PROPER 12 C, Luke 11:1-13

In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches what we call The Lord’s Prayer to his disciples. The form of the Lord’s prayer in Luke is slightly shortened from the one in Matthew, which is more like the traditional prayer we know. The first two sentences are praise and acknowledgement of God and his will for the earth – that his kingdom might be established here. This is followed by three very basic petitions.

· Give us what we need each day to sustain life, both physical and spiritual.

· Forgive us for the things we do wrong as we forgive others who do us wrong.

· Save us from the time of trial.

This last line is different from the Lord’s prayer we all learned as children. It’s the result of advances in linguistic studies and is considered a more accurate translation of the original text.

The problem with “Lead us not into temptation” is that it always made me wonder what kind of loving God would lead me into temptation? Does God send temptation our way just to see how we’ll do? Would good parents do that to their children?

To ask, “Save us from the time of trial,” makes more sense to me. In the first few centuries that would be the times of persecution, when Christians were offered the choice between renouncing their faith or going to their deaths. Luckily we don’t have to face that sort of trial in our culture, but I can think of lots of other trials one might endure that would test one’s faith.

The question I did not find answered in the commentaries is this: Does save us from the time of trial mean “Dear God, please don’t let this happen to me?” or does it mean, “Dear God, if this happens to me, please walk with me and keep me on the right path?” Maybe it means both, but it’s something for you to consider.

We’re so familiar with this prayer that we may pray it by rote without really thinking about what it means or what our own intentions are. And I do think our intentions are very significant when we pray.

So whether you say “lead us not into temptation” or “save us from the time of trial” ask yourself what you mean by that. What do you intend for it to mean to God. What temptations or what trials are the ones that you fear most?

The second half of the reading today encourages us to pray with persistence. The parable of the man who won’t get out of bed to help his neighbor is about asking persistently until you get the results you want. The word persistence in this passage actually means shamelessly. That is, to ask, without shame, over and over as often as necessary.

The last lines of the reading actually take us back to the beginning. “Is there any among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy spirit to those who ask him?”

Aha! Jesus is talking about asking, seeking, knocking, in search of the Holy Spirit, not worldly goods or sucess or some sort of advantage for the seeker. Jesus is talking about what happens when we seek the Holy Spirit – when we seek to encounter the Holy in our daily lives.

Christians from day one have prayed this prayer daily or weekly, but I wonder how prepared we are to have our prayers answered? Praying for a comfortable life is not the same as praying for an encounter with the Holy. Rather it’s just the opposite. How comfortable were the lives of those people in the Bible who were touched by the Holy Spirit? Why would it be any different today?

Here’s the problem. When you invite the Holy Spirit into your life, you are opening yourself up to change, because such an encounter demands a response. Many of us aren’t prepared for this. “Sure I’d like to see and experience the holy each day, but I want to go on living my life the same as now.” Sorry! It just doesn’t work that way!

When it comes to responding to the Holy Spirit’s call to us, I’d rather support those who are doing good rather than do it myself. I think of this as being a Good Samaritan from a comfortable distance. Father Tom from St. Thomas told a great story about this some years ago. Some of you may remember it.

A priest in an inner-city church went each day to the grocery store to buy bread, peanut butter, and jam. He went home, made sandwiches, and in the evening went out on the streets offering the sandwiches and conversation to the people he found living rough.

A business man in the suburbs heard about the priest and was moved by his dedication. He sent the priest a check for $50 and attached a note saying how much he appreciated what the priest was doing and to use the money to pay for the sandwich supplies.

The priest sent the check back to the man with a note attached. It said, “Make your own dam sandwiches!”

We each have to do our own responding. So consider carefully what you pray for.

There are branches of Christianity that teach people that if they follow all the rules, God will take care of them and protect them. But if disaster then strikes such a family, the assumption is that they must have done something wrong, much as Job’s friends assumed about him.

Our tradition accepts the reality that bad things happen to everyone, and that rather than praying for an easy life, we pray for the strength to endure whatever happens to us. We don’t pray for a parking space, we pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit in all that we do.

And as for petitions, perhaps all we need to do is pray for the Holy Spirit to be present with the people we want to pray for, or just visualize those people and trust God to be with them, leaving the details to God instead of telling God how to fix things.

St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” Annie Lamott said there are only two prayers that are necessary: “Thank you, thank you” and “Help me, help me!” And I say, “Pray unceasingly. Use words only if necessary.” AMEN

PROPER 11, C

Luke 10:38-42

In bygone days I had the greatest admiration for Mary, because she did exactly what I would want to do. To heck with working in the kitchen. Here is this fabulous teacher in our very own living room and I want to hear what he has to say. I don’t care if women are supposed to be servers, or supposed to disappear when the men gather for learning. Like Yentl, I wanted to be in on the action, on the learning, on the discussion.

However, when I read the story of Martha and Mary this week, I was overcome with sympathy for Martha, because I suddenly remembered when I had been in her shoes. Some years ago the famous biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan was teaching a seminar here. The whole class gathered one night at my house for dinner and fellowship.

Everyone came bearing gifts of food, but I was stuck in the kitchen dealing with all of it and trying to get it ready and out for everyone. Meanwhile a large group were gathered around Dom out on the deck, listening.

