hand up, love forgives our faults, love understands our sorrows, love builds us up and shows us the way to live in this world. Love calls us to serenity and peace. And finally love calls us to love one another as God loves us. All we have to do is go on trying! AMEN

EPIPHANY

Matthew 2:1-12

Way back in 2007 I described in some detail the difficulties of the journey the Magi made to seek the Holy Child. I related that journey to the journey each of us experiences in life with these words:

“On this day, when we celebrate Epiphany, we acknowledge that the journey of the wise men to find the Christ child is also the journey of every child of God. Their journey is also our journey. We too seek to find the Holy, to validate our relationship to God, and to offer gifts of thanksgiving.”

Last year I went on to talk about the return journey of the Wise Men wondering about how they responded to what they had experienced and then connected that again to our own journeys through life:

“The spiritual journey of our lives is determined by how we experience the holy in the world around us and how we respond to that experience. We can ignore it. We can poo-poo it, or we can thank God for it.”

This year I want to consider the darker or more difficult side of spiritual experience, suggested to me by a poem by T.S. Eliot called “Journey of the Magi.” What he leaves us to ponder, difficult as it is, certainly matches my own experience.

The poem begins, much as my first sermon began, with a description of the difficult journey to Jerusalem.

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow. . .

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and their

women,

And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters, . . .

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.”

The middle part of this poem is a brief vignette of their arrival in a temperate valley, suggesting the area around Jericho, but the description of the valley is filled with biblical references, e.g. three trees on the low sky, suggesting the crucifixion and a white horse galloping away in a meadow, like the first horse of the Apocalypse. Not that they recognized any of this.

The last stanza is in the voice of an old man remembering:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different: this Birth was

Hard and biter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here in the old dispensation

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.”

What this makes very clear is that the experience of the Holy, or the experience of an epiphany, in which we either see something we’ve never seen before or we see something in a startling new way changes us. While it may be a change for the better, it is fraught with difficulties. While the experience may well be the birth of something new in us, it usually also represents a death of something old in us.

How do we return to life as it was after such an experience? Well, the truth is that we don’t, we can’t, unless we choose to ignore the experience. That, of course, is the comfortable path. Put it aside and resume life as it was.

That was not what Wise Men would do, and so they suffered various challenges, the same ones we may face when we experience the holy in our lives. They returned home, but it was never the same. Their people and their gods now seemed alien to them, and vice versa. I know that this experience of being an alien in the midst of familiar surroundings is wrenching.

The only other option is to struggle to integrate the new experience and the new understanding into what we thought we knew before. And sometimes that requires throwing out the old road map and creating a new one. This is a daunting task, one that requires a certain amount of time and attention and living with uncertainty. No wonder so many folks put it aside.

As a young person, as a middle-aged person, I found it well worth the effort to do exactly that, in spite of the alienation and discomfort it caused. But I also have great sympathy for the old Wise Man in the poem who concludes, “I should be glad of another death.” Whether he is talking about his physical death or having another spiritual experience makes no difference.

Whether we actively seek the holy in our lives, whether we struggle with the meaning of our experience, or whether we choose the path of least resistance, we are all children of God.

What I said last year still holds: “Only at journey’s end will we find our true home, and the gift we give will be ourselves, laid at the manger each Christmas, offered at the altar every Sunday, and returned to the Spirit when we die.”

AMEN

Advent 4, Year B

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Canticle 15; The Song of Mary
Luke 1:26-38

Mary. The Gospel of Mark never mentions her pregnancy. The Gospel of John doesn’t either. Matthew does – but Matthew gives her no voice. For Matthew, Mary is a passive recipient of all that unfolds within and around her. All that we know of Mary comes to us from the Gospel of Luke. Luke describes a woman born into modest means, barely more than a child, betrothed to an older man. She was living the life her parents lived before her, a devout Jew under Roman rule in difficult times. She was ordinary, and knew herself to be so. Greetings! says Gabriel. Who, me? says Mary. Excuse me, what?

Greetings. During times of strife men of a certain age in this country were not surprised to encounter this particular salutation. “Greetings! You are hereby ordered for induction into the armed forces of the United States….” This particular greeting was not, in general, received as good news.

