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15th Sunday after Pentecost B18 September 6, 2015
Trinity Church Hartford Labor Day weekend; TEC: Racism
Mark 7:24-37
This summer a friend introduced me to a book published in 1998, written by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, whose title is “Respect: an Exploration.” In the book Lawrence-Lightfoot, an African American writer, suggests that the word “respect” is a key to constructive, healthy relationships, and chronicles people from various professions in whose lives and work respect is a constant, and connections, attention, faith, curiosity and engagement are among the hallmarks.
Skimming through the book, got me thinking about the term “respect.” Here are some of the dictionary particulars of its definition: respect is an attitude, an understanding that someone, something, is important, or serious and therefore should be treated in an appropriate way.
Or, to put it another way, Respect is a significant focus and blessing which I give to someone or something I hold in high or special regard.
Interesting how most of the “Christian classical virtues” primarily are about one’s own being: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, humility. There are some, however, that define one’s relationship to others: for instance, forgiveness, liberality, kindness.
It’s to this latter group, virtues that relate me to others, that I now want to add a “new” virtue, “respect.”
Jesus had that virtue, in spades.
Listen to today’s gospel story of Jesus — venturing outside the towns and cities that would be native for him: first in Tyre and Sidon and then the region of the Decapolis. Unlike the hundred thousand persons running for President, Jesus wanted his presence kept secret. Bt it couldn’t be:
In Tyre a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile (not a Jew), of Syrophoenician origin (not a Galilean). She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, ‘The children must be fed first, for it is not fair just to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ (“Dogs” — He put her off.) 28But she came back at him, ‘Sir,* even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ 30So she went home, found is as he had said.
Whoa. Do you see what happened here?
Jesus saw that she was not “one of their own,” not a person of the people or the faith of the God of Israel. And so his reaction was to dismiss her. She wouldn’t have that, and her response to him led Jesus to stop and take a second look, re-focus, if you will, and he then responded differently.
That’s what “respect” is: it is the virtue of going beyond the cursory reaction, the stereotype, the “first look”, and to ascribe worth to the other, give attention, to engage in deeper way.
Look at the word, “respect.” The “spect” part comes from the Latin that gives us the word “spectacles (something to help seeing), and “spectator” (someone who [supposedly] attentively watches). And the “re” indicates “back, “again,” “for a second time.” So its root components describe an action in which you or I “look again” — more intently than we normally might.
Jesus respected Simon the tax collector and to the scandal of others, ate with him. He did the same when the disciples dismissed children brought to him, he brought them close and set them as an example. On hearing blind Bartimaeus. those around Jesus told him to be quiet, Jesus was going to Jerusalem; Jesus summoned him over, and Bartimaeus was healed. Or again, from this morning’s gospel: when he was implored for a healing by the friends of the deaf man in the non-Jewish Decapolis, Jesus touched the man who then could hear and speak.
Even in encounters with enemies, Jesus engaged them, drew them in, deemed them worthy of his attention.
Be careful of two “respects” we are not talking about. Jesus’s kind respect is not the miserableness you know is coming when someone says, “with all due respect” which more often than not is a prelude to being slammed with actually little or no respect. Nor does this respect in Jesus carry the sense of formal respect that requires that one must stay away, keep one’s distance.
Rather, this respect engages, draws in, sees worth in the other, gets closer, is an act of faith, brings healing. As the Epistle of James makes clear, it is not something that proffers favoritism or countenances exclusion, for any reason.
What then if we were to enshrine this “respect” as one of the classic Christian virtues? Always sought to practice it with each other? And with neighbors who may differ radically from us?
Respect for those who labor, hugely missing from the minds of the Robber Barons. Remember respect for creation. It’s not just people.
On this Sunday it is about people: The Episcopal Church urges us its members to confront our racism, to admit it, and work to heal it and its legacy. Jesus-respect is the virtue that makes us want to take a second look, to look again, to move beyond surface simple impressions and stereotyped pre-conclusions about each other, to look deeper and move closer, in Christ’s love.
Finally, imagine in the big picture how our respect in Christ for others — all others — whoever — how our respect could be, as it was in Jesus’s ministry, a door-opening for the love of God sweep to into their lives, and even for those we so respect to find new relationships with God.
There it is. This has been an effort to respect — to look again — at respect. Jesus showed it. So for us, let it be, too!
Sermon Proper 17B
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Marie Alford-Harkey
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
August 30, 2015
Back in the late nineties I fell in love with the Franklin planner system. Do you all know about these? It’s supposed to be a system that allows you to organize your life according to what matters most to you. They even had that tagline on the box: “What matters most?”
At any rate, I dove into the world of the Franklin planner head first. I loved it. I bought the book that went along with the system and went through all the recommended steps to identify what mattered most to me and what were my ultimate goals in life. See, the idea was that if you did all this, and then worked your way down from your values to your major life goals, to goals for the next 10 years, 5 years, etc, that by the time you got down to your day to day life, you would be doing that things that would eventually lead you to accomplishing your goals. You would be doing “what mattered most.” So your daily tasks were divided into 4 quadrants based on how they aligned with your goals and values – important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, and neither urgent nor important. You were supposed to be weeding all of the unimportant stuff out of your life.
I loved the whole system. I had this thick notebook of monthly calendars and daily task lists, and daily calendars, and a section on my goals and values…. Oh it was good stuff. And it worked great for me – for like 3 months. But pretty soon, for me, it came to be all about the lists. I loved making those daily task lists and then marking things off them. Sometimes, I would write something I had just done on the list, just for the pure pleasure of checking it off. I loved those task lists. The goals and values pretty much went by the wayside.
My love of lists, and checking things off them wasn’t new, however. I can remember how, as a young teenage Christian, I would look at lists like the list of sins in today’s gospel, and start checking things off. Fornication, – nope (I was like 14), theft – nope, murder – nope, adultery –nope (again, I was 14), avarice—weeelllll…., wickedness-hm, yep, most probably, deceit – oh yeah, that too, licentiousness – no idea but sounded like it had to do with sex so I figured I was safe, envy – oh yeah – lots of that, slander – um, definite possibility, pride – yep, folly – most definitely.
What I liked about those lists of sins in the bible was the idea that I could figure out how I measured up, or didn’t, based on which sins I had or hadn’t committed. Much like the Pharisees in the gospel, I was completely missing the point. That’s actually the whole purpose of the Pharisees in this story. They are Mark’s literary device to illustrate what it looks like to completely miss the point.
The rules that they were following did originally have a point – they were to show that they were set apart as people of this particular God. But somewhere along the way, these people forgot what the purpose was and became far more concerned with the lists of rules and laws that had their religion had developed over the years than with knowing God and being God’s people. They got distracted. Just like me and my planner – they forgot what mattered most and focused on the lists.
It’s so very human, though – just tell us what to do, and what not to do – what are the rules? We’ll makes lists, check them off… we’ll try really hard. But that’s not the point. Back in Deuteronomy, God’s exiled people are told that they will once again follow all of God’s commandments and prosper. How can God promise such a thing? Well, Moses tells them, following God’s commandments is not too difficult for them, it is not beyond the people. No, Moses’ message from God is that the word of God is in your heart and on your lips. The word is very near to you. This is true for all of us, for we are all God’s people.
This is the point. Jesus chides the Pharisees with words from the prophet Isaiah, saying that they have strayed from what is in their hearts – “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far away from me.” And Jesus adds, “you abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
You abandon the commandment of God – which is in your heart.
When Jesus turns to talk to the assembled crowd, this is the point of the list of things that defile a person – that the people have abandoned what is in their heart – the Word of God. They’ve gotten distracted. They have forgotten what matters most. So their actions and their character reveal it. All those sins that Jesus names – they come from inside, from forgetting what matters most, from being distracted from God’s very essence, God’s word, that is in us.