As you can imagine, I was sorely torn between my duties as the hostess and my desire to hear everything he had to say. And I must admit that, like Martha, I felt resentful that I was stuck in the kitchen. Yet from a practical point of view, someone had to do the work. . . .

As I tried to understand this story in a way that didn’t seem unfair to Martha, to Mary, or to Jesus, I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of crucial details missing. For instance, was Martha preparing a meal just for Jesus or were the 12 disciples sitting there with him? There’s a big difference between cooking for three and cooking for fifteen!

While we get a good glimpse of Martha’s feelings, we have no clue about Mary’s. Did she just think that Martha could handle it alone? Or was she so engrossed in the words she was hearing that she lost track of time? Or did she just not care about her obligations as hostess because she cared so much more to hear what Jesus had to say?

If we look more closely at what we know about Martha, we may get some clues. “But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her than to help me.’”

So . . . if Martha just needed help wouldn’t she have said something quietly to Mary? How about getting her attention and just signally for her to come to the kitchen?

Instead, Martha goes to the Master and whines. This tells me that Martha didn’t just need help, she wanted to embarrass Mary, to get even with her for leaving Martha in the lurch. Yes, Martha probably did need help, but she also got worried and distracted – angry even, and so had to appeal to the authority figure in the room to solve the problem for her. She is playing the martyr.

Joel Green, as quoted by Cynthia Jarvis, says, "The nature of hospitality for which Jesus seeks, is realized in attending to one’s guest, yet Martha’s speech is centered on ‘me’ talk (3 times). Though she refers to Jesus as ‘Lord’ she is concerned to engage his assistance in her plans, not to learn from him” or to serve him.

And this helps to explain the rather sharp response Jesus gives her. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

As James Wallace comments, “Is it possible that this story of two sisters offers us an ongoing plea from the Lord to focus on him, to give him some ‘prime time,’ some continuous full attention, just as we do for our close friends? At least, this is what we do, if we want to keep them as close friends. This same Lord calls us to focus on him when we gather on Sunday, to move from our place of being ‘worried and distracted by many things’ to one where we are in touch with the one thing needed, the good part that will not be taken away. There we will connect with the source that brings both peace and energy to all our undertakings.”

This story has often been interpreted to prioritize the contemplative life over the active life. I don’t think so at all. Martha is being chastised not for serving in an active way, but for not keeping her focus on the object of that service.

James Wallace comments, “It does not necessarily affirm the contemplative over the active life, and it should not be used to deny women their gifts and calls to ministry. Theologian John Shea observes that, while in English we hear that Mary has chosen ‘the better part,’ in Greek the word is translated as ‘good.’ Mary has chosen the ‘good’ part, meaning she has chosen ‘the connection to God who is good, the ground and energy of effective action.’ He sees the story not as reinforcing a Martha-Mary dichotomy but calling for a recognition that God is both inside and outside, sustaining us while summoning us to work and, through our service, to bring about a world of justice, mercy, and peace. It is not an either/or message but a both/and message.”

In other words, God is active and present in both a contemplative life and an active life, and in fact we need to live both kinds of life to live a fully Christian life. We need to study, meditate or pray, discuss, and consider. Then we need to go out into the world and act as God’s hands and feet and heart in the world.

God is present in our activities inside church and our activities outside church. We are called to be both thinkers and doers, both pray-ers and workers, both students and activists. While any of us may be more inclined to be one or the other, we need to develop both to have balance in our spiritual lives.

The same is true for our congregation. As Joel Green notes, “A community that is hospitable to Christ is a community marked by the attention the community gives to God’s word. A church that has been led to be ‘worried and distracted by many things’ inevitably will be a community that dwells in the shallows of frantic potlucks, anxious stewardship campaigns, and events designed simply to perpetuate the institution.

Whether working or worshipping, we all need to keep God as the central focus. That should keep us from turning into a Martha! AMEN

Proper 9, C
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

What does it mean to be a Christian? An acquaintance gave me an interesting explanation. He had been raised in Christian tradition, but had gone through an exploratory period, looking at all the options out there from atheism to Islam to Christianity. He eventually landed back at Christianity, and thought he would stay there. In effect, Christianity had the best deal going. He expounded: atheism offered no reward. Be good, be bad, doesn’t matter. When you are dead, you are dead. No upside. The eternal upsides all lie in religions. However, most religions have rules. And people always break rules, himself included. This is where Christianity had it all over the other religions – with Christianity, if you break the rules, and say you’re sorry, you go to heaven and live forever anyway. What could be better? Do what you want. Repent as necessary. Eternal, blissful life.

The image is rather different from the one that Jesus paints for the 70. To paraphrase, “I’m sending you to lay the groundwork in places that I intend to go eventually. Give the people a message that they will not understand and may not welcome. I don’t want you to bring anything with you – no money, no way to collect money, no security of any kind. Travel together. Depend on the hospitality of the people I just told you may be hostile.” Yet, in spite of this somewhat stark, intimidating picture, the 70 “return with joy”.

From our typical vantage point on the summit of What’s-in-it-for-me, my acquaintance’s picture seems the more pleasant one. Yet, he still searches, and the 70 returned with joy.

I find it interesting that Jesus sent the 70 to “every town and place where he himself intended to go.” He was not expanding his area of outreach. He had proven quite adept at healing and exorcising already. Why did those 70 lambs need to expose themselves to the wolves?