Greetings, favored one! In Mary’s salutation from the fearsome archangel good news abounds. (The) Rev. (Dr. J. Barrington) Bates expounds:

There is good news here for everyone. Those who lean toward the more Catholic can revel in the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Those who prefer the Protestant end can take comfort in Gabriel’s word of grace. Feminists note that the willing assent of a women was necessary for the whole plan of salvation. Those who are more fond of patriarchy insist that the angel – who appeared as a male, after all – set the whole thing in notion. Humanists delight that a human vessel could contain God. Believers claim authority for the divinity of Christ. Skeptics repeat the words, “How can this be?” Optimists find hope in the phrase “Nothing will be impossible with God.” And all of us are invited to accept our call to vocation, proclaiming, “Here am I, the servant of God.”

We are accustomed to the Christmas pageant view of Mary, veiled head bowed, meekly accepting a fate thrust upon her – or alternatively to the ostentatiously ornate images of the Queen of Heaven – golden and glittering and other than. No matter your beliefs on the true nature of Mary, ordinary girl with an extraordinary son or ever-virgin, ever sinless queen of heaven -either of these image misses the good news intrinsic in the person of Mary. Mary is us. Ordinary. Blessed.

Meister Eckert (1260-1328) gets to the point when he says, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”

Mary’s yes to God is not the yes of an conscripted soldier – but the yes of an ordinary person filled with overwhelming, all-consuming love. We hear the Gospel story today and see the woman/child on her knees with head bowed, but listen to her words that follow – the words of the song of Mary, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” A vessel she may be, but Mary is no passive receptacle, no cardboard cutout for nativity viewing pleasure. Mary’s yes is the deliberate, willing, fervent yes described by James Joyce in Ulysses “and yes I said yes I will yes.” Mary is us – an ordinary person living her ordinary life, blessed by God, and given a weighty, transformative decision to make.

David, the shepherd King, having built his own house, laments that he has neglected the Lord, who still lives in a tent. The Lord reminds him, “I have been with you wherever you went”. On Wednesday we will gather in this house of God to worship and welcome the child Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Barbara Brown Taylor asks the question “Do we build God a house so that we can choose when to go see God? Do we build God a house in lieu of having God stay at ours?” Or do we gather today in this house of God to prepare to carry the Word within you, to bring forth the light of Christ in your life, to say with Mary, “Yes, Lord” yes I say yes I will yes.

Greetings, favored ones. The Lord is with you.

Amen.

ADVENT 3, B

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

John 1:6-8, 19-28

For some reason the lectionary this week jumps from Mark to John. Now Mark is the least wordy of the Gospels, and since Mark gives us no birth stories, it’s not surprising that we read Luke on Christmas, but why we read John this week is not so clear.

For one thing, John the Baptist, as we know him from the Synoptic Gospels – meaning Matthew, Mark, and Luke – is what? A prophet, a baptizer, one who calls for repentence. One of his major jobs is to baptize Jesus. But in the Gospel of John this John has a different roll. He comes as a witness, sent by God, to bear witness to the Word and to point to the light. This means his primary vocation is to bear witness to Jesus, to point him out to others, to call their attention to him.

Since John’s Gospel is the Gospel of signs, it makes some sense that John the Baptist becomes John the signpost. And it also carries on this Gospel’s use of light and dark as metaphors for good and evil. John came to testify to the light.

It’s clear in this reading that John’s job is to point to Jesus, and it’s clear in the Gospels, taken together, that Jesus always points to God. I see the central purpose of Jesus’s life as modeling the nature of God, so that we might know God more clearly than had been possible in the past.

As I mentioned last week, Advent is a time when we not only prepare for the coming of the light into the world, but also a time to consider how we are supposed to live while we wait for that to happen. That is, not just while we wait for Christmas, but while we wait for the Kingdom of God to become realized in this world. Are we to model our lives after John or after Jesus? I suspect the author of John’s Gospel would say John. I would say, why not both?

In the story, John literally points to Jesus. Jesus figuratively points to God during his ministry by modeling God-like behavior. Why can’t we also do both?