I wish I could say that this doesn’t happen to me – that I always maintain my connection to what matters most to me – to the Word, to God’s very self that dwells in me and in each of us. I wish I could say that, but it’s just not true.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a crowd sourcing question on Facebook for her sermon on “junk food theology.” She asked, “What’s the craziest thing you were ever told or expected to believe?” There were tons of responses, and I added a long one. I could have written about at least 10 or 12 examples of faulty theology that I have moved away from as I’ve gotten older. A while later, she posted again. She thanked all of us who had responded to her first question – and there were a lot of responses – and then she asked, “Now – what are the things about faith that you’ve rediscovered? Today, what is at the heart of your faith?”
I sat there and stared at the computer for a few minutes. “I ought to know the answer to this,” I thought. I began to try to construct a “right” answer in my head. What was good Trinitarian theology? What about the Nicene Creed? How could I sum up the Anglican theology that I learned and loved in seminary? My thinky brain went nuts.
And then I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for that. She had asked a very personal question – What is at the heart of your faith?
So I made myself stop the hamster wheel that often takes over my brain. I stopped trying to find the right answer and I looked deep inside and asked myself that question – today,what is at the heart of your faith? At the heart? Not what would be the acceptable answer to someone else, but what is, honestly, at the heart of my faith? And that’s where I found the answer – in my heart, not my spinning brain. It came out easily and fully formed, because it is the word that is very near me. I wrote, “My faith is in Jesus who came among us as human and by the very act of incarnation redeemed humanity. My faith is in God whose love for all of us is impossibly extravagant. My faith is in the Holy Spirit, who dwells in and among us, breathing God’s breath into us.”
That moment and that statement were so profound for me. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I paid attention to the faith that is in me – to what matters most to me. I got caught up in going to seminary and pursuing my call and working for justice and all kinds of things that are informed by that faith, and many more that are not. Somewhere along the way, I got completely distracted. And what happens when we do that? When we forget what matters most? Well, the power of that list of sins that Jesus gives in today’s gospel is that they are so us – so human – so particular. Have I been envious? You betcha. Greedy – yep. Deceitful – yep. Foolish – absolutely. Prideful – without a doubt. Whenever I am not connected to the Word that is in me, those very human sins show forth in my life.
And the opposite is also true, of course. Lately, I have seen no better example of someone who connected to the essence of God inside himself than Jimmy Carter. This man’s character has been revealed in his actions for a very long time. Right after his presidency, he founded the Carter Center to advocate for human rights. He’s a key figure in Habitat for Humanity and has continued to build houses well into his 80’s. He is devoted to Jesus and to human rights. He left the Southern Baptist church – a church his family had been a part of for three generations – over its opposition to women as pastors. But he didn’t leave his faith. As we all now know, he still teaches Sunday School.
And now we see his grace in the face of his diagnosis of brain cancer. He talked to the media about how he felt when he got the news. “I was surprisingly at ease. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t go into an attitude of despair or anger. I’m thankful. And hopeful.” This reveals a man who absolutely lives from his heart – who is connected to the Word that is in him.
Of course he’s not perfect – none of us are. All of us forget the faith that is in us – all of us are guilty of any number of the sins that are listed in today’s gospel. All of us, to some degree or another get distracted from living from our hearts, where God’s word dwells.
But here’s the Good News. God does not get distracted. God’s character is completely consistent with what is in God’s heart. And that is extravagant, perfect love for each and every one of us. So when we realize that we’ve been far from the word that lives in us, when we come back from our pride or our greed or our foolishness or even worse sins, God is there, waiting to welcome us, arms wide open saying, “Look! Here is my beloved!”
Sermon August 09, 2015
The Rev. Bonnie Matthews, Deacon
Proper 14 Year B
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 31-33; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Reflecting on the readings appointed for today has been a challenge for me. At first glance of the scripture I was conflicted by the dichotomy of following ethical instructions as presented by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians and the gentle hope and promise of an everlasting life. Am I being called to deliver a fist pounding sermon about following moral law as Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians (but wait a minute that’s not who I am) or present the gentle words of everlasting life through the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John? The more I contemplated and prayed the more I became certain that I was not presented with an either or choice for a sermon. I was presented with an opportunity to speak to the love of God and the hope of everlasting life given to us in Christ Jesus.
Until verse 51 of today’s gospel reading, the gift of bread is not a gift of manna from heaven that is to be received in order to assuage our physical human appetite. I believe that Jesus is referencing the gift of hope and promise in the word of God’s love always being present to us. The meaning of bread changes to a promise of love and everlasting life when we hear verse 51 "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
When we come to the table during our service of Eucharist we are recalling the events of Maundy Thursday from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and we are spiritually nurtured through the gifts of bread (body) and wine (blood).
But the writer of the Gospel of John is suggesting that we recall the acts of Jesus’ full life.
At Trinity we remember that when the gifts of bread and wine are elevated and we hear the words “Behold what you are” and we respond “May we become what we receive”. Our prayer is that we become and act as Jesus did in the whole of his life.
For me this is where the clarity of the connection between Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and the Gospel of John begins.
While recalling the Jewish and Greco-Roman instruction, Paul is presenting the reader with early Christian instruction that has ethical implications. This instruction is an example of how Jesus lived and served.
Ephesians: 4:31-5:2 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children and live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
However early this instruction is, I believe that it holds true for present day religious communities. In particular, the Christian community is called to demonstrate God’s love for the world by serving as Jesus would serve.
As a community of faith we are called to act as one. Following Jesus’ command we are called to love one another. We are not meant to be one in community within these four walls and then act as individuals going in different directions outside of this building. As one, we are called to follow Jesus’ example no matter where we are.
Given accounts of the news in relation to racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious and sexual differences this seems like a daunting command. And in many ways it is. It is difficult to hear what we would consider to be outrageous acts of violence being committed by someone without reacting in an unkind way.
How we respond, what we do, and how we act matter. Our Baptismal Covenant calls us to strive for justice and peace among all people. It calls us to be advocates for justice. But how is that done in what seems to be a world where the me comes first?
Being an advocate begins when we step back from a heated issue, thinking first and responding second in a calm fashion. It means looking for ways to solve issues before becoming a part, or a side, of an issue. It means working toward a solution and not just putting a band-aid on. It means speaking out to interpret the concerns of the needy to those who will listen to those who may be able to move the issue at hand toward improvement.
It may mean not just giving to a food bank or soup kitchen, but working at a food bank putting your feet on the ground to assess what is really happening. When people know that someone is listening they may start by telling their story at a ten thousand foot level, but when they understand that someone is hearing and understanding and not judging, their story may gain depth moving closer to the real issue. Those in need are tired and they are frustrated and have too many other issues at hand to navigate systems for change. How can someone think when their thoughts are consumed with where their next meal will come from?
When someone who is not directly affected listens and understands they may better have the ability to collaborate and promote better local and government support with a move toward better pay or more social services to support the neighborhood. It means building relationships with those who care about supporting anyone who may be marginalized in any way.
My example of the food bank/soup kitchen and working poor is just one example where you can help. I choose this example on purpose. At the Hospitality Center for the homeless in New London someone did listen to the plight of the hungry and homeless who are insurance poor. They heard a different story. They heard that homeless or working poor persons who are recovering from a medical condition and who otherwise would have been released from the hospital to their homes have nowhere to go. This hospitality center reacted and they have collaborated with Lawrence and Memorial Hospital, the Visiting Nurse Association of SE CT and the Community Health Center Inc.