My grandmother was a lovely cook – turned out marvelous meals, wonderful appetizers, sublime deserts. I learned to love garden fresh peas at her table, and still remember her Swedish meatballs and signature coffee soufflé. Even scrambled eggs seemed better at her table. “I just follow the recipe,” she would say. “I’m not like some people who can just whip stuff up. I have to follow the recipe.” And indeed, when she cooked, somewhere in the kitchen you would find a 3×5 card with the recipe lovingly typed out from her old manual typewriter. Eventually the time came when I inherited her recipe box. A cheery yellow box of probably a couple hundred 3×5 cards, recipes typed out in detail – even the scrambled eggs. Swedish meatballs – much the ingredients you would expect, but the instructions of those rigid, cannot-cook-without-it recipes fascinated me – “pat them into balls, not too tight, just a little crumbly, but not too crumbly or they will fall apart.” What is too tight? What is too crumbly? Why did she need a card to tell her what she obviously knew from doing it 100 times? Even the scrambled eggs recipe – eggs and a little milk. Scramble. Cook until done. She needed the recipe for her own confidence. She was doing what she knew from doing.

Jesus gave the recipe to the 70:

1. Travel together. You will need your brothers and sisters, your community. They will be strong when you are not, or you will be able to be strong for them. You will need to bear one another’s burdens.
2. Realize ahead of time that the result is not guaranteed. You may meet hostility, indifference. You may be welcomed with open arms. The message you should give is the same – “The Kingdom of God has come near.”
3. Travel light. You do not need the burdens and baggage of stuff and of self.

He gave them the recipe, but they needed to go out and do, because the time was soon coming when Jesus would no longer be physically present. The physical work of the Kingdom would soon fall to others.

The number 70 is symbolic. Genesis chapter 10 lists all of the nations of the world, numbering 70. Seventy is all of humanity. All are called to be part of the Kingdom. All are called to serve the Kingdom. We are the 70, and we are called. Called to serve justice and peace.

St. Teresa of Avila said,

“Christ has no body on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless others now.”

Lest we be overwhelmed by this task, remember a couple of things. 1) Jesus did not bid the 70 to prepare the harvest – that is God’s job. The seventy were asked to assist in collecting a harvest already grown. 2) Jesus gave no measure of success or failure. There are no standards, no post-performance evaluations. He asks only that we DO. Until we DO, we do not know how to do. We do not know if our meatballs are too crumbly or too tight. We do not know how much scrambling is just right. We do not know the effect of just sitting and being with someone who is ill, we do not know the effect of a smile for a stranger whose appearance typically earns her avoidance. We do not know the effect of a phone call to someone otherwise isolated. Until a couple people got together and tried it, who knew a community could come together year after year and serve hundreds of meals on Christmas Day? Until someone asked, who knew how very many pairs of shoes could come in for a good cause? Until someone dared to ask, who knew that a church could thrive through a ministry of all the baptized? Until someone made the attempt, who knew how many churches could join together in fellowship in Lent soup suppers and in maintaining the Clothes Closet? Carlo Carretto said, “We are the wire, God is the current. Our only power is to let the current pass through us.” Who knows what God can do through us, if only we DO.

Christ has no body on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless others now.

Praise be to God. Amen.

PROPER 8, C

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21

Luke 9:51-62

For a few moments I want you to put yourself in Elisha’s sandals. This young man was plowing in the field. The fact that there were 11 other yokes of oxen ahead of him indicates that his family was very well to do, and they were plowing a very large field.

There he is, just minding his usual business, maybe thinking about the pretty girl he’d like to marry, when along the edge of the field comes this old, cranky man called Elijah.

Elijah was a prophet called long ago by
God to speak the truth to the people of Israel, but who recently walked into the desert, laid down, and asked God to let him die. He’s sick of being alone, talking to people who don’t want to hear him and refuse to listen. So God sends him off to find a companion, a servant, who will grow up to take his place.

So Elijah waits for his chance and then throws his mantle onto the shoulders of Elisha. This outer garment acts as a symbol of Elijah’s position as prophet. Just think for a moment what this interruption of Elisha’s life was like for him. The implications are huge. To follow Elijah, he has to give up a comfortable hearth and home; he has to give up all thoughts of marriage and children; he must leave his parents.

It’s so surprising that he indeed does just that. He responds to the call in spite of the cost. The cost of discipleship is also a major theme in today’s Gospel. Jesus points out to the first unnamed man that to follow him is to live without a real place to call home. To the second he says rather harsh words, “don’t bother to honor your father by burying him properly, but just go out and proclaim the Kingdom.” And to the third unnamed person, who offers to follow Jesus, but first wants to go home to say goodbye, Jesus says this: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Talk about harsh! Remember that Jesus is responding to the way we often respond to God’s call, “yes, Lord, but . . . . Jesus is saying that one’s response to God must be unconditional. That is another way of saying that our fidelity to God is supposed to come before our fidelity to family, tribe, or nation. And he is reminding us that the cost of discipleship may be very high indeed.

One thing that hit me this week is that the generation that most of us belong to did not grow up expecting to be called. Certainly not by God. We were the flock who went to church to hear the minister. He was the called one. “Call” only applied to clergy. Therefore we didn’t need to worry about it or even think about it, much less listen for it.