Now the good news, for a church full of Episcopalians, is this: we can do both without having to rise in church or on a street corner to testify, to give witness statements, or any other verbal forms of self-disclosure. Like John, we can testify by pointing to the light in our daily lives. We can share that discovery with others in so many quiet ways.

We can model John by looking for and pointing out the pinpoints of light that many people overlook. Dark news is what we hear most often, but there are lights all around us if we but have the eyes to see. Make these the topics of conversation and ignore the bad news.

I find these gloomy days of early winter and dwindling daylight very hard to bear. It’s easy to be grumpy and pessimistic. That’s about where I was one afternoon last week. As the dusk was getting deeper I suddenly saw a fox trot up the stairs to our deck, dash across it and run down the stairs on the other side. Then he ran across the yard and disappeared. About the time I was wondering if it had really been a fox, he appeared again, coming up the same stairs again but taking off in the opposite direction. This sighting changed my attitude. It was exactly like a beam of light in the darkness. And it reminded me of the glories of creation and how we are all related because of it.

And then sometime in this last week I saw this great picture of a Santa, laying across his big chair with his head lolling over the arm, sound asleep, with a tiny baby sleeping on his stomach. What an image to cheer the heart.

And my favorite one over the past year – a picture someone posted on Facebook and I reposted, which I can still see clearly in my mind’s eye. There a very large portrait, hung on a wall, of Maria Montessorri dancing with great joy and grand abandon. In front of the portrait with her back to the camera is a little girl doing the same dance. She reminded me of a granddaughter at that age and also looked very much like our own liturgical dancer her at Holy Trinity.

Your assignment for this week is to stay alert and look for the things that bring light to your lives. A former priest friend of mine used to call these God-sightings, but for Advent let’s just think of them as glimmers of light in this darkening world, and promises of the great light to come. And when you see them, tell someone. That’s how we can model John’s witness.

We can also model our lives on Jesus by trying to live by the same guidelines as he did. That means that we try to love God first and love our neighbors as ourselves. No, we won’t succeed all the time, but that’s no excuse for not continuing to try. Keep in mind the old joke:

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

“Practice, practice, practice!”

It’s that same for Christians.

“How do you get to the Kingdom of God”

“Practice, practice, practice!”

Sometime around 200 AD Tertullian reported that the Romans would exclaim about the Christians, “See how they love one another!” Some think that is why the church grew and expanded so quickly in the ancient world.

More good news for Episcopalians: To testify to the light, to point to God, to love God and to love one another can be done without words. It does require action, supported by study, prayer, worship and/or other forms of spiritual practice (practice, practice!). These help us stay on track and help us keep our actions in line with our Christian principles. They remind us of who we are (God’s children) and how we are to treat one another (as family).

This is how we live as we wait for the coming of the Kingdom. And each of us can become a point of light in other people’s lives.

Remember the song? This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine! AMEN

ADVENT 2, B

Isaiah 40:1-11

2Peter 3:8-15a, 18

Mark 1:1-8

A good portion of this sermon is taken from a sermon I preached in 2002. If you’re annoyed with hearing it again, please let me know.

Advent is a time of waiting, a time of quiet reflection, a time of repentance, and a time of anticipation. The Advent readings reflect all of these and more. John the Baptist comes preaching repentance – that it is time to turn back to God and righteous living. He fills us with anticipation of the greater one to come.

Advent is a time of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus, for the arrival of God in our midst. It’s not surprising that it also becomes a time to look forward to the Second Coming, when Christ will return.

So we hear apocalyptic messages like the one in 2 Peter, where the heavens pass away with a loud noise and the elements are dissolved in fire. But it is important to remember that such language is meant to signify huge changes and not to be taken literally. “We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”

Imagine, for a moment, a world, a city, a neighborhood where righteousness is the way of life. Talk about a new creation! Who needs fireworks?

As the writer of Peter points out himself, the key question is “What sort of persons ought you to be” while you wait? His answer is that we must strive to be at peace and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord.

