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Homily
Maundy Thursday April 17, 2014
Exodus 12:1-4,11-14 I Corinthians 11:23-26 Psalm 116: 1, 10-17
John 13:1-17, 31-35
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer
Holy Week is such a busy time of the year for all of us who are faithful. It is a time when we are frequently busy with many preparations for Easter.
The Altar Guild members are busy keeping up with the changing colors of the altar linens, polishing the silver, purchasing flowers and checking to see that we have incense.
It seems as though the choirs are here every evening practicing hymns and anthems.
The readers are perusing their assigned readings for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday
For those of us who are delivering homilies, we are meditating on the word.
Church service leaflets need to be copied for the many services this week.
And last but not least….
Let’s not forget the movement of all of the chairs and furniture for our services at Trinity Church.
Sometimes…. in all of the preparation for the services during Holy Week…. and in the anticipation of what is to come…. we momentarily loose our focus on what this week is about.
The love that God has for us.
A love that is so strong that God would send his Son to us in human form to die for our sins.
Jesus, His Son was sent to be our redeemer.
For me, Maundy Thursday is a day of calm, a day in which God’s presence is felt more than any other day of the church year.. The service of foot washing, the celebration of the Eucharist, the assigned readings, and in years past, sitting and praying into the very early hours of Friday with only the dim light of the candles and the reserved sacrament in the garden at All Saints Church cause me to be more aware of God’s love. For me it is an evening in which I “put the world around me on hold”.
Jesus knows what is to come. Jesus knows that his purpose on earth has come to an end. He accepts that he has come from God and is going to God.
In the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, which was written about 15-20 years before the Gospels, Paul recounts the sacred teaching and tradition the Lord gave to us, the tradition which is known as The Lord’s Supper.
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the lord’s death until he comes.
As Christians we celebrate this tradition of remembering Jesus in our service of Holy Eucharist.
At Trinity we further remember that we are to go and be the love of God with the words from The Society of St John the Evangelist,
Behold what you are
And we reply
May we become what we receive.
In meditating on the Gospel from John for this evening, these words are of particular importance.
I am to love and serve Christ and in doing that I am commanded to love those around me. The words “may we become what we receive” inform me that as a Christian, my duty is to humbly receive the body and blood of Christ and then be the face of Christ in the world.
Jesus’ commandment in the Gospel of John is just the beginning of how to be the face of Christ in the world.
“Where I am going, you cannot come. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Jesus is with the ones whom he has loved he becomes the example of love through service.
Through the washing of the disciple’s feet, Jesus shows that no one is greater than another. God’s love for each of us is no different than His love for another. We are equal.
Peter wanting to show his love and obedience says, “not only my feet, but my hands and my head”.
But Jesus doesn’t.
Jesus only does what is necessary.
In receiving service we are to be humble, receiving only what we need.
Like Jesus, when we give, we are to give with love and humility.
While Jesus will not be with the disciples, and we may not always feel that he is with us, we are assured of his presence through acts of love, both given and received.
I know I have been made more aware of this through our Lenten discipline of service.
This discipline has changed me.
Instead of plodding through my day in a vacuum, consumed with the things I have yet to do, I took the opportunity to recognize the many people who are the face of God, as well as the people who yearn for the love of God in their lives.
While I provided acts of service/kindness to those who were in apparent need, my focus was to be more present to people I met or passed by.
These people did not appear to be in need. Some looked lost in thought, some had a furrowed brow, others seemed to have a vacant expression and others met my gaze offering a greeting before I could even acknowledge them.
I won’t go in to detail about my encounters but I will say that I have learned that God’s love is not to be taken lightly, nor is it a love that we have the flexibility to share only with those who are close to us or with those we perceive to be in need. It is a gift that
is to be shared by all.
Through that gift of love we build relationships with one another in community and in the world becoming a part of God’s intended creation.
Let us Bless the Lord for the gifts of service and love.
Thanks be to God.
Palm Sunday
April 13, 2014
Trinity Church Hartford
The Rt. Rev. Andrew Smith
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord, God of our salvation, that we may enter with open hearts upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby you have given us life and immortality, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Biblical witness says that, in spite of the outburst from Peter, Jesus took his followers far away from home, south from Galilee along the length of the Jordan Valley, through Jericho, and then up to take on the powers of Jerusalem.
For Jews, and Jesus and his followers were Jews, Jerusalem was the absolute center of the world. The City of (King) David. Home of MountZion, where God permitted Solomon to be the first to build God a house. For a thousand years, that mountain had been the place of God’s dwelling, God’s home on earth, and therefore the center for all worship and learning.
In Jesus’ day, the Temple area had been rebuilt by Herod the Great: on the expanded mountaintop its area now encompassed the equivalent of thirty football fields. Retaining walls covered in gleaming white marble. Monumental staircases leading up from the valley below. Colonnades and courts. The huge sacrificial altar. And the Temple itself, looming over everything, of white marble and adorned with gold. Thousands and thousands gathering daily in the Temple courtyards. Such a stunning contrast to the villages of Galilee; the disciples were overawed; it must have been their first visit there as a school, the disciples of Jesus.. To the center of the world.