Then along comes this new stuff about Total Ministry, and suddenly we are told that everyone is a minister. What? Since when? What do you mean we’re all called to be disciples? Maybe the team, maybe even the vestry, but everyone?

Don’t you just hate it when the rules get changed like that? Well, it’s true and not true, because the idea of everyone being ministers or disciples was clearly the way of the early church. So this isn’t really new, it’s just not what we were brought up with.

Because of this change, though, it’s important for us to pay attention to these lessons about call and about the cost of becoming disciples.

At text study this week we talked about what an interruption in anyone’s life it is to be called. Think of Elisha with the mantle, Moses with the burning bush, the rich young man who wants to live righteously but can’t give up his wealth. Call can come in many forms, but it most often shows up in the interruptions in our lives. These may be times of crisis, when someone we love dies, or we have been terribly hurt by another person, or we lose our jobs. These sudden changes in our reality give us a chance to reconsider, to change our lives in significant ways, and maybe to listen more closely to the voice of God.

I know that my most powerful experiences of God all came in the wilderness, which clearly means I was on vacation, which itself is an interruption of our daily routine. Because it was outside my normal experience anyway, I think I was more open to experiencing the reality of God. No, I didn’t hear a voice, but these experiences changed my world view.

Any interruption in your normal routine may be an opportunity to pay closer attention, to listen to the silence more carefully. This also can happen on retreat, in meditation or prayer, on a walk, or driving your car. The question is, are you paying attention or just spaced out?

Since I firmly believe we are all God’s children, I do believe we are all called to be disciples. The tough part is figuring out “called where and to what?” The even tougher part is responding positively. When I first figured out that I was being called to priesthood, I pointed God to someone else more worthy. Then I found several other excuses. Then I actually figured out what it would cost to go to seminary and realized I would come out of school entirely broke, in my mid 50’s, and the possibility of not being hired because of being a woman was a very real.

To do something so irresponsible was contrary to everything I had been taught. Like the rich young man, even though I was far from rich, I could not make that sacrifice. Luckily, many of the stories of call, both from the Bible and from our own communities, show us that when God doesn’t succeed the first time, God always tries again. And again. And again. I think this modifies to some extent what Jesus says in today’s Gospel.

While it may be true that anyone who puts their hand to the plow and then turns back is not fit for the Kingdom of God, the many people who refuse to put their hand to the plow are usually given many chances to change their minds. I’ve heard many such stories, often prefaced with something like: “It took three times before I listened, or got it, or understood what God had in mind for me.” Sometimes it’s 10 times or 15 times.

No matter how many times you feel you have been called, whether it’s none or some or frequently, the important thing is that you keep listening. Treasure those interruptions in your life that give you the chance to hear with a new ear, consider with a new outlook, or experience God’s love in a new way.

We are all called to be disciples in one way or another. And while the cost may be high, so are the rewards. I’m not talking about gaining stars in your crown or guaranteeing your admission to the pearly gates. I’m talking about the rewards you gain in this life from being a disciple, including the joy of serving others, the peace of being in tune with creation and God, and the knowledge that you are doing your part to create a better world. Living as a disciple of Jesus is a great way to live.

AMEN

Proper 7

Luke 8:26-39

Back in 2004 when we were planning a Lenten Series with a focus on restoring community, my first impulse was to preach on today’s Gospel about the healing of the Garasene man, but then I decided to use the woman taken in adultery instead.

The reason I changed my mind in Lent is that adultery is something we still understand in the 21st Century. Possession by demons is not. While some clergy I have met or whose books I’ve read firmly believe in possession and the need for exorcism, such things are outside the experience of most of us. In addition, our education in Western science and empirical thinking makes it hard for us to even think in such terms.

In order to make sense of today’s Gospel about the man possessed by demons, we almost have to recast his situation into terms we can accept. What we call addiction strikes me as the closest analogy we can use. While not everyone with addictions winds up as outcast and pathetic as the Gerasene, we all know that some do. We’ve all heard stories of men and women living rough on the streets who used to have families, steady jobs, respect, and a place in the community. All of these were gradually lost as their addiction to alcohol or drugs took hold of them.

One can imagine a similar scenario for the Gerasene. It’s not hard to picture him as a working man with a wife and children. He begins to act peculiar, say odd things, that only his wife notices, but gradually other notice too. Then his work starts to suffer because he can’t stay focused. He may have been a street person too, for a while, before he scared his neighbors so badly he was driven out into the countryside.

One difference between the 1st Century and the 21st Century versions of the story is what happens to the man’s family. In our day, divorce might come early and the wife has some options that weren’t available then. The demoniac’s family was thrust into poverty or worse. They became objects of pity and then scorn. Meanwhile Dad is living in the tombs, running amok in his nakedness, and howling at the moon.

Into this situation comes Jesus, arriving by boat from across the lake – in fact, coming from another country. The people here are Gentiles.

He steps out of the boat, encounters the naked man, and heals him – sets him free of the demons that had possessed him, destroying a whole herd of pigs in the process. Is it any wonder that this healing ended Jesus’s activities in this neighborhood? I think it makes this healing story more realistic than some of the others, that Jesus was driven away.

Usually commentators focus on the herd of pigs that were destroyed. Certainly the owners would be upset and clearly that means they care more about their animals than about the welfare of the naked man. But there’s much more going on here that we should consider.