As a result they have what is called respite center that has 7 hospital beds for post procedure/treatment care as well as foot care for the homeless.
I imagine that if one were to apply the same techniques one can work to build understanding with many of the issues facing us today.
The act of judging builds sides for and against but listening and understanding one’s plight, finding common ground where you can meet leads to relationships that move forward.
Jesus didn’t look from afar at the unjust in the world. Jesus invited or met the marginalized whether they were poor, ill, of the “wrong” religious sect, diseased or outcasts. Jesus didn’t just meet them. Jesus listened and offered respect and understanding, Jesus offered the love.
Isn’t that what Paul is saying? Isn’t that what the Gospel of John is saying? Acting as Jesus would have us do is opening the world to know the love of God for all of God’s children.
Grant to us Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right that we may be enabled to live according to your will. Amen.
August 2, 2015
Proper 13, Year B
Trinity, Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
In his letter to the Church in Ephesus, Paul urges his fellow Christians to “bear[ing] with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This is a vision, as he goes on to say, of “one body and one Spirit, [just as you were called to the] one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” Notice the frequency of the word one, synonymous with unity, commonality, of oneness together in God.
But, Paul goes on to say, there will be differences within that unity because each of us was given a different gift “for building up the body of Christ.”
As members of Christ’s kingdom, lived out at least partially in our church communities today, we have the hope of love and unity, of oneness together to which each of us is contributing in his or her own particular way, striving to let our differences make a positive contribution to the whole body.
Unfortunately, however, as members of a conflicted society in America today, we have the reality of differences which are being exploited by the masters of jingoism, and race-baiting, those who, in the heated rhetoric of political campaigning, attempt to toss us to and fro by blowing what Paul calls the winds of doctrine. These winds are accompanied by the “trickery, [and] craftiness in deceitful scheming” through which the instigators of division intend to turn our racial, ethnic, sexual, and class differences into weapons of divisiveness which set us apart rather than bring us together.
The deceit in our own time often takes the form of an ugly and aggressive denunciation of the foreigner in our midst, the “Other”, the person who doesn’t look like us or doesn’t come from where we and our ancestors came from: this rhetoric of denunciation stokes our fear of the different person, especially if he or she has brown or black skin or Latino accent and who crosses our national border without credentials.
And the trickery to which the masters of manipulation resort is to suggest that these differences of ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation, are essential to our very identities and to how we should relate to each other.
Differences can be the catalyst for wonderment and joy at the glorious multi-hued richness of God’s creation or they can be the fuel for the flames that would divide us from each other while we hunker down in our bastions of isolation from those whose differentness we perceive as a threat to who we are.
As Christians we have the vision of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-sexual community of oneness in which difference is a gift which only adds to the richness of our unity. And yet, despite this vision, we must not in our eagerness to celebrate our oneness and unity, ignore those differences that still define reality for many people in much of our society. It is not enough for those wearing the lighter skin of social privilege and power simply to preach vague appeals to love or to claim that they are beyond the divisions based on race that presently define much of race relations in our country. Demeaning racial policies and practices still define the experience of being black in this country and feel-good rhetorical appeals to holding hands and singing kumbaya will not obscure the ways in which racial differences are still exploited by those whose privileges are built on racial difference. While in God’s kingdom race will be irrelevant it is clearly not irrelevant today in a society still based to a large extent on the privileges that come to those whose skin is lighter than their darker skinned brothers and sisters.
If Paul’s vision of community is true then what we need is a basis of identity that does not glorify differences for their own sake but instead for what they can do to enhance and enrich the reality of love, which is not subject to border patrols, or skin color, or differences in sexual expression.
The most difficult challenge we face today is acknowledging the differences that have in fact divided us, acknowledging the painful reality of the destructive practices, based on skin color, or ethnicity, or sexuality, that have kept us apart.
Perhaps it is time for those of us who, by reason of DNA, biology, or inherited advantage, are in a position to control the structures of social power, to step back for a moment from our tendency to dominate the conversation and to listen to the voices and experiences of the other without insisting that we truly know their experiences because we simply do not.
The ambiguities and complications of racial difference in the context of working for reconciliation was poignantly revealed in a recent New York Times interview with Jimmy Carter and award-winning African-American writer Jacqueline Woodson:
Carter: You know, intimacy and knowledge and mutual affection permeated some parts of the South when I was growing up during the depths of the civil-rights troubles. And we were not atypical. Every white family who farmed and had black neighbors, they knew each other, they cared for each other. They shared garden plots and wood to burn in the fireplace.
Woodson replies: But that also came from a sense of place and knowing our place — not disrupting it. From the time we were enslaved, there were complicated relationships between black and white people. There was love, and there was family, and so many ways in which it’s impossible to be on the outside and understand it.
Woodson reminds us that race is still a reality exploited for reasons of divisiveness, and the bloody history of our country including all the recent shootings of unarmed black men, based on the exploitation of racial difference cannot be ignored. It is only by staring racism in the face and acknowledging its reality that we can begin to get beyond it.
But to acknowledge these things does not require us to believe that such differences are always going to stand as barriers to true love.
Paul understands that the true community is full of difference: we are not all intended to do the same things or occupy the same positions. But he also understands that those differences are ultimately subordinate and subservient to a higher reality: the reality of love in which the most important thing about others is their ability to love and be loved in return.
The actuality of Love has shown us that differences in sexual orientation or racial background are irrelevant to the love people of the same or opposite sexes or races or ethnicities can and do feel for each other. Whatever the winds of expedient political doctrine have said otherwise, real-life experiences show that love can be the difference-embracing but also difference-transcending truth about human relationships.
Christians have a glimpse of a borderless community into which all are invited without passport or documentation.
What we should bring to that community is our ability and willingness to love: to accept the other as other, resplendent in his/her uniqueness, but whose uniqueness is not an obstacle to love but an invitation to it.
Paul’s letter this morning can allow us to answer that invitation: As he says:
“We must no longer be children, but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 26, 2015
Trinity Church Hartford
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind
to see if there are any who are wise,
who seek after God.
Today’s pericope is one of the Gospel Big Ones — the story appears in each of the four gospels. All accounts tell of Jesus’ ministry in the Galilee, especially in Capernaum, and of Jesus’ sudden decision to get out of that town.
John 6:1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias (also called Lake Kinneret, Genneserat, Ginosar, later under the Mamluks it was known as Minya, one hymn calls it the Syrian Sea): It is in a depression that is part of a great tectonic rift that runs all the way into Africa, a lake shaped like a harp, 13 miles long, 8 miles wide. It was and is today the most important body of fresh water in the whole of the western Middle East.
West side of the lake: what we know as the shore edge of the Galilee: warm year-round, actually below sea level, fertile, good rain, great for growing crops, densely populated. Lakeside Galilee is where the village of Capernaum (Town of the prophet Nahum) was located in Jesus’ day — Capernaum, a ruin today, contains a site where there is good evidence that Peter owned a house, the one where Jesus often stayed. In Jesus’ day Capernaum and all Galilee was ruled by the tetrarch Herod Antipas, the same Herod who had executed John the Baptist.
The other side of the lake: (all this is background) across the Jordan, there it’s very different from the western shore; rocky, dry with little rain, people in Jesus’ day living in scattered towns and settlements. And in his day it was a whole different tetrarchy: Iturea, not Galilee, ruled not by Herod Antipas, but by his half brother Philip.
“After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.”
Some say because of the large crowds and the work of the ministry Jesus and the twelve were exhausted, and they sailed across to get away, to rest. From another reading one might infer that having heard of John’s execution, Jesus took his followers east, across the Jordan, into Philip’s tetrarchy for their safety, to get themselves beyond the reach of Herod.