It was the time of Passover, the annual solemn festival of remembrance of how God in Egypt passed over the houses of the Israelites during the slaughter of the firstborn of every human and animal.
So, huge crowds were gathering in Jerusalem; the population of the city swelled; there was the crowded chaos of visitors and the marketplace and troublemakers, especially those who wanted now to throw off Roman oppression as their ancestors had thrown off Egyptian oppression. Rebellions had been constant; Judea was perhaps the toughest Roman province to govern in all the empire. Retribution was swift, without trial, sure, and ugly.It was the time of the Jews’ central festival, and the festival was a time for trouble.
In Jerusalem was the highest religious authority and power also. It was there that sat the Sanhedrin, the elite, Jewish collaborators who were appointed by the occupying Romans and given authority to decide and rule for the people. They had heard of Jesus from the north, and were on their guard.
And the Roman Prefect for Judea was there in the city then, too, because of Passover, to keep order at all costs. Normally the he would have been at his home on the coast, in the magnificent (pagan) city of Caesarea Maritima, but, knowing the tensions and the things that could happen at Passover, Pontius Pilate too was in Jerusalem, to oversee the Antonian Guard which was on red alert
Jerusalem at Passover: Into this explosive mélange, Jesus came. He didn’t just arrive: he ARRIVED.
The Mount of Olives is along a high ridge to the east of the city of Jerusalem; it’s higher than the city, higher than the TempleMount. From there one can look down, over Jerusalem, below. It’s the ridge from which they say invading generals and kings controlled sieges of Jerusalem, and from which they rode in victory processions down into the KidronValley and up to the city, to claim it as their own.
So it was that Jesus, having ascended the desert road from Jericho, looked over the city from the top of the Mount of Olives – some say he wept for what was to happen -- and then, like invaders of past centuries, he rode on a donkey down the mountain and up to Jerusalem to claim his place as a triumphant king.
What was he thinking?
I think there must have been some advance work for that day by the disciples. Had they set up a prior “code word” understanding with owner of the donkey? Who put out the word and mustered the crowd?
I wonder what were the disciples thinking, each of them, as Jesus of Nazareth, carpenter’s son, , improbably trotting along, surrounded by disciple body guards, some of them armed. as a conquering king, headed directly down in an assault on Jerusalem? Were they caught up in the moment, believing the new kingdom really was about to happen? Did they again hope for and expect the fire from heaven? Did they have doubts and foreboding about what was in reality inevitable?
The crowds. What were the crowds thinking? They were shouting to Jesus, “Hosanna” which being interpreted means, “Save us.” O mighty king, Save us. Were they serious? Were some joining this little procession as a lark, a joke, mocking, having fun at Jesus’ expense? Shouts, palm branches and cloaks – a royal carpet -- laid out before him. Were some maybe caught up in the fervor, hoping? Some just not sure what it all was about?
And the Pharisees, pushing in, demanding that Jesus hush the throng and to call off the charade: what were they thinking? That this is too ridiculous? Blasphemous? That unless they managed to stop this shouting and waving of palms, the merciless might of Rome would descend on them all? Were they concerned that Jesus was signing a death warrant for them all?
Down into the Kidron Valley went the procession, up the hill to the TempleMount. As they approached the Temple, Jesus created another scene as he waded into the market where the sacrificial animals were sold, and where currency was exchanged for payment of the Temple tax, and – John says with a whip he made – upended the money tables and chased out animals, and loudly condemned the buying and selling in the holy place. He began to heal the blind and lame. Little children crowded around and took up the cry, “Hosanna!” “Mighty King, Save us.” The chief priests and scribes were now also furious, and more so as Jesus stood up to them and answered them back.
Quixotic demonstration? Absurdity? Passion? Ugly confrontation? Danger? Jesus walking into the valley of the shadow of death? Truth? Yes, to all.
Would you have gone along with him? As a follower of Jesus?
He asked it, expected it, of them that day.
Will we go along with him today?
Wherever he leads, with him, may we go, our Hosannas, like theirs, ringing clear.
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord, God of our salvation, that we may enter upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby you have given us life and immortality, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
ARCH STUART
I didn’t know what to make of him at first. That was early in 1985, when I had arrived in Manchester to become Rector of Saint Mary’s Church.
Once every three weeks Arch Stuart showed up at church, and informed me he was the person “on” that Sunday to lead worship as a Lay Reader of Saint Mary’s at Manchester Manor convalescent home. I didn’t know who he was, didn’t know where he came from, but every three weeks he was there, Arch Stuart, never missing a beat.
Later, when I was serving as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Connecticut, he was there also. This time as a member of the diocesan Social Concerns and Witness Committee. Again, never missing a meeting. Often quiet, frequently insistent, usually presenting a cause, or a paper, or a petition, or a letter to the legislature or governor; and usually finding those meetings with the committee-that-didn’t-do-what-he hoped, frustrating.