The community has made its accommodation with the demoniac. He lives in the tombs and leaves them alone. They leave food for him so he won’t come into the village at night to steal it. They hardly ever have to see him, so his nakedness is no big deal to them. If the boys of the village sometimes entertain themselves with taunting him, throwing rocks and running away, — well, boys will be boys.

His wife and children have accepted their lot and pretend he is dead. They eke out a living and close their ears to any comments about the wild man who lives along the lake. His daughter has assumed an “I don’t care” attitude about her non-existent marriage prospects and may have already taken up life as a prostitute. It’s the one way she can provide for herself and not ever have to trust anyone again.

Then along comes Jesus, a Jew from across the lake. He heals the man and turns their world upside down. People don’t like this. People like you and me don’t like this. He may have been an alcoholic, but he was our alcoholic, and we knew how to deal with him. Now we have to change not only our behavior, but also our attitudes, to accommodate this healed person.

Yesterday we could dismiss him or shun him. Now he acts like everyone else. Changing our relationship with him affects other relationships too. And it’s a terrible dilemma to know how to act towards him. It was comforting to have someone to look down on. Will he take a job away from someone now? Will the women have to include his wife in their conversations at the well and treat her the same as other respectable married women?

Thirty years ago I had a dear friend who had just struggled to sobriety. I was shocked to discover that within the first few weeks after treatment, her husband told her he really preferred her drunk. She was devastated and I was outraged. I’ve now heard similar stories more times than I can remember.

It’s easy to be outraged, but how do we respond when the spirit offers us opportunities for change? More often than not, I’m just like my friend’s husband or the villagers who drove Jesus away. Change makes me uncomfortable – even change for the better – so I resist it, struggle to turn it back – preferring the demons I know to the unknown over which I feel I have no control.

And accepting change gets even harder as we get older. So how many opportunities for growth and change have we turned down lately – or avoided, or sabotaged? Look around you in the week ahead. It’s always easier to see this fault in others – but then look at yourselves too. Think of it in terms of missed opportunities for healing and health.

Churches need to ask the same questions. We want to grow but don’t really want to change. We want to attract young people, but expect them to like our forms of worship. Be gentle with yourselves, but keep asking the questions. Does our behavior welcome Jesus and the spirit into our lives, or does it drive him out? If we welcome him, we will have to change.

The demoniac was healed by Jesus, but his children will always carry the scars of what happened in the meantime. Jesus sends him home to tell others of his healing, but also to heal his family by his return.

I watched my son grow to manhood while his father raised another family. I was incapable of healing the wounds this caused, but I gained tremendous respect for all you fathers who hang in there with your children, no matter what else happens, and I have the same respect for my son, who is doing the same.

So every time you pray for healing, for yourself or others, remember that you are praying for change and include a prayer for the folks who may not want change at all. AMEN

TRINITY SUNDAY, C

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-25

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity. One of the most iconic phrases of Christianity. The trinity is present in our actions, our art, our liturgy. “Holy Trinity” along with “Christ the King” is one of the most popular names for an Episcopal church. We share it with over 500 Episcopal churches.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. We transition from the relatively rapid progression of seasons Advent through Eastertide recalling Jesus’s birth, death, resurrection and ascension – the real biggies – into the vast expanse of ordinary time celebrating the life that happens in between. This Sunday we pause to celebrate the Triune God. The Holy Trinity. The words are found nowhere in the bible, yet it is one of the most fundamental, sacred precepts of the Christian church. Fundamental, and utterly incomprehensible. There are more heresies arising around this topic than any other in Christendom. In fact, I’ve been told that there are really only two ways to avoid preaching heresy on Trinity Sunday. One is to stand up front, say nothing, and show photos of cute kittens. The other is to quote the Creed of St. Athanasius. We’ll get to that in a minute.

All this Trinitarian heresy bubbled up around the time of Constantine. You remember Constantine – the Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity, and therefore converted the Empire to Christianity. Constantine wasn’t necessarily incredibly worried about the concept itself, but he was very concerned about maintaining order. Maintaining order meant having an orthodoxy on which to fall back. To that end, in 325 he called the council of Nicea, which dealt with a number of issues, most prominent among them – what is the trinity? From that committee meeting of bishops came the compromise document that we know today as the Nicene Creed, and orthodoxy was born. Apparently with orthodoxy comes heresy – there are heresies I don’t even know how to pronounce. Along comes the creed of St. Athanasius to clear up the clarification:

(read rather quickly)…We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost
incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.

(pause, big breath)

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet not three Lords, but one Lord….

Mmmm….looking around I recall that, while simply reading the Athanasian creed was supposed to protect one from uttering heresy, it was also guaranteed to give the congregation a good nap – so perhaps this will help those visually minded folks among you…

(Draw celtic knot Triquetra)
For Christians, the celtic knot Triquetra represents the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–three persons as one God. Its three equal arcs represent equality, its continuous line expresses eternity, and the interweaving represents indivisibility and unity. Sounds perfect. Except that it also happens to be a pagan symbol as well. And…we’re back to heresy.