The passages that jumped out at me this week point in the same direction but in a less obvious way. Isaiah says:

All people are grass

Their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

When the breath of the Lord blows upon it;

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

But the word of our God will stand forever.

Peter says: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”

These quotes sent me rooting through the Psalms where I found this in Psalm 90:

You turn us back to dust and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’

For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. . . .

The days of our life are seventy years,

Or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;

Even then their span is only toil and trouble

They are soon gone, and we fly away. . .

So teach us to count our days

That we may gain a wise heart.

Here is a theme, or better, a plea for Advent. O Lord, teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Make us mindful of how fleeting our life on earth is in the scheme of things, so that we can be grateful for each day, no matter what it brings.

This sort of mindfulness is what I get from my encounters with the universe. One of these cold still nights put on a jacket and boots and go outside, even for a few minutes, and look at the sky. You can see the constellation spread across the dome of the sky like a starry rug. Consider the enormity of the universe and your miniscule place in it. Ask the question “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Or woman either, for that matter. Hopefully you will return to your house feeling a sense of joy.

Continue the questions. What are my troubles in the vastness of interstellar space? What is my sorrow in a thousand years of history? How horrible is my pain in the light of such beauty? Can you watch the seasons change and imagine your life will not? Can you watch the flowers die and still believe you won’t?

So many people in this country live in cities, surrounded by concrete and man-made things. We hide ordinary death in hospitals and splash horrible death on the screen. We live in a country that has not experienced war, up close and personal, for over a hundred years.

Are these some of the reasons our culture seems to suffer from certain illusions? The illusion of security I’ve talked about before, but we not only thing we’re safe, we now thing we’re entitled, as Americans, to be safe. We think money can buy us safety. It’s clear from what’s happened since the 9/11 event challenged that illusion, that we also think our safety is more important than feeding hungry children or funding education for all our children.

If you think I’m exaggerating, look at how much money is being spent on airport security alone, while welfare and education and minimum wage increases wait at the chopping block – in spite of the fact that all that money is not going to buy us the assurance of safety.

Nothing will; nothing can. Life is one risk after another. What happened on 9/11 was terrible, but there are other families who loose their breadwinner every day and get no help at all. Every day there are families who bury their children.

We were aghast at the pictures of people jumping from the WTC and rightly so. Why weren’t we equally aghast at the pictures of people hacked to death by their neighbors in Rwanda? Or women stoned to death by the Taliban?

I’m afraid it’s because we see the WTC victims as Americans – that that somehow makes them more important, more significant than the others. But what did Isaiah say?

“All people are grass.”

And as Steve Schaitberger used to say to us, “What part of all don’t we understand?”

All people are grass. None of us lives long. All of us are subject to wind and weather, to flood and drought, and to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We cannot change that. We can only choose how to be while we live — how to be, how to act, and how to respond to the vagaries of our lives.

We can put our trust in locks, security systems, money, bank vaults, popularity, good looks, brains, or power. But they will fail us, as all human things do. The question is not, “How do I stay safe? Or how do I beat the system?” The question is “How do I want to live whatever life I have?”

Do I want to live in peace or do I want to live in strife? Do I want to grow in grace or grow in anger? Do I want to increase in wisdom or in foolishness? Do I want to take revenge or give love?

Listen again to Isaiah:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

The Creator of the ends of the earth. . . .

He gives power to the faint

And strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary

And the young will fall exhausted,

But those who wait for the Lord

Shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles

They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint.

It boils down to this one question. Whose promises do you trust?

Let us pray:

May the power of God infuse our lives with his peace and grace and energy as we wait in patience and hope for his arrival in Bethlehem. Amen

Advent 1, Year B

Isaiah 64:1-9
Mark 13:24-37

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation – T. S. Eliot.

Advent. The coming. The new church year. A season that acknowledges mystery and longing and emptiness and lonely nights. The time the church bids us to seek a further union, a deeper communion – even through, especially through, the cold and desolation of the world. Advent is a juncture understood more fully in quiet contemplation than in the chatter of life. Advent demands a vivid awareness more potently provoked by imagery than by the most scholarly texts of erudite analysis. It is a time of pregnant yearning, of urgent anticipation surpassing the power of explanation – it must be lived.