I still didn’t know what to make of him.
He would drop by Diocesan House, and push in to our lives as bishops with one agendum and then another, asking, no, directing, us to address in the public forum the issues he identified.
I learned from one graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Social Work that Professor Stuart was “a clear-eyed progressive, always positive and energetic.”
In the course of time, Arch and I came to know each other, better. He talked about his family. We talked. I listened. He was forthright, yes? with his perspectives, opinions, and my responses seemed to glance off him like raindrops on a highly polished car.
His cause was social justice, complete, pure, simple.
We shared very human moments, such as the time in 1996 when he was heartsick over the “Welfare Reform” push – and the consequent “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act” which President Clinton signed in to law, which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program in effect since 1935. Arch was devastated, absolutely devastated, by that act of Congress and the President’s signature. “My whole life’s work and belief in social welfare has been torn apart, destroyed.”
Arch was immensely proud of his relationship with the Anglican Church in Australia, especially with Archbishop Keith Rayner, whose letter Don read a few minutes ago. Every time he returned from his annual, beloved trip to Australia, he was eager to tell of his meetings and conversations.
There was loneliness. And there was the cancer too. And the strokes. Then there was a new light in his eyes, a greater energy in his presence. Alice Custer, that was you; you were the source of that. Arch and Alice were married, and both their lives were blessed. It was so good to see them, him – outside of agenda, in their home, surrounded by his paintings, Arch with a smile. Yes.
Here at Trinity, when Kate and I returned after my retirement, here Arch was again. Present in Sunday worship as often as he could be, and that was very regularly, because of its importance to him and in the later years supported by members who talked with him here, called, visited, and ferried him back and forth. Thank you!
Yet, again, I didn’t know what to make of him. He was unrelentingly opposed to intercessory prayer, where we ask God to do things, which we do here in worship every Sunday. He was dissatisfied with the witness of the Church in the public arena. He opposed the creation of Trinity Episcopal Day School here at Trinity. And yet he was here, with his walker, participating, receiving communion, week in, week out.
It wasn’t until I dug out the several monographs he had given me years ago, and also began to read Arch’s 2012 book, “Putting Universal Human Rights to Work” that it all began to come together. Here’s some of what he reveals in those writings.
Arch was twelve when his father was stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease. His father died less than two years later, when Arch must have been fourteen. During those two years a family member paid a specialized minister to come to read to his father from a book on spiritual healing so he would get control and overcome the disease. Arch saw the minister as exploitative, as he wrote, “to pretend that he had healing powers and to accept pay for this.” And, where from this man was the care for the rest of the family?
From that time Arch had a very clear, unshakeable conviction of the inefficacy of intercessory prayer, embraced in his theology that God would not wait and bargain with those God loves. Not all prayer; Arch did write prayers: just prayer in which we try to convince God to do something -- outrageous, or miraculous.
In a draft paper on Hospice, in which he argues that its ministry is only special because “we” don’t provide equivalent ministry at other times in living, he again takes a swipe at bargaining prayer, and he raises the case for euthanasia; and – interesting -- he also envisions a practice where the person near death and friends and family gather for a service of recognition, in which all could reaffirm their faith in a loving God and in the power of the Resurrection.
Above all it is in the book that Arch takes an encyclopedic look at The World, especially at the economic, political, religious and social orders in that world, as he pours out a lifetime of observation, experience, thinking, analysis, and prescriptive admonition – “there needs to be” is a frequent phrase throughout the book – for all who would read. He was a dyed-in-the-wool John Maynard Keynesian, painting the macroeconomic picture, and clearly in these later days swimming against the tide in the current political and cultural throes which afflict America.
Social liberalism trumps laissez-faire conservatism (he refused to use the label “free-market conservatives”). Civil rights must check civil liberties. Macroeconomics is more important than microeconomics. Nonmarket exchange (concerned with the welfare of all) must be cherished as much as market exchange (requiring that everyone makes it or not on his or her own). Unions shops are workers’ major recourse to the concentration of power and wealth among those who own or control resources. For Arch the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a foundational document.
Unvarying, social liberalism.
Religion, his faith in God, also formed Arch Stuart as a scholar and writer and advocate. Throughout his papers and the book, are references to teachings, from both testaments of the Bible and especially the gospels, and from the Book of Common Prayer which we use today.
He was a modern voice for the old Social Gospel, a movement in Christianity from early in the last century for social justice, which, keenly reading the whole Bible, saw that God’s will extends beyond the redemption of the individual, but also includes the whole of cultures and societies.
The landowner who hired people at different hours, some for only one hour, and paid them all the same wage? Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living: Arch, referring to that teaching, wrote, Jesus knew that.
Think of the Good Samaritan, who gave health care in the desert to the man who had been robbed not because he deserved it or had insurance, but because he was in need.