Whatever he was thinking, they couldn’t get beyond the reach of those — believers? curious? wanting healing? seeking hope? — who really wanted him, to be there, with him, to listen to the words, to know the healing, perhaps even to join up full-time. So they went looking for him.
There’s the thing. They went looking for him. Some say it was a walk of only seven miles, and others think they had to go up around the north end of the lake over to the far eastern shore, perhaps twenty miles or more. The point is, they got up and left where they were, and searched for Jesus.
And the things they witnessed because they were there: the miracle of the mass feeding when they were hungry — not only the words (which are spirit and life) and healings, but food, actual real food in the middle of nowhere, which made them think of the other time their ancestors were fed in the wilderness, with Moses. And later that night for those who got into the boat to return through a storm to the western shore, to see Jesus in the storm — did Jesus say, “It is ‘I am’?” to know they were instantly safe.
The folks who didn’t go, well, they missed out.
Or even worse. Think of the story of King David we read from Second Samuel this morning.
1 In the spring of the year, the time when (real) kings go out to battle, instead of going himself, King David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. Not only was “all Israel” out, but the ark of the covenant — remember at this time the ark, God’s seat of presence, moved from place to place in a tent — the ark of the covenant, and therefore God, was out with the armies. But David remained in Jerusalem.
And look at the trouble he got himself into. Idleness. Voyeurism, Lust, Deception, Violation of Bathsheba’s ritual of purification, Adultery, Bathsheba’s pregnancy, Secrecy, Lies to Uriah her husband, Manipulation and the Plotting of the trusting general’s staged battlefield death.
David should have gone out to be in the presence and power and purpose of God.
That’s not to say that if a person doesn’t actively go looking for God that he or she will be depraved or will mess up as badly as did David, (David was a good king), but it is to say, that David should have been, we should be, out there, where God was at work. Nor does it mean that if we are out looking to be with God that we won’t also still be sinners; next week, as we shall see, Jesus impugns their motives and scolds the very people who were there with him in the Iturean wilderness.
No, it’s just the direct, stark contrast in these two lessons that struck me: juxtaposed, they say, don’t sit around; go, seek to be with God. Go, in your heart, your mind, as much as possible in your being, seek to be in the presence of Christ, go to him, be with him, to learn, to know healing, to see miracles, to work with hom, as the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians put it,
to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, (to get the big picture) 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Maybe it’s as simple as opening a Bible instead of turning on the TV, and reading, reading, it. For me it means the discipline of going to meet once a month with a spiritual director, who helps me see where out there I am finding God in Christ. It also for me means actually doing stuff that Christ told us to do — feeding the hungry, caring for creation — for you it may mean visiting the sick, demonstrating in public, tutoring. Spiritual retreats. Discussion and book groups. Talk less to yourself and talk more with God.
Not staying put; moving out from the usual of what we know to be with God. Cross the river. Walk the Five miles, or Twenty miles; into new territory.
As the psalmist put it, Truly be wise — seek after God. Enough said.
Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
April Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
Sermon for July 19, 2015 Proper 11 B
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Where is God pitching God’s tent in the world?
Today’s readings from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are about how God is moving with God’s people. In 2 Samuel we are told that David is disturbed by the fact that he has a nicer dwelling than God, whose ark has been moving about in a tent. But, God tells Nathan that God has never asked to live in a house. God gets a little indignant with David, asking “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought you the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.”
Basically, God tells David (through Nathan) that God isn’t ready to settle down yet. God wants to continue to journey with the people of Israel. Being in a tent affords God the freedom to travel and journey with the people.
God’s identity as a God of the tent reappears in the New Testament in the form of Jesus. In Mark, we hear that whenever Jesus enters a town, a city, or a farm, people brought the sick to him in the market place on pallets. The market place was the most public place in a town or city. It was the center for commerce and an unexpected place for Jesus to heal people. Generally sick and infirm people were kept out of sight, not brought out in public. And rabbis like Jesus generally did their teaching in the temple. But Jesus’ ministry took place on the move – and wherever the people were gathered. Just as God moved among God’s people in a tent in the time of David, Jesus moved among the people of his day.
And of course, God continues to pitch God’s tent among us today.
For me, God is pitching God’s tent among us as we see a new movement for racial justice in the United States.
As I kid growing up I heard all types of stories about racism and how it had touched the lives of my mother’s family in Macon, Georgia. My great grandmother was the child of a plantation owner and his slave. My grandmother worked as a maid to support her family because it was one of the few paying jobs a black woman could get in her day.
My mother tells me stories about navigating in a segregated world – separate drinking fountains, worries about where to stay on long road trips, fears about where she could safely go. I was told as a kid and now I understand that I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors. And I’ve always known that racially motivated violence and police violence is a reality for people of color.
My parents moved to New England to give me opportunities they believed I wouldn’t have been afforded in the South as a black person. My mother was determined that I would grow up in a different world from her. Like many black kids whose families moved north, I spent summers back “home” with my grandmother in Macon. She lived on an unpaved street where she knew the drug dealers by name and where I rarely saw white people. That was just the way it was in her world. Racism was overt in Georgia, unlike in New England where people were generally not openly racist toward me and my family. Sometimes I felt guilty about being an African American woman growing up with the privilege of living in New England.
Since the death of Trayvon Martin, though, I’ve become more and more aware that the people whose names and faces I’m seeing on television who have been subjected to violence at the hands of the police (or other white citizens) are people who look like me.
Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, Dajerria Beckton in McKinney Texas, Eric Garner in New York City, Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Tamir Rice – 12 years old, armed with a toy gun – in Cleveland, Ohio.
For the first time in my life I felt like I needed to do something drastic, to speak out, to stop pretending that the horror of what was going on didn’t touch my life. Before, the things in the news had seemed so distant. But this police brutality and murder hurts my heart in a way I have never known before. My people, black people, people who look like me were being targeted and killed and continue to be targeted and killed.
Last December, Marie told me that there was going to be a Black Lives Matter March in New York. She told me Union Theological Seminary was gathering people to worship and then go together to march. I realized that I NEEDED to be a part of this march.
When we arrived at the chapel at Union for worship we were given forms to fill out and a button that had Union printed on it with big letters. The button was so we could be easily recognized if we needed help and so we would not get separated. The forms asked for our names, known allergies, contact person, and if we had any physical limitations. On the bottom of the form was a phone number of the person who would have all of our information. We were then instructed to write the phone number on the inside of our arm. All of these measures were taken in case we got arrested. After worship we were instructed on how to conduct ourselves in case we were arrested. I’m not going to lie - I began to get frightened. Marie and I looked at each other and sighed.
I kept reminding myself that people during the civil rights movement did more dangerous protesting than I was about to do. I picked up a sign from the back of the chapel to carry while we marched. When it was time to leave everyone started chanting, THIS IS WHAT THEOLOGY LOOKS LIKE over and over again as we walked to the subway station. In the subway station and on the subway we sang protest songs. Many of the people in the subway moved away from us, stared or just got off, but we kept singing. I felt such a connection to all of the people from Union, even though we didn’t know very many of them. We all knew that God was on the move with us as we united to protest for justice.
When our group met up with the other marchers on the route, I could see all the helicopters, police and media. I held up my sign which read “I can’t breathe.” This was the plea that Eric Garner repeated 11 times as police had him in a choke hold. I held my sign up boldly making sure it could be seen. And I cried when I first chanted: I can’t breathe…one, I can’t breathe… two, I can’t breathe…three, I can’t breathe… four, I can’t breathe …five, I can’t breathe… six, I can’t breathe… seven, I can’t breathe…. eight, I can’t breathe …nine, I can’t breathe…. ten, I can’t breathe… eleven.