(Diagram/explain the Shield of the Trinity)

(Interrupting self…)
“Wait. I hear a noise. I hear a sound. Do you hear it?
It is Wisdom calling.
Where is she? Where can I find her?
She calls from the heights of the heavens and speaks with truth on her lips.” (excerpted from Ministrymatters.com)

We tie ourselves up in knots, celtic and otherwise, trying to find The Answer with a capital A. No matter how many diagrams we draw or marginally heretical metaphors we make, we cannot find a logical way to make 1+1+1 = 1. So we either ignore the whole thing, or put it down to an article of faith and either way pray to God nobody asks us to explain it. As one author said, “we want to be able to explain the Trinity in logical, rational terms. But the Trinity is a mystery, and like any mystery, we go down rabbit trails, there are sleights of hand, there are diversions and distractions (these are all known as “theology”!).” This author sees the doctrine of the trinity as “attempting to draw us closer to the truth that God is Love. Not an hypothesis, not a research project, not a theological conundrum, but Love.” (Thom Shuman, Midrash discussion)

We are accustomed to thinking of mystery and wisdom as opposites. Wisdom is what comes at the end of the mystery, when the secrets are revealed, the answer known, and everybody knows whodunnit. Even at their roots the words are opposite. The root of “mystery” comes from Greek “to close the eyes” and “wisdom” from the Old English – “to see”. The dancing, joyful Wisdom makes her appearance here today to remind us that the mystery which is the God of Love delights in Wisdom, and Wisdom in the mystery.

Dame Julien of Norwich said “And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed. And the high goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he in us. We are enclosed in the Father, and we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. And the Father is enclosed in us, the Son is enclosed in us, and the Holy Spirit is enclosed in us, almighty, all wisdom and all goodness, one God, one Lord.”

John confirms that we cannot understand God in God’s fullness, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Paul reassures us that, though the way be difficult, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. I do not expect to understand the trinity, but I know God, the father and creator in the majesty of mountains and waves and stars. I know God, the Son, in the ones who struggle and suffer for justice and peace, in the ones who protect the vulnerable, in the ones who feed the hungry. I know God, the Holy Spirit, in the smiles of children, in the wisdom of elders, in the light that shines in the dark times, in the communion and fellowship we share. May we always live and move and have our being in the love that is the triune God…. Amen

PENTECOST, C

Acts 2:1-21

John 14:8-17, 25-27

Wilderness Inquiry is a non-profit that leads wilderness trips for mixed groups of able-bodied and disabled people. While I lived in Minneapolis I did some volunteer work for them and have also participated in several of their trips.

Also while I lived there I attended Church of the Epiphany in Plymouth, where I met a woman who was a paraplegic. Evelyn had a truly horrible story. She was in a car accident when her children were still in school that left her paralyzed from the waist down. While she was in the hospital, her husband not only divorced her, he also sold all her clothes.

I did not hear this from her, but from others. She had a sunny disposition and did not seem to dwell on her troubles. She was living alone in an apartment with part time helpers, but seemed to manage very well. Only later did I hear from her that she had taken a Wilderness Inquiry trip.

“And what did you think of it,” I asked. “Oh, Lynn, it was life-changing,” she replied. “I realized that if I could drag myself across portages and survive in the north woods, I could handle anything.”

As I tried to imagine what Pentecost was like for the followers of Jesus, this is the story that came to mind. I suspect that they would have felt the same way Evelyn did. Not so much from a survival sense, but in the sense that the experience of Pentecost gave them the confidence and courage to go forth and do as Jesus had done before them.

There they were huddled together in a house in Jerusalem, probably still wondering what they were supposed to do, perhaps gathered for worship, but the estimate I saw was that it was no more than 120 people. How could this small group of mostly Galileans hope to walk in their Master’s footsteps?

They were probably gathered to celebrate the third great festival of Judaism, the Festival of Weeks, when the first fruits of the harvest are given to God. It also celebrates the giving of the Torah, especially the Ten Commandments. So as this festival marks the birth of the Jews as the people of God during the Exodus, so this event marks the birth of the church. For without Pentecost, the church might not have become a reality.

When the wind came and filled the house the spirit filled all of them, not just the disciples. They were all able to speak in a foreign language and all spoke of God’s deeds of power. On every head there rested a tongue, as of fire.

The use of tongues, as of fire, reminds me of the passage in Isaiah 6:6 describing a vision he had. “Then one of the seraphs flew to me holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ and I said, ‘here am I; send me!’”

I see these tongues, as of fire, as marks of refining fire that burns away sin. The real point is that each of these people can see that they don’t have to be perfect to carry on the Lord’s work. Being suddenly able to speak in a foreign language has shown them that God is with them and will help in their efforts to communicate the Gospel to others, no matter what their native tongue is.

The resurrection and the ascension may have amazed the followers of Jesus, but the experience of Pentecost empowered them. It gave them confidence that they could carry on. It showed them that they had gifts they had not realized and that with the Holy Spirit, all things may be possible. Speaking a foreign language is a metaphor for all that they can do which logic or their own assumptions holds them back from attempting.

For example, how would you respond if given the chance to travel in a non-English speaking foreign country? Might it make you nervous? Would you go anyway or stay home? I learned on my first trip abroad that a little confidence and a willingness to improvise can conquer almost any language barrier.

We were staying with a family in the burbs of Rotterdam and it was COLD. So, of course, I caught a cold and needed some meds. I walked to a nearby pharmacy, but no one there could speak English. So I said, “I have a cold in my nose, and I’d like some nose drops” while using my hands and exaggerating how plugged up I was with my voice. Worked like a charm and we all had a good laugh. I held out some money and she took what she needed and gave me change.