Recall the Gospel lesson we ready this morning – about God’s judgment with the sheep on one side, the goats on the other. We tend to see each “side” as a collection of virtuous or non-virtuous individuals. The gospel talks about gathering “the nations.” The social gospel also can see each group as a whole culture – the United States, for example, all of us, judged, on whether we cared for the poor, the hungry, the sick. Are we Sheep? Or Goats?
He has been one of a kind. He pushed on, in the worst of times. And yet he is but one of our kind: a person moved by experience, thought, faith – who like all of us lived equal with others before God and was loved equally by God in God’s justice. That moral vision is something huge to strive for, as we are reminded as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
And in that loving justice, we believe that God has brought Arch Stuart, as God intends for each of us, through this life and into a life far greater than we can ask or imagine. I hope in the new life there are some surprises for Arch: affirmation for those principles for which he lived his life? Maybe an active clearing house for intercessory prayer? Certainly a love that passes all understanding.
For us? Arch leaves us a clear legacy. That last afternoon in the hospital, he held our hands, tightly, as he tried to tell us some last things. Then he drifted into a deep sleep. Something from deep inside me moved me to say quietly, “Arch, we will carry on.”
To the glory of God and the well-being of all people. May it be so.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Lent 4 – Year A – March 30, 2014
1 Samuel 16:1-13 John 9:1-41
“I Can See Clearly Now”
It was a cold January evening about 6 or 7 years ago. It was the weekend of the Martin Luther King Birthday holiday and Debbie and I were on our way out to visit my college roommate at his farm out in central Pennsylvania. And, as I usually do for a long weekend, I was willing to drive late into the night on Friday in order to have the full day on Saturday at the farm. We had made this drive many times before and I knew the roads well, even the part of the highway that was under construction on those twisty turns around Wilkes-Barre.
On this particular night, however, a surprise awaited us. What was forecast to be 2 or 3 inches of light snow suddenly turned into a larger storm coming off the Great Lakes and there we found ourselves on Route 80 in the middle of Pennsylvania with no highway lighting, no guardrails to guide us, you couldn’t see the lines marking the lanes on the road, and the snow was falling so heavily that visibility seemed like almost zero. I found myself sometimes losing my bearings, having no sense of whether I was in the middle of the road or about to go off of it – whether to the left or the right I was not always sure. I found myself trying to follow the stray car or truck in front of me – probably on the theory that we were better off being stranded with others than all alone. I realized that in many ways I was virtually driving blind – able to see almost nothing, having no sense of distance or depth, having no visual points of reference to assist me in knowing where I was.
Now, of course I have never shared this with Debbie – this is the first time she is hearing me say this – but that drive was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I can’t really remember a time when I felt quite as frantic and vulnerable as I did that night. We did arrive safely and soundly at my friend’s house, albeit several hours later than expected.
The Lesson from the First Book of Samuel and the Gospel this morning each have something to say about sight and blindness, seeing and not seeing so I would like to spend a few moments exploring what they have to say about the subject and how it relates to us.
Let’s look first at Samuel. He’s having a whole lot of problems seeing a lot of things. First, he is having a problem seeing that King Saul is no longer in the Lord’s favor. He is blind to the fact that Saul hasn’t lived up to expectations, that circumstances have changed and God is ready to move on. “How long will you grieve over Saul?” the Lord asks him. Get over it! Go to Jesse the Bethlehemite and you will find my choice for the new king there.
The next thing that Samuel can’t see is a clear pathway to doing the thing that the Lord wants him to do. “How can I go?” he asks God. “If Saul hears of it he will kill me!” Samuel isn’t sure how this game will play out and isn’t prepared to put himself at risk to find out. So the Lord lays out a plan for him and to invite Jesse and his family to the sacrifice.
The third area in which Samuel is blind is in the criteria by which God will select the next king of Israel. As soon as Samuel lays eyes on the first son, Eliab, he says to himself, “Surely this is the one. This is the Lord’s anointed one.” But the Lord says, “Not so fast.” And then God admonishes Samuel about God’s standards: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” And so the procession continues: As Jesse calls up each successive son, the Lord tells Samuel, “No.” Finally, when the Lord has seemingly rejected everyone offered, Samuel has to ask Jesse if there are any more sons. And of course, there is David left – David, the youngest, whom Jesse didn’t even deem fit to come to the sacrifice, but left him tending the sheep. And of course, this is the one that the Lord chooses and instructs Samuel to anoint.
Our Gospel is on the surface the story about a man who was blind from birth and his parents, about Jesus and his disciples and about the Pharisees. Applying an ancient understanding of sin – a notion that regrettably still has some currency even today – Jesus’ disciples and the Pharisees all assume that this blind man is blind because of sin – either something that he himself has done or something that his parents have done prior to his birth. But Jesus rejects that argument head on. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus replies. Jesus says pretty clearly that he is less interested in being in the business of locating and labelling sinners than he is of working with others in a way that God’s works might be revealed in and through them.
When the once blind man is asked to offer his own testimony, his response is that he doesn’t know a whole lot about sin but he does know about results: He was blind and now he sees. It kind of reminds you of Jesus’ response when John the Baptist’s disciples come to him to ask him if he is the Messiah. He doesn’t answer directly, but he tells them to look at the results and judge for themselves.