I walked that day like I had never walked before, I walked with passion and purpose. I walked with my white wife in a march to show the world black lives matter that my life matters.
God’s movement in the world is not always comforting. God is pitching God’s tent in the world right now. God is pitching God’s tent in the midst of injustice and racial relations. God is pitching God’s tent in radical change and the righting wrongs of the past. Just like in 2 Samuel God is not interested in staying in one place. God is journeying with God’s people. God is showing up in public and untraditional places.
Let us always proclaim; Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to from God generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Pentecost 7 – July 12, 2015
Mark 6:14-29
What We Can Learn from Herod
One of the things I love about the Revised Common Lectionary is that it provides us with lots of opportunities to focus on some of the great stories of the Bible. And today we have one of those great stories – the story of Herod ordering his soldiers to go to John the Baptist in the prison, cut off his head and bring it to him. Books, plays and even an opera have been written about it. And that could be it – a powerful ruler cuts off the head of one of his subjects on the whim of his daughter and wife, and we could leave it at that. But we lose some of the moral richness of the story if we only look at it skin deep.
To start, this is NOT Herod the Great, who was King when Jesus was born – this is Herod Antipas, his second surviving son. His father was so skilled a politician that he was the first to be known as “King of the Jews” and his descendants, including Antipas, became “tetrarchs”– a title with little authority – puppet rulers through the first century of the Christian era.
Mark places this passage immediately after the passage in which Jesus has sent out the 12 apostles 2 by 2 to heal the unclean spirits and preach a gospel of repentance, to cast out demons and to anoint the sick and heal them. Herod has heard about Jesus and the work of his disciples, and when the passage begins there is discussion about who Jesus is. Mark tells the story of John’s beheading as a flashback to what Herod has already done, and it is clear that Herod is haunted by the fact that he was responsible for the Baptizer’s death. So haunted, in fact that he believes that Jesus is actually John the Baptizer who has been raised and has come back.
The flashback story focuses on the person of John and the person of Herod. On the one hand there is John the Baptizer – one who is comfortable living on the margins of society. He lives in the wilderness, wears camelhair clothing and subsists on wild honey and locust-beans. He is a prophet calling people to repentance in preparation for one who is to come who is greater than he, and he is willing to risk arrest and death for that cause. There is a lesson about the nature of prophecy here – prophecy can serve as both a warning and a promise. Remember that the role of prophets in Scripture is not to be fortune tellers, but rather to look at the circumstances and to make people aware of the consequences that will follow if that behavior is not changed. John the Baptizer wonderfully combines both warning and promise – a warning about the need to repent and a promise about the coming of the Kingdom in the person of Jesus.
Then there is Herod Antipas. Unlike John, his very identity is to be at the center of power and living a life of comfort and security. He is caught in a web of social, personal and moral dilemmas. He has a title but little power; he himself is subject to the pressure of his Roman superiors. As such, he wants to please them, and both his family and political allies with whom he surrounds himself apply additional pressure on him.
And so John the Baptizer presents a unique problem for Herod. He has challenged Herod’s morals, and Herod’s authority itself, for having married his brother’s wife Herodias, something not permitted under Jewish law. Herod, under pressure from his wife and others to take action, imprisons John. And yet at the same time, he is somewhat protective of him. He is intrigued by this odd prophet. Mark tells us in verse 20 that Herod feared John, “knowing that he was a righteous and holy man” and so Herod protected John from his wife’s desire to have him killed. But Mark goes further to show a human, more sensitive side to Herod. In verse 21 he writes that when Herod heard John preach, “He was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.” There is something in John’s message that speaks to Herod’s higher values and engages those values, creating an internal tension in Herod in which he has to balance the pressure of his family and political circles and yet remain faithful to – or at least mindful of – his own personal standards and inner values. He recognizes in John the kind of human authenticity to which he too is called, but he is too caught up in the demands to meet the expectations of his kingship in which he realizes he does not securely hold the power that his title would suggest. Herod knows enough about truth to recognize his own unfairness – his one great flaw is his insatiable need to be in control – having it, protecting it, keeping it.
And so this story of Herod and John is not just a struggle of light versus darkness, but one of political power versus prophetic faith.
Mark highlights this point again in verse 26, when his daughter Salome tells her father that she wants the head of John on a platter. Mark writes that Herod “was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for his guests, he did not want to refuse her.” He becomes a victim of his own making -- forced into the position of reacting to the events around him rather than being pro-active and making things happen.
On the surface of this story, John is the only one whose life is at risk. Herod makes his public image and pride more important than regard for the life of a righteous man. And yet Herod, too, has something at risk here. In the foolish abuse of his power by casually ceding it to the whims of his teenaged daughter, he has destroyed his relationship with John, which will continue to haunt him in the person of Jesus – the same Jesus whom Herod will once again meet during Jesus own trial several years later. In ordering the death of the prophet, Herod may well have lost connection with his own soul.
Prophets and those in authority often are at uneasy odds. Those in authority are comfortable with the way things are: What’s not to like? They are in control! And the role of the prophet is to engage those in authority in the prophet’s cause by showing them what is wrong with the present state of affairs and the negative consequences that will be sure to follow if things are not changed. By pointing out the danger to the authority’s self interest in preserving the status quo, as John did to Herod, the prophet engages the authority in the prophet’s own cause, even if it is a cause with which the authority disagrees or a warning that the authority does not want to hear.
We have many parallels to the John and Herod relationship in our own history and experience. King Henry VIII and Thomas Moore, who set a moral standard that Henry could not meet and lost his head for it. Many of the saints who are memorialized in the Episcopal Daily Office companion, Holy Women, Holy Men were prophets in their own time, truth tellers and whistle blowers who challenged privilege and the injustice of the status quo, who demanded we examine abuses of power, who challenged ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Martin Luther King and others in the civil rights movement were prophets who made the civil leaders of their time very uncomfortable indeed. The moral courage and the visual images of their crusade ultimately proved more powerful than the violence that was waged against them under the authority of the state. We have witnessed the latest chapter of that crusade in the wake of the murders in the AME Zion Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The horror perpetrated by a young man who was enamored of the Confederate Flag as a symbol of white supremacy jolted our national consciousness about the continuing racism in our society. But I would contend that it was the grace showed by the survivors of those murdered in immediately forgiving the murderer – the very next day, immediately and without reservation -- that made them modern day prophets. They are prophets to the truth that love will always trump violence, that God’s grace is stronger than the power of evil in our world. And it was the power of that prophetic witness that has caused the unexpected and almost unbelievable – the swift and certain move of southern states – South Carolina in particular – to remove the confederate flag from public display as a symbol of honor. Did anyone see the passionate speech of another modern-day prophet, Rep. Jenny Anderson Horne – a Republican representative from the Charleston area and a descendant of President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis? She was in tears as she told her fellow lawmakers that this was not about heritage – it was about doing what is right. She bore witness to the difficulty and the pain involved in confronting one’s own position of comfort in light of new circumstances that scream out, “Wait a minute! Stop and reflect! This is wrong!”
The prophetic word is one that points us to truth and breaks through the denial of those who profit or otherwise benefit from what our culture presents as the status quo. It can be recognized by its appeal to the principles for which Jesus stood and for which he died for us: equality; justice; freedom; love and charity toward others; lifting up those who are on the margins of society and respecting the dignity of every human person. Those values that we reaffirm each time we renew our baptismal vows.