So why, as I pondered the lessons for today, powerful in their ability to evoke a visceral response – – from Isaiah, “O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…” and from Mark, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven” – – Why as I pondered these emotionally charged words did decidedly soulless phrases like “imminent eschatology” and “participatory eschatology” repeatedly invade my thoughts – like a tuneless, rhythmless song stuck in my head?

The original intended beneficiaries of the Gospel of Mark had a problem. They had rather a lot of them actually – surviving the persecution of Nero not least among them. The Gospel of Mark is widely accepted to be the oldest of the Gospels, probably written about 66 AD (CE). Aside from the issue of avoiding the unhealthy attention of Nero, these early Christians had another, more theological problem. For many, if not for most, Jesus seemed to be running a little late. They had waited these 30+ years since Jesus’s death with great faith and not inconsiderable patience for the second coming. They held an imminent eschatology – they believed that Jesus was going to come and the world was going to end imminently. Except that it hadn’t. Yet.

In response to the prolonged delay many began to think perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, and that actually Jesus’s return wasn’t imminent, but rather would mark the culmination of all world events – a future eschatology.

The Gospel of Mark hovers between the two worlds. Some verses seem to suggest an apocalypse the day after tomorrow would not be an unreasonable expectation; other verses shift the end times comfortably down the road of time. The Gospel of Mark be-bops between the positions practically on a verse by verse basis. Scholars suggest the author was working from two different sources as he penned his work. Unable to make up his mind between the two options, he wove them together into a single narrative.

Maybe the author of Mark was a hopeless flip-flopper as this suggests. Or maybe he took pains to ensure that the time and the place in which we would meet our God in a new way was simply not the point. “Keep awake!” says Jesus. “You do not know when the time will come.” What if?… What if Jesus calls his followers to help shape the Kingdom of God here, now, tomorrow, always – participatory eschatology.

Advent lasts 4 short weeks. What would you do if you somehow knew you had only 4 weeks left to live? Pray more? Laugh more? Give more? Mend broken relationships? Forgive that long-nursed insult? Create a legacy?

Mary Anderson in the Christian Century says, “By answering yes to one or more of these possibilities, we indicate that in our last days we would be better stewards of all the things God has given us in this life — better than we are now. In the intensity of last days, we would live better, be better. We would be more generous, more focused on the most important things in life. The question is: Why do we need to be under threat of death to be better stewards?” “Keep awake!”

One preacher tells this story (John Sumwalt, Midrash, private communication): The preacher’s friend Herb jogged to the corner store almost every day, and had gotten to know the storekeeper. One day the storekeeper was staring out the window, tears in his eyes. Herb asked him what was wrong. “Herb, do you see that bench over there?”

Herb nodded. “There’s an old woman who comes there about this time every day, day after day. She sits. She knits. She waits. Buses come and go. She never gets on a bus. She never seems to know the people getting off. She knits and she waits. We shared some coffee and conversation the other day. I found out her son is in the navy. She last saw him two years ago when he left town on one of those buses. He’s married now, and has a baby girl.

She has never met her daughter-in-law or seen her grandchild. They’re the only family she has. She told me, ‘It helps to come here and wait. I pray for them, knit little things for the baby, and I imagine them in their apartment on the base. They are saving money to come home on the bus next Christmas. I can’t wait to see them.’”

The shopkeeper took a deep breath and said, “I looked out there just now, and there they were getting off the bus. You should have seen the look on her face when they fell into her arms and when she laid eyes on her little granddaughter for the first time. It was the nearest thing to pure joy that I ever hope to see. I’ll never forget that look for as long as I live.”

Herb jogged back to the store the next day. The shopkeeper was in his usual place behind the counter. Before he could say anything, Herb asked, “You sent her son the money for the bus tickets, didn’t you?” The shopkeeper looked back with eyes full of love and a smile that was the nearest thing to complete joy that Herb had ever seen and said, “Yes. I’ll never forget that look for as long as I live.”

Keep awake. “Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it’s been lost.” (Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way)

Thy Kingdom come, Lord
Thy will be done.

Amen.