In his interaction with Jesus, the once blind man is asked by our Lord if he believes in the Son of Man. Again he disclaims knowledge – I’m no theologian, he seems to say, but I would like to believe. When Jesus tells him that it is he, the man immediately responds, “Lord, I believe.” And here is the great irony: The man who was once blind can see what Jesus’ critics and even his own disciples cannot yet see. Once again, God turns the tables on our own conventional wisdom.
Both the Old Testament lesson and the Gospel direct our attention to the stark differences between the way God sees and the way we see. In Samuel, the issue is what we look like – the tallest and handsomest is not always the best choice for King. The Lord advises Samuel that he looks at what’s on the inside, in the heart, not what’s on the outside. In the Gospel, the issue is once again outward appearances, but this time the conventional wisdom is that lack of perfection represents the judgment of God. And once again, the Lord’s response, this time coming from Jesus, is that God looks to the heart, what’s on the inside, and not what’s on the outside. The man’s blindness is not caused by sin, nor does his blindness or the fact that he has been a beggar make him any less valuable in God’s eyes. Quite the opposite. Jesus says in that wonderful verse 3, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
We could spend a lot of time focusing on the self-righteousness of the Pharisees and the presumptiveness of the disciples, and the irony that the very ones who are so convinced that they alone can see are the ones who Jesus calls blind. But I invite you instead to reflect on this aspect of the importance of seeing clearly: Recognizing that each one of us – no matter what we look like, no matter what we do, no matter our station in life – which each and every one of us is born with qualities that allow God’s works to be revealed in us.
So often we are unable to see that. Blindness can be caused by a lot of factors. Of course there is actual, physical blindness, like that of the blind beggar. That’s what we think of as blindness. But the inability to see can be caused by other factors – pride, self-righteousness and arrogance, for example, attitudes that close the eye of our minds or our hearts – these can blind us to seeing the truth about ourselves and others. Or sometimes – as was the case in my driving experience through the blizzard – we can’t see because there is so much other stuff getting in our way, hiding that which is right before our very eyes.
The story about Samuel doing the Lord’s work in helping to identify the new king can be helpful to us in two respects. First there is Samuel himself – he is having trouble seeing his own role and how he figures into what the Lord is doing. So the invitation is there to take stock of ourselves, of our own lives. How can we participate in what the Lord is doing? As it was for Samuel, this may involve some risk-taking: Perhaps it will involve going where we haven’t gone before; perhaps it will mean God is calling us to go outside of our comfort zone. The lesson in both of these stories is that God will both guide us and provide what we need.
Then there is Samuel in his role of identifying the new King. As we saw in the story, he doesn’t do this on his own – he is constantly guided by the Lord, but note this well: God’s selection of the new king required Samuel’s participation, his partnership with the Lord, allowing God’s purpose to be worked through him. Much like Samuel, we, too, can and should play an important role in identifying the God given gifts of others – how God’s works can be revealed in them. Sometimes we are unable to see in ourselves those things that God sees in us. This can be for all of the reasons I have already identified, like pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, and so on. More often than not, I think, it is because of factors such as lack of self-esteem or lack of confidence in our own God-given gifts. And, yes, sometimes we just don’t want to be bothered – sometimes, it’s easier not to know. The man in the Gospel story received his sight – that didn’t mean his life got less complex. For all of these reasons, we can be like Samuel and be God’s partner in identifying gifts in others and sharing with them what we see. Heaven knows they may not be able to recognize in themselves the many ways in which God’s works can be revealed in them. We can be a Samuel to others.
God is calling us this today to seeing in a new way – to see the way God sees and not the way we are used to seeing. This relates to the way we see the world around us and all of its creatures – it also relates to the way we see ourselves and those with whom we share fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ. As we celebrate today a milestone in our journey together, let us see ourselves – each and every one of us – as valued children of God who were placed here so that God’s works may be revealed in us. AMEN.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Lent 4 – Year A – March 30, 2014
1 Samuel 16:1-13 John 9:1-41
“I Can See Clearly Now”
It was a cold January evening about 6 or 7 years ago. It was the weekend of the Martin Luther King Birthday holiday and Debbie and I were on our way out to visit my college roommate at his farm out in central Pennsylvania. And, as I usually do for a long weekend, I was willing to drive late into the night on Friday in order to have the full day on Saturday at the farm. We had made this drive many times before and I knew the roads well, even the part of the highway that was under construction on those twisty turns around Wilkes-Barre.
On this particular night, however, a surprise awaited us. What was forecast to be 2 or 3 inches of light snow suddenly turned into a larger storm coming off the Great Lakes and there we found ourselves on Route 80 in the middle of Pennsylvania with no highway lighting, no guardrails to guide us, you couldn’t see the lines marking the lanes on the road, and the snow was falling so heavily that visibility seemed like almost zero. I found myself sometimes losing my bearings, having no sense of whether I was in the middle of the road or about to go off of it – whether to the left or the right I was not always sure. I found myself trying to follow the stray car or truck in front of me – probably on the theory that we were better off being stranded with others than all alone. I realized that in many ways I was virtually driving blind – able to see almost nothing, having no sense of distance or depth, having no visual points of reference to assist me in knowing where I was.