And yet we – each of us – need to acknowledge and confess that our human inclination is to prefer social stability and equilibrium, what scientists call “homeostasis” – things staying in a comfortable balance that doesn’t upset the norm. Let’s face it – whatever our political stripes, we like what we are used to, what we know. It’s like comfort food. And yet, our society, our world, our church are on the move, and God is always tapping on us to pay attention; not to FOLLOW the world, mind you, but to ENGAGE IT AND TO challenge IT. . Truth to tell, we are usually pretty comfortable with injustice and inequality so long as we ourselves are comfortable and our lives are not directly touched. That is because it is our human nature to prefer stability and the security it bring us to what is usually the messy, chaotic, vulnerability-inducing process of personal and social transformation into which God calls us.
John challenged Herod to imagine alternatives to the only world he knew, and Herod failed the test. The modern-day prophets challenge us to imagine alternatives to “normal” when “normal” stands in the way of the coming of the Kingdom even though it is what we are most comfortable with. Jesus himself left behind many who found him both odd and interesting, perhaps even perplexing. Like them, we know if we listen long enough, we, too, will be brought to a point of decision we would just as soon avoid. We would rather remain in our comfort zones.
Hearing, and heeding, the prophetic word has consequences. Hearing, and heeding, the prophetic word leads to changed, even transformed, lives. With enough followers, Jesus can lead us to a changed world. Amen.
Trinity Church, Hartford
June 28, 2015
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8B
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2:23-24; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
“What To Do When Christendom Dies”
We are today, as individuals, as a Church, and as a nation in the midst of overlapping identity crises.
Recently the news has not been good for those who find their identity through membership in institutional Christianity if that identity is dependent on Christianity being a thriving and robust power in society. A new Pew Poll is showing a precipitous drop in the number of persons in both Europe and North America who officially identify themselves as Christians. The number of persons who tick “none” when asked for their religious affiliation is steadily growing. More and more people are saying that they are not religious even though they still want to think of themselves as ‘spiritual’. All of these trends suggest that Christianity’s identity as an institutional religion in America is in crisis or at least has become problematic for many. As Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has said, commenting on the Pew Poll, “the advance, particularly among the young, of an appealing, powerful culture that has its own standards and values (expressive individualism, moral relativism, lifestyle liberalism) . . . no longer presupposes religious belief and finds traditionalism to be repressive.”
We also face another identity crisis. On this Sunday we are a week away from July 4, a date on which we celebrate the importance of our national identity. That identity has often been associated with the belief among many Americans that we are a Christian nation. But this belief is simply not true since claiming institutional affiliation with one Christian church or another is not the same as believing and adhering to the core principles and values of Christianity. Calling oneself a Christian for the purposes of a census is not the same as being a Christian in heart and mind and practice. Unfortunately our national history reveals the enormous gaps that have and continue to exist between professed Christian values and those we actually live by.
In our national mythologies most of our founding fathers were thought of as Christian and sometimes attended Christian churches but many of them were not Christian in any traditional sense. People such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and George Washington were, for the most part, Deists who believed there was a deity who was a remote, distant being who wound up the world as if it were a clock and then left it to run its own course without interference by God. Deists rejected the literal truth of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, original sin, predestination, the corruptions of institutional religion, the sacred powers of the clergy, and the abstruse notions associated with the doctrine of the Trinity. Whatever the founders of this nation gave us, it was not a Christian nation in any traditional sense.
And if these two crises of identity were not enough, there is the continuing crisis within the Christian churches over what exactly does it mean to believe and be a Christian? As a parish and as a denomination we still remain deeply at odds with some other parishes and dioceses within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican communion as a whole over how inclusive we must be of diverse forms of sexuality, or how to interpret the Bible, or what historical doctrines are still to be accepted uncritically, or whose authority for acceptable belief and practice we are to acknowledge. Many of us still struggle over the question of whether, if we still have questions about the intelligibility of the doctrine of the Trinity, we have forfeited our identity as Christians.
What then should we do in the face of these multiple identity crises? What do we do when the cultural powerhouse once known as Christendom begins to wither and die around us? What do we do when our church no longer controls the cultural agenda of an increasingly secular society?
As strange as it may sound, perhaps the response we ought to make is to actually give thanks that our privileges as a once powerful religious tradition have eroded. Christianity in its institutional form has not done well when it is the privileged power in society. When it was rescued from persecution by the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, it quickly succumbed to the blandishments of royal favor and advancement. Priests and bishops became ‘princes of the church’ and were entrusted with the kind of worldly power that Jesus had warned against. After having lived for a time as people who were suspicious of wealth and shared equally what little they had, the Christian church became the largest landowner in all of Europe. People genuflected before clergy rather than before God. And the inevitable result was that the clergy who were supposed to represent Jesus, the impoverished, itinerant carpenter, who died a shameful death on a cross, wound up being dressed in the finest raiment and living in splendor and ostentation and building grand cathedrals on the backs of the labor of those who remained in poverty.
Later the cultural privileges given to Christianity in Europe took new forms in America when it became complicit with the defense of slavery, or the denial of rights to women, the segregation of African Americans, and the repression of sexual minorities. Lusting after the privileges of power corrupted much of Christianity and prepared the way for its slow but perceptible decline in America.
Given the sorry history of much of institutional Christianity’s seduction by worldly power, we should both acknowledge and give gratitude for the decline of the Church’s institutional privileges. As long as Christianity was the dominant cultural force in America it tended to become an apologist for that culture with its vaunted individualism, self-seeking, and worship of material success, values which are hardly in tune with the core Christian values of community, justice, and compassion for others. From the beginning Christianity should have been, as it was for its first few centuries, an irritant to the dominant culture, a critic of that culture, a disturbing force, a worm in the apple of complacency, continually pointing to the hollowness of trying to live by material values alone or by refusing to treat the needs of the poor as more important than the wants of the wealthy. In this morning’s reading Paul reminds us of the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. If the Church is to follow this poor Jesus, it, too, must become poor so that others might become rich in all the basic spiritual goods in addition to those material goods essential to a flourishing and healthy life. Christianity by its very nature should be a destabilizing force in a culture dedicated primarily to greed and the acquisition of wealth. Because its roots lie in a transcendent, not a cultural source, it should always be at the edges of society, challenging it from the margins, not safely ensconced at its very heart where its radical potential for spiritual renewal and transformation is virtually suffocated. Instead it should be offering something from the realm of the transcendent, not just echoing the values of self-absorbed secular values that cannot glimpse reality beyond its present cultural enclosure.
But, we might ask, if Christianity is relegated to a second or even third class place in American society won’t it lose any influence it might have in keeping its moral voice alive? A voice that can identify and name the rot at the heart of a self-absorbed culture, a rot that eventually leads to a lack of concern for social justice? That voice is vital to the continuing significance of the Christian faith. But it lacks seriousness when it is uttered from within the corridors and bastions of privilege and worldly power. It can only be taken seriously when it emerges from the communities of the dispossessed, the outcasts, and the marginalized. How can the princes of the Church stand with the poor and disenfranchised and still wear their garments of splendor? How can they speak with and for the poor unless they are one of the poor?