In John’s lesson today, taken from the farewell speech of Jesus to his disciples, Jesus says this. “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact will do greater works than these.” The disciples heard these words before Pentecost, but the experience of Pentecost gave them the confidence to actually believe what Jesus said.

Confidence is a subset of courage, it seems to me, and the opposite of courage is fear. Cowardice is what happens when fear wins out over courage. As a result of Pentecost the disciples and other followers of Jesus had the courage to continue his work, they had the courage to speak the Good News and to carry it to the ends of the earth.

I’m sure I’ve told you before about the Native grandfather who explained to his grandson that there were both good and evil spirits within each of us. When the grandson asks, “Grandfather, which one will win?” the grandfather responds, “The one you feed.”

The same is true for courage and fear. They are often at odds with one another, even though fear is a survival tool that God gave us to help keep us safe. If we let it run our lives, we are feeding it too much, and we will find that our courage has faded into the background. Courage is strengthened by using it, by trying new things, and by stepping out and risking failure. Failure is not a problem; it’s how we learn about the world, about what works and what doesn’t, about what we’re good at and what we’re not.

If we trust in Jesus we will do the kind of works he did, as we are able, honing the gifts we have to the work at hand, screwing up our courage to speak the Good News or to be the Good News to others. That is how the disciples spread the Kingdom and so can we. AMEN

7th SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 17:20-26

Many of you remember the good old days, back in the 60’s, when we had 60 or 70 people each Sunday, we had a choir, and we had a bustling Sunday School. I’ll bet that almost everyone you knew then was in church somewhere in this community on Sunday morning.

Well, times have certainly changed. I haven’t seen the latest demographic information, but it’s quite clear that most people no longer go to church with any regularity and large numbers never go. This decline started in the mainline churches, but the Evangelical churches and the fundamentalist churches are now having the same problems.

I recently attended the ECMN annual clergy conference. The whole time was focused on a book called The Missional Church, written by Randy Ferrebee, who was also there to do a number of workshops and presentations for us. When Mel came back this week from our Mission Area meeting, she reported that if we want to know what the various Missioners are talking about we will all read this book!

For now I just want to share one thought from this book. Randy labels the church of the first 300 years after Jesus as the Missional Church. After the conversion of Constantine and the adoption of Christianity as the official church of the Empire, the church became the Institutional Church. The major mark of the Missional Church was that it existed in a time and place that was at best indifferent to it and at worst antagonistic. It was often ignored and it was also at times persecuted, even unto death.

It’s important to understand that this early Missional Church is the church to which and out of which the author of John is writing. By the time of the second and third generations after Jesus lived, the communities that followed Jesus mostly existed in Hellenistic communities like Ephesus, part of the Roman Empire, full of temples to numerous gods. The Jesus followers had been expelled from the synagogues and were worshiping in house churches.

If you think the Christian Community is divided and divisive now, you should take a look at the first 300 years. According to Bart Ehrman, a scholar who writes extensively about this era, there were even communities that believed in more than one God, not to mention all the arguing about the nature of Jesus, human or divine, about why the 2nd coming hadn’t come, about why Jesus died on the cross, or about whether communion with God came through human will or divine grace.

This is the community for whom John wrote his Gospel, and what we heard this morning is known as the High Priestly Prayer. This comes just before Jesus goes off to Gethsemane, and he is praying, not only for his disciples, but for every believer who comes later, that they may all be united by God’s love, in the same way that Jesus and his disciples are. This is a good lesson for the community just after the Ascension too, a reminder that we are still connected to Jesus even though we no longer see him.

While the repetition in John can be annoying, the purpose is to emphasize what Jesus is asking for. At its highest level, this prayer is asking that the relationship that exists between Jesus and God be replicated among all believers. Not just the disciples, but everyone who comes after them, including you and me. He prays “they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Peter Carman comments in Feasting on the Word that this means “unity among the followers of Christ may offer a model of a better world for all of humanity. . . and that this “unity grows out of the love of God.” This unity in love is what the Christian community can offer to a broken world.

Clearly this is as true today as it was in John’s time. At least in this country we are now a minority. We have to compete, not so much with other religious communities, but with sports, and working families who have little time together, and indifference. But the signs of brokenness are all around us, as well as signs of great hunger for meaning. The Christian community does still have much to offer to the world around us. Love, more than anything else.

There was a time when I was very enthusiastic about ecumenical work, that is, with the various Christian denominations working towards some common understanding. And lately I’ve heard three or four people express the wish that all the churches could agree. Well, I no longer think that is either doable or even necessary. For one thing, the major differences between Christian churches seem to me to be a reflection of the differences in our personalities, something that is not going to go away.

You know, some folks like everything to be black and white and some see mostly gray. Some want to be told what to do and some want to figure it out for themselves. You can go on from here.

The important fact from today’s Gospel is that the unity we should be seeking is a unity founded on love, not on belief, not on practice, and not on polity. When unity is based on the love of God that we all share, then there is necessarily respect between us as well. This is the recognition that we are all children of God.

I’d say that we have acted on such love, even if we have not talked about it this way, because we have joined with other denominations in practical mission to the broken world. Whether it’s the Lenten services, the Clothes Closet, the Servants of Shelter, or the Christmas dinner, we are in fact being a Missional Church by working with other Christians to model Christ’s love for us, and our love and respect for each other.