Now, of course I have never shared this with Debbie – this is the first time she is hearing me say this – but that drive was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I can’t really remember a time when I felt quite as frantic and vulnerable as I did that night. We did arrive safely and soundly at my friend’s house, albeit several hours later than expected.
The Lesson from the First Book of Samuel and the Gospel this morning each have something to say about sight and blindness, seeing and not seeing so I would like to spend a few moments exploring what they have to say about the subject and how it relates to us.
Let’s look first at Samuel. He’s having a whole lot of problems seeing a lot of things. First, he is having a problem seeing that King Saul is no longer in the Lord’s favor. He is blind to the fact that Saul hasn’t lived up to expectations, that circumstances have changed and God is ready to move on. “How long will you grieve over Saul?” the Lord asks him. Get over it! Go to Jesse the Bethlehemite and you will find my choice for the new king there.
The next thing that Samuel can’t see is a clear pathway to doing the thing that the Lord wants him to do. “How can I go?” he asks God. “If Saul hears of it he will kill me!” Samuel isn’t sure how this game will play out and isn’t prepared to put himself at risk to find out. So the Lord lays out a plan for him and to invite Jesse and his family to the sacrifice.
The third area in which Samuel is blind is in the criteria by which God will select the next king of Israel. As soon as Samuel lays eyes on the first son, Eliab, he says to himself, “Surely this is the one. This is the Lord’s anointed one.” But the Lord says, “Not so fast.” And then God admonishes Samuel about God’s standards: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” And so the procession continues: As Jesse calls up each successive son, the Lord tells Samuel, “No.” Finally, when the Lord has seemingly rejected everyone offered, Samuel has to ask Jesse if there are any more sons. And of course, there is David left – David, the youngest, whom Jesse didn’t even deem fit to come to the sacrifice, but left him tending the sheep. And of course, this is the one that the Lord chooses and instructs Samuel to anoint.
Our Gospel is on the surface the story about a man who was blind from birth and his parents, about Jesus and his disciples and about the Pharisees. Applying an ancient understanding of sin – a notion that regrettably still has some currency even today – Jesus’ disciples and the Pharisees all assume that this blind man is blind because of sin – either something that he himself has done or something that his parents have done prior to his birth. But Jesus rejects that argument head on. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus replies. Jesus says pretty clearly that he is less interested in being in the business of locating and labelling sinners than he is of working with others in a way that God’s works might be revealed in and through them.
When the once blind man is asked to offer his own testimony, his response is that he doesn’t know a whole lot about sin but he does know about results: He was blind and now he sees. It kind of reminds you of Jesus’ response when John the Baptist’s disciples come to him to ask him if he is the Messiah. He doesn’t answer directly, but he tells them to look at the results and judge for themselves.
In his interaction with Jesus, the once blind man is asked by our Lord if he believes in the Son of Man. Again he disclaims knowledge – I’m no theologian, he seems to say, but I would like to believe. When Jesus tells him that it is he, the man immediately responds, “Lord, I believe.” And here is the great irony: The man who was once blind can see what Jesus’ critics and even his own disciples cannot yet see. Once again, God turns the tables on our own conventional wisdom.
Both the Old Testament lesson and the Gospel direct our attention to the stark differences between the way God sees and the way we see. In Samuel, the issue is what we look like – the tallest and handsomest is not always the best choice for King. The Lord advises Samuel that he looks at what’s on the inside, in the heart, not what’s on the outside. In the Gospel, the issue is once again outward appearances, but this time the conventional wisdom is that lack of perfection represents the judgment of God. And once again, the Lord’s response, this time coming from Jesus, is that God looks to the heart, what’s on the inside, and not what’s on the outside. The man’s blindness is not caused by sin, nor does his blindness or the fact that he has been a beggar make him any less valuable in God’s eyes. Quite the opposite. Jesus says in that wonderful verse 3, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
We could spend a lot of time focusing on the self-righteousness of the Pharisees and the presumptiveness of the disciples, and the irony that the very ones who are so convinced that they alone can see are the ones who Jesus calls blind. But I invite you instead to reflect on this aspect of the importance of seeing clearly: Recognizing that each one of us – no matter what we look like, no matter what we do, no matter our station in life – which each and every one of us is born with qualities that allow God’s works to be revealed in us.
So often we are unable to see that. Blindness can be caused by a lot of factors. Of course there is actual, physical blindness, like that of the blind beggar. That’s what we think of as blindness. But the inability to see can be caused by other factors – pride, self-righteousness and arrogance, for example, attitudes that close the eye of our minds or our hearts – these can blind us to seeing the truth about ourselves and others. Or sometimes – as was the case in my driving experience through the blizzard – we can’t see because there is so much other stuff getting in our way, hiding that which is right before our very eyes.