So the increasing marginalization of the Church in America might be just what is needed if the Church is to find its true voice and authenticity in speaking for the poor and the other disenfranchised people in our society. And don’t underestimate the power, the real spiritual power, of the voice of those who speak with authenticity from positions of non-worldly power. In time, that spiritual power can transform both lives and whole societies. Look at the transformational power unleased by the radical message of one member of the most marginalized people in the first century: Jesus of Nazareth, a marginal Jew. And in our own time, the words and lives of previously marginalized people such as African Americans, and more recently, gays, lesbians, and trans-gendered persons have moved themselves in an amazingly short period of time, from a place of powerlessness to a place of real moral power as their voices and actions are making a real difference to the shaping of a new America and a new world. When the Church continues to remain stuck in outdated views about sexuality, such as the Roman Catholic Church did before the recent referendum in Ireland on gay marriage, it will be overcome by the forces of compassion and love and justice. The response to the recent terrorist massacre of black Church people in South Carolina indicates a faint but real attempt to come to grips with the history, causes and symbols of continuing racism in America. But all of these recent and dramatic changes have arisen out of an initial position of worldly powerlessness and dispossession. With the grace of God we have reason to believe that the brave voices and actions of those once outside the mainstream will eventually become the voices and actions of the majority in America. And that could have happened only because those fighting for true justice were not the initially privileged or powerful. Their outsider status reminded them that God comes first to the poor and powerless. Poverty of worldly power is a reminder that true power comes from God, not from all the material wealth and power we accumulate in this world by worldly ways and means. Out of poverty comes true richness and for that we can be grateful as our false wealth is slowly peeled away leaving us resting solely in the hands of God.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Pentecost 4 – June 21, 2015
Mark 4: 35-41
“Calm in the Midst of the Storm”
At the beginning of this week, I had planned to have a kind of “dialogue homily” with you about the beginning of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. This is an event that only happens once every three years and – given the structure of the church – is really where the important decisions are made within the church structure. Among the many items on the agenda for this year is the election of a new Presiding Bishop for the Episcopal Church, and one of the four nominated candidates is our own Ian Douglas from Connecticut. Included in today’s service is a special litany asking God’s blessing on the proceedings at Convention.
But that was Monday. Before we heard the news of Wednesday evening. The news that the historic African American Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina had been the site of 9 murders – all of the victims people of color, including the pastor of the church. The news that the murders were committed by a young white supremacist by the name of Dylann Storm Roof. The news that on his Facebook page, Roof is wearing a jacket bearing the flags of Southern Rhodesia and Apartheid-era South Africa. The news that as he began shooting, he accused his victims of “raping our women and taking over our country” as then proceeded to shoot each one of them multiple times.
The victims were real people, not nameless numbers on a stat sheet. They had real lives, families, jobs, colleagues—peoples whose lives they touched and were a part of in very real ways.
Clementa Pinckney, 41
Pinckney was the church's pastor and a state senator representing the 45th District. A married father of two, Pinckney was elected to the state House at age 23, making him the youngest House member at the time.
Tywanza Sanders, 26
Sanders graduated from Allen University in Columbia in 2014 with a degree in business administration,
Cynthia Hurd, 54
Hurd was a branch manager at the Charleston County Public Library.
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45
Coleman-Singleton was a high school track coach. He has a son who is a sophomore at Charleston Southern University. She was also a pastor in the church.
Myra Thompson, 59
The wife of The Rev. Anthony Thompson, Vicar of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church in Charleston.
Ethel Lee Lance, 70
A grandmother who was described as “the heart of her family” who had worked at the church for 30 years.
Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74
Simmons was a ministerial staff member. He was transported to a hospital after the shooting and later died
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49
Middleton-Doctor was an enrollment counselor at the Charleston campus of Southern Wesleyan University and a mother of four.
Susie Jackson, 87
Jackson was Ethel Lee Lance's cousin and a longtime church member.
Aside from the sheer horror and viciousness of this crime, there are a number of aspects of this attack that I have been pondering throughout the week. The first is the nature of this event. It was a hate crime, perpetrated and pre-meditated by a Caucasian person who has a professed hatred for people of color. There are not a lot of dots to connect here, and the dots we have all say it was a hate crime committed by a white supremacist. We all wish it were something else – but saying it or wondering about it doesn’t make it so. Failing to call it what is so clearly is diverts attention from the continuing sin of racism in our nation and dishonors the memory of those who died there.
The third is the place where the shootings took place. First of all, it was in a church. But it wasn’t just any church. Emanuel is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South. In 1822, one of its founders, Denmark Vesey, organized a major slave uprising in Charleston, but authorities quashed the rebellion before it could happen. It formed an important part of the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century. Now some commentators – almost all of them NOT people of color – are making the claim that this incident is just one more example of a wholesale cultural attack on Christianity claimed to be going on in this country. As an active person of the Christian faith my entire life and a pastor for the past 15 years, I just don’t understand that claim at all. Pardon any cynicism I may have, but it strikes me that all of the folks taking this position are the same folks who define their Christianity in terms of who is NOT called to the table – folks about whom they have the right to decide what they can and cannot do, who they can and cannot be. Let’s be clear: The victims were not killed because they were Christians – they were killed because they were black, and the murderer said so. What many people don’t know is on that same evening, St. Matthew’s Missionary Baptist Church, another Black congregation, was sprayed with gunfire while the choir was practicing inside. This is not an isolated event.
But to me there is another aspect of the killings taking place in a house of worship that I find more troublesome. And that is, this murderer gained access to the church in the first place by taking advantage of one of the fundamental aspects of any healthy and vibrant community, and that is hospitality. The murderer actually pretended to be interested in the Bible Study that was going on. And I suppose in this sense you could say they may have been killed because they were Christian. Even though he was White and the participants in the Bible Study – all people of color -- might have found this odd, they welcomed him in – someone different from themselves -- among them, even complemented him on being there. Welcoming the stranger – isn’t that exactly what Jesus told us to do? Spreading the Word among those who are thirsting for knowledge and faith – isn’t that the Great Commission that Jesus gave us? We do that exact same thing every single week, and virtually every single day here at Trinity, and I dare say so does every other church on Asylum Hill and indeed in the City. Many suburban churches would do the same.
For those of us who are pastors, there is one more sobering aspect to the Charleston murders: This is the second time in several weeks that a pastor has been shot while serving the church. The pastor at Church of the Nazarene, over on Capitol Avenue, was shot several weeks ago as he was placing small American flags on the church grounds prior to Sunday worship on Memorial Day weekend.
You may be wondering – some of you have already asked me – What are we going to do in the aftermath of the Charleston murders? It is something I have given considerable thought to. A number of us pastors talked about it as we gathered on Friday evening for a prayer vigil at Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion church up on Main Street. And to a person, we all agreed: We will – we must – keep on doing what Jesus asks us to do: To follow Jesus and keep on welcoming the stranger in his holy name. Certainly we have been and will continue to be mindful of common sense security measures – especially with Trinity Academy and The Choir School of Hartford serving children in our facilities.
But do we really want to turn God’s house into a fortress? When you think about it, what could have been done to prevent these shootings? Do we want Vinnie (the security guard) to start patting everyone down as they enter the building? Should we make everyone pass through a metal detector on their way in? There really aren’t many ways to stop a mad man. Some one or a group of people could just as easily take out the guard or guards we would post at the entrances before coming in after the rest of us.
No, I think Jesus models the answer for us in this morning’s Gospel. Just like the disciples in the story, we too are now frightened, confused, and not sure where to turn. It would be so easy to circle the wagons, look to our own resources for protection, and take care of ourselves. But that’s not what Jesus asks us to do. To the fearful disciples, he says, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?
At times like these, we must remember that many times the opposite of Faith is not Doubt – it is Fear. Fear blinds us to the possibilities – the opportunities -- that God sets before us. I mentioned to you last week that a group of us pastors in the city are planning a series of community walks for peace in our city and for the protection of our children. We have asked our congregations to stop at 1 p.m. each day to pray for our city and the protection of our children. Those of us gathered at Metropolitan A.M.E. on Friday evening recommitted ourselves to working together in unity across racial, ethnic and any boundary defined by people being “other” than ourselves.
You know, kind of a funny thing happened on Friday evening. As the prayer service was beginning, my friend, Pastor Terry Jones who is the Senior Pastor at Metropolitan, turned to me and whispered, “Why don’t you go ahead and lead us in the closing prayer and the blessing – you’ll provide the diversity we need.” He identified one of the sad realities about religion in 21st century America: It is still one of the most racially divided institutions we have.