There’s still more we can do, especially by focusing on being with people outside our walls, as well as giving to them. But we have taken very important first steps.

All week I’ve been humming a song, and now it’s your turn – “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” Wouldn’t John love this song? I hope you hum it all next week! That’s the root of who we are and all that we do. AMEN

Previous sermon for Easter 6, C, “Have You Met Lydia” should have been dated 5/5/13, not 5/1/13.

Easter 6, C
Acts 16:9-15, Revelations 21:10, 22-22:5, John 14:23-29

Have you ever been homesick? That uprooted, yearning, disconnected feeling? Poet and philosopher Rumi describes the sensation this way,

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?”

Do you think Lydia knew that empty, lost feeling? I suspect Lydia knew homesickness. Lydia fascinates me. We know little about her. She is specifically mentioned only twice in the scriptures – what we read today and a throwaway line later in Acts saying Paul went to her house after he gets out of jail. We actually don’t even know her name. “Lydia” is what is called an ethnicon. It isn’t what her mother or her brother would have called her. It means “the Lydian woman”. It denotes her birthplace – Lydia of Asia Minor, in which Thyatira is a small city. She is far enough in life events and geography from her birth home that her very name has been lost.

Paul meets up with her in Philippi, a leading city of Macedonia. Founded by Philip of Macedon in 356 BCE, it was initially a bit of a backwater. By the time our heroes met there, however, it had been rediscovered by Emperor Augustus as an ideal place for retired army officers who had faithfully served him. It had become a leading Roman colony. The Roman Empire is well known for its architecture, its infrastructure, its art. It is definitely not known for its emphasis on gender equality. In the manner of all Roman society, Philippi would have been exceedingly patriarchal. Yet here, in a place of prayer, Paul finds Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. That means that she dealt in exceedingly expensive cloth, whose use was limited by law to the elite classes. She listens and learns and is moved by the Holy Spirit. There is no mention of a Mr. Lydia – by her instigation she and her household are baptized, and her (Gentile) home opened to Paul and his companion.

One commentator writes of Lydia that she is the contemplative Mary and the active Martha all rolled into one (Ronald Cole-Turner, FEASTING ON THE WORD).

We know why Paul does the things he does. The Spirit drives him forth. In this case, in the text just before our lectionary selection starts, the Spirit has warned him off two travel plans he had in mind. It nudges him to Philippi with the vision we heard this morning, the man of Macedonia pleading for his help. We never meet the man. We meet Lydia instead.

Almost certainly raised a gentile, Lydia clearly hungers for something more. Her restless searching made her a “God worshipper” – someone following Judaism, but not yet a confirmed convert. Ronald Cole-Turner writes, “She comes to worship because she is hungering for something more in life, something beyond the commercial success she has apparently achieved. She is hungering for more because that restless Spirit, who is surely in us all before we ever know it, has stirred up a holy longing in her soul.” Her heart and mind, open to the Spirit, find a home in the message Paul brings.

In Revelations, John of Patmos writes for a community that knows homesickness. Revelations was written in 80 or 90 AD. The people who lived when Jesus lived are dead or very, very old. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in about 70 AD. It is difficult for us to truly appreciate the meaning of the destruction of the temple. We lament the destruction of sacred places when it occurs from time to time. But the temple was so much more than a simple sacred space. The temple was considered God’s physical home, the Holy of Holies. This place defined not just the Jewish people, but their relationship to God. Its destruction signified exile, dispersion, disgrace, captivity, repression, a tenuous existence as a faithful people.

John of Patmos brings them back home to God in vivid, open, flowing terms. In the early church, New Jerusalem was seen as a metaphor for the church. Any physical temple becomes irrelevant. God IS the temple, and God is a constant shining presence in New Jerusalem – in the lives of the men and the women who carry forth God’s vision. There abides the river of the water of life. There we find abundance and healing and light. Its gates will never be shut by day–and there will be no night there.

We all live with events and circumstances that leave us feeling uprooted and alone. An accidental glance in the mirror, improperly prepared for day starkly reveals the passage of decades – not years, decades. Significant portions of my physical self are now falling out, drooping down or have gone on seemingly permanent, unauthorized hiatus. Sudden unpredictable changes in health status turn lives upside down. Our city is slowly absorbing recent news of a major job loss that will leave no one unaffected. It can leaves us in danger of longing for the “back then”, the “back there”, restless for the “something else.” CS Lewis, in Pilgrim’s Regress suggested that we are all homesick, homesick for someplace we’ve never been. Therein lies the key, I believe. Not in looking back to the used to bes, might have beens, could have hads, but deep into ourselves now, where God in Christ has come to set up housekeeping. Augustine of Hippo says, “Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.”

Jesus was leaving, turning his disciples’ lives upside. His bequest lives on today. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

In a very short time, we will have the chance to “Pass the Peace.” Think for just a moment what you are offering as you hold out your hand and say “God’s peace” or “The peace of the Lord”. We offer each other a refuge, a home, a small taste of the peace which passes all understanding. With Lydia, may we throw open our spiritual doors to the new life of the living Christ. May we learn to offer God’s peace to all who are homesick or heartsick, who are hungry, weary or alone. May they see his face shining in our lives, his name on our foreheads. Amen.