The story about Samuel doing the Lord’s work in helping to identify the new king can be helpful to us in two respects. First there is Samuel himself – he is having trouble seeing his own role and how he figures into what the Lord is doing. So the invitation is there to take stock of ourselves, of our own lives. How can we participate in what the Lord is doing? As it was for Samuel, this may involve some risk-taking: Perhaps it will involve going where we haven’t gone before; perhaps it will mean God is calling us to go outside of our comfort zone. The lesson in both of these stories is that God will both guide us and provide what we need.
Then there is Samuel in his role of identifying the new King. As we saw in the story, he doesn’t do this on his own – he is constantly guided by the Lord, but note this well: God’s selection of the new king required Samuel’s participation, his partnership with the Lord, allowing God’s purpose to be worked through him. Much like Samuel, we, too, can and should play an important role in identifying the God given gifts of others – how God’s works can be revealed in them. Sometimes we are unable to see in ourselves those things that God sees in us. This can be for all of the reasons I have already identified, like pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, and so on. More often than not, I think, it is because of factors such as lack of self-esteem or lack of confidence in our own God-given gifts. And, yes, sometimes we just don’t want to be bothered – sometimes, it’s easier not to know. The man in the Gospel story received his sight – that didn’t mean his life got less complex. For all of these reasons, we can be like Samuel and be God’s partner in identifying gifts in others and sharing with them what we see. Heaven knows they may not be able to recognize in themselves the many ways in which God’s works can be revealed in them. We can be a Samuel to others.
God is calling us this today to seeing in a new way – to see the way God sees and not the way we are used to seeing. This relates to the way we see the world around us and all of its creatures – it also relates to the way we see ourselves and those with whom we share fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ. As we celebrate today a milestone in our journey together, let us see ourselves – each and every one of us – as valued children of God who were placed here so that God’s works may be revealed in us. AMEN.
Sermon for Lent 3A, March 23, 2014
Marie Alford-Harkey
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
John 4:4-42
"Boundary Lines"
Goodness, but we humans love to draw categorize people, don’t we? Christians/Non-Christians. Republicans/Democrats. Liberals/Conservatives. Pro-this/Anti-that. Progressive/Evangelical. Fortunate/Less fortunate. Samaritans/Jews. We like to put people in boxes, with nice neat labels because once we know how to categorize someone, we know all we need to know about them. But the problem with human beings is, they crawl out of those damn boxes.
In the New Testament, Samaritans are a group that is looked down on and despised by the Jews. And yet, Samaritans were very similar to Jews; they were descended from two of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were monotheists. They worshipped the same God as the Jews. But the differences were significant as well. The Samaritans only the Torah (the first five books of the bible), where the Jews followed the much more detailed holiness codes set out in books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Samaritans claimed Mount Gerizim as their holy place, while the Jews claimed Jerusalem.
Jews referred to Samaritans as, “half-Jews.” Jews wouldn’t even walk through Samaria in their travels. They didn’t talk to or associate with Samaritans.
Thank goodness that Christians don’t treat other Christians that way today, huh?
So the fact that the woman at the well was a Samaritan certainly separated her from Jesus in some significant ways. The fact that she was a woman was another barrier between her and Jesus. Jewish Rabbis in Jesus’ day certainly didn’t hang out at wells talking to women. We see that when we get to the disciples thoughts about what the heck their Rabbi is doing talking to a woman.
But the story gets more interesting when we listen in on the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, because then we realize that the Samaritan woman is not staying in her box as an outcast begging to be accepted. Rather she is very much an equal conversation partner with Jesus, and she ends up being a powerful apostle.
When Jesus asks her for water, she asks him very directly, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
When he starts talking about living water, she boldly asks him where he thinks he’s going to get such water since he doesn’t even have a bucket. And she doesn’t apologize for being a Samaritan, but instead claims her tradition proudly and asks Jesus if he is greater than Jacob.
Jesus doesn’t answer that question, but talks more about the living water, and how those receive it will never thirst again. She asks for this water – who wouldn’t want never to be thirsty again, never to have to carry the heavy water jug in the heat of the day.
Jesus finally reveals to her that he is not talking about water to drink. He tells her to go call her husband. She answers him promptly and truthfully, saying, “I have no husband.”
And he replies, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.’” Note well that nothing in his answer implies blame or shame about this fact.
There are many possible explanations for this woman’s husband situation. She may have been trapped in cycle of levirate marriage, in which, if a woman’s husband died, she had marry the next male in the family line. It’s possible that she was infertile, which was grounds for divorce for men, and so she might have been “passed” from one man to another. Women in Jesus’ culture and time could not survive without a male protector, so it would have been dangerous for her to be on her own.
These facts about her husbands were just that, facts. Jesus doesn’t judge those facts or this woman. The writer of the gospel who recounts this story seems to have only one reason for telling this detail, and it’s not to show that she’s a “sinner.”