And my friends, as you look around this house of worship, this is an area where we can indeed be leaders in this community. Do we always get it perfect? Of course not. But Jesus doesn’t call us to be perfect. He calls us to be faithful and to follow where he leads. And in times and circumstances like those we have experienced this week, it is more important than ever that we remain faithful to be, and to continue to become, the disciples and the apostles that Jesus desires for us to become. To join with our brothers and sisters across the City and throughout the region, following Jesus direction to welcome the stranger, and striving to fulfill Jesus’ last prayer to his heavenly Father, that we all may be one.
And now, in response to the request of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, I ask you to join me in praying the Prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, found on page 833 of the Book of Common Prayer. Please stand as you are able:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.
Sermon for June 14, 2015
The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartfor CT
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17and Mark 4:26-34
We are star dust. You’ve heard that, right? Every element in our bodies had their origin in stars exploding billions of years ago. And the hydrogen in us – water contains hydrogen, you know, and we’re 70% water – goes back to within a few seconds of the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago! We are very old, people.
And yet, we’re also very young. We have 50 to 75 trillion cells in our bodies. And the average age of them is only between 7 and 10 years. Even our skeletons are new every 10 years.
What’s more, consider this: since everything is comprised of essentially recycled star dust, it’s therefore not inconceivable that a sub-atomic particle of you was in Jesus’ body. Or Attila the Hun’s. Or both.
We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully and mysteriously made. To be very sure, this thing called life is some kind of marvelous! I don’t know about you, but when I reflect on it, I’m not sure whether to fall to my knees in awe or jump up and down in excitement.
Which brings me to the apostle Paul, the author of our New Testament reading. Now, obviously, St. Paul wrote long before particle physics was discovered. And, yet, he seems to have intuited a crucial part. Remember what we just heard? “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; everything has become new.”
And, how could Paul possibly have known this? From personal experience. You’ll likely recall that the book of Acts tells how God changed Paul from head to toe. Changed him from a Christ hater, a Christian persecutor and some say murderer to the single most important Christian figure in history. Don’t forget: Paul is the one, more than anyone else, whose preaching of God’s new creation made the Jesus movement go viral!
No doubt, some here this morning have known a radical makeover like Paul’s. You are able to sing the hymn “Amazing Grace” with special verve, especially the line, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” You know this new creation just like Paul.
All of us, however, can surely find a voice with the contemporary hymn chorus, “I’m not what I want to be; I’m not what I’m gonna be; But thank God I’m not what I was.” This is God’s new creation at work also.
And then, not least, we can observe God’s new creation in the movements of God’s makeover in the world around us, so very noticeable just within our lifetimes. Indeed, in whatever ways we as a society are more loving, more just, better stewards of God’s creation, more inclusive of differences, this, too, bears witness to God’s new creation.
Bottom line: The good news, the very good news is that God is active, moving, recycling, refashioning, repurposing, re-creating creation and us to more completely reflect God’s glory and design and purpose. Moreover, when we as God’s self-identified people – God’s church folk – get involved, things move along faster, and suffering is reduced.
However, with us or without us, God is being God. Even as we sit here today, stars are dying which means their atoms and protons are reformulating and shooting into space. God is not taking the morning off! Stuff is happening and God is being God, creating new from old.
It’s what God does. Makes new from old.
And yet still, amidst all the wonder and awe, as the old spiritual declares, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he’s watching me.” At the least, heavenly fireworks included, God is personal, very personal. As personal as Jesus. This is our faith. This is our experience.
Now, let’s take Paul’s new creation and our personal stories of God to the next level. We can also say God’s eye is on the sparrow and we know God is watching us – as church. We’re here today not just as a collection of individuals, but as church. In fact, we’re living out Paul’s dream as church.
And, we, too, as a church, have a unique identity, a DNA, if you will. We, too, as a church have a future. And, a God who’s watching us and leading us.
But leading us to where? That, of course, is our anxiety as Trinity Church. Either on a front burner or a back burner, there is increasingly a sense of crisis that pervades our assemblies. Thank God, our outstanding leaders are working and praying night and day to enable Trinity Church to re-imagine, really re-create ourselves given our current state of affairs. And, there’s much to be encouraged about.
Accordingly, I think it would be faithful to our scriptures, to stop here and just remind us all of Paul’s promise of God’s new creation and let well enough alone. Just sit down. Many would welcome that, I’m sure.
But, before I do I want to share something interesting and I think helpful from the Gospel lesson. I don’t usually mix the lessons, but I think this begs to be mixed.
First of all, we need to be reminded that Jesus’ parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed are not just about us. They’re about God and about the kingdom, the commonwealth, the realm, the way of life that God is guiding us and all of creation toward even now.
In the second of the two parables told back to back, Jesus notes how something tiny like a mustard seed becomes a very large shrub. So large in fact that the birds of the air can rest in it.
At first, this parable seems to be mostly an echo of the first parable: You can count on God not just growing God’s kingdom like seeds grow into wheat, but you should also know that God often takes inauspicious beginnings and grows them into astonishing outcomes.
But there’s something else in this parable which caught my eye and I think is worthy of yours. And that is the point Jesus seems to be making that birds of the air can now take shelter in this now large bush. It’s a reminder from Jesus that even among plants and animals it’s about symbiosis, relationships, things working together for the good of all creation, the glory of God. For humans, this suggests community with all living things. And for those of us who self-identify as God’s people, it’s grounded in Church.
All of which underscores the reality of science and scripture and faith that we don’t exist just for ourselves any more than bushes or birds exist for themselves. God has need of us!
Curtis Almquist is a monk in the monastery of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass. Father Don, Peter Vreeland and maybe others of you are affiliated with St. John’s. He began a March sermon by asking, “What’s your identity? What are you to be about?”
Reading that, it occurred to me, aren’t these our questions not only as individuals but also as church? What’s our identity as Trinity Church? What are we to be about?
Almquist goes on, “Why don’t you be a lover: to presume that why God has extended your life into this day, is for the cause of love. To receive God’s love in every way into your being and then to reflect that love outward.”
Almquist then quotes Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval abbess, who “said we should be mirrors. We should be mirrors, mirroring God’s light and God’s love with great generosity everywhere we go. Love is our essence.”
Accordingly, even as bushes grow to fulfill their parts in creation’s ongoing story, so our highest, unique purpose is fulfilled towards the same end by – loving. Or as Hildegard put it so memorably, and I think it is no less true for a church than individuals, to mirror God’s light and God’s love with great generosity.
I think this is an excellent image for a statement of purpose for a church trying to live out its mission in light of God’s mission: to mirror God’s light and love with great generosity.
To be very sure, in the context of our shared life together as Trinity Church, facing an uncertain future, this question of how to love generously must be obviously and intentionally and consciously at the center of every aspect of our life together and the tough decisions we will have to make.
Lest we become mere problem solvers. Lest we lose ourselves in agendas which pit one faction against another. Lest we clench our hands so tightly in fear that we cannot open our hands in faith. Lest we try so hard to save our life as we know it that we forget why our life is worth saving in the first place.
To whom is God calling us to mirror God’s love in this neighborhood? And, since most of us come from neighborhoods all around Hartford, to whom is God calling us to mirror God’s love there, where we live, where we work, where we play? To whom is God calling us to love and love generously?
For this is what we are to be about. And in our answer will be our identity.
To say the least, living boldly and generously into God’s future and ours will demand of us nothing less than a new creation, personally and as church.
But, thank God, making new from old is what God does.