Instead, it’s to show that this is how the woman comes to see who Jesus really is. As she will tell others later, he tells her everything about her life. Because he does so, she realizes that he is a prophet, someone with special knowledge from God.
And when she realizes this, she asks him about the most pressing theological question that plagued the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. She asks him where God should be worshipped. She says, “Our ancestors worshipped God on this mountain, but you Jews say God is to be worshipped in Jerusalem.”
Surprisingly, Jesus tells her that the place where God is worshipped doesn’t matter because the day is coming, no the day is already here, when worship is liberated from any particular place and instead reoriented it toward spirit and truth.
And she gets it. She understands that the day that is coming, the day when spirit and truth are more important than place, is the day of the Messiah, and she tells Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming who will proclaim everything to us.”
And Jesus tells her: I am he.
She believes him. She understands what she has heard and learned there at the well and she runs away, leaving her valuable water jar behind. She hurries back to Sychar and tells her fellow Samaritans that she has met a man who “told me everything I have ever done.” Come and see, she tells them. This might be the Messiah.
The Samaritans were persuaded by the woman’s testimony, and many of them believed that he was the Messiah. So they invited Jesus to dwell among them. And he did. He went and stayed with the despised Samaritans for two days, and many more people believed. Those who came to believe told the woman, now it’s not just because of what you said, but because we gave heard for ourselves and we know that this is the savior of the world.
This is what it means to be an apostle. We invite people to come and have their own experience of Jesus. And when they do, we discover that Jesus, as always, is present with the very people that we are inviting in, that we have deemed to be outside our borders.
I saw this border crossing in action on Friday, when George and I presented workshops at True Colors, the largest conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the country. It happens every year just up the road at the University of Connecticut. It’s focused on youth and thousands of high school students come, as do lots of college students and adults: teachers, therapists, parents, social workers, and even religious leaders.
George’s workshop was called “queering the bible.” He began it by reminding the participants that we all bring our own experiences when we read the bible, and then he shared some of the interpretations of biblical stories that have been meaningful for him. I watched as young peoples’ eyes lit up at the thought that they could bring have their own experiences of God in which their sexual orientation wasn’t a barrier in their relationship with God, but rather an enhancement of it.
This is such a powerful message for anyone who has felt the sting of rejection from religion.
I still remember the first time I read myself in the bible. When I began to come out as a lesbian, I was just beginning to make my way back to the church after a very long hiatus from Christianity. And I thought well, that’s that. I can’t possibly be a Christian – I’m a lesbian. Then I learned from folks in the LGBT community that there were, in fact, Christian churches and religious leaders who did not believe that being a lesbian was a sin.
I was skeptical. I had 15 years of a different kind of Christianity in my history. It was hard for me to believe that God really loved me – all of me, which included my love for and attraction to women. I went to a welcoming church – my hunger for God was great – but deep down I always believed that we were just fooling themselves. Surely God didn’t really love us lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people just as we were. Surely God wanted us to be different.
I heard educated clergy talk about how queer people could see themselves in biblical stories, and sayings, much like George did at the workshop on Friday. I heard them proclaim Jesus’ boundless love. But I didn’t really believe it. I thought that these readings of the bible were far-fetched, that there was no way that the bible was “really” mean for people like me. Until suddenly it was.
I was in a very low place – feeling lonely, and isolated, and deeply sad – and out of nowhere, the words of Psalm 139 came to me – “God, you formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” And somehow, I knew that those words were about me – all of me. Not because I was “born this way” – I have no idea if sexual orientation is genetic or not – but because all of me, my sexuality, my brain, my body – all of me is precious to God. I saw myself in scripture. I saw myself inside the bounds of God’s love.
My own experience of God was nurtured by priests and pastors who invited me to come and experience Jesus for myself. They were patient with me while I struggled to believe that I was not outside Jesus’ boundaries. And when I finally, deeply knew that God’s love really did include me, like the Samaritan woman, I was able to invite my people in to experience him.
When I was a high school teacher and gay-straight alliance advisor back in the Midwest, it was a common occurrence for gay kids to would come to me, crying, and ask me if they were going to hell like their pastors told them. Out of my own experience of Jesus’ boundless love, I could tell them no, and invite them to experience Jesus for themselves. I sat in the halls of a public high school and recounted stories of Jesus to these kids, stories like this one of the Samaritan woman, to help them toward their own experience of Jesus.
On Friday, I listened to a panel of UConn students talking about how their coming out journeys were influenced by their faith – a couple of Christians, a Hindu, and a Jew. What struck me was that these young people were not apologizing for their experience of the divine. They weren’t humbly asking for a place in their faith. They were claiming their place. They were confident that their experiences of God were valid experiences, and they were happy to share those with others.
The thing is, we can’t limit peoples’ experience of God. When we go and tell people about Jesus, and invite them experience Jesus for themselves, we have to let go of what that experience will be like for them. There’s no one way to read the bible or experience Jesus because there is no one way to be human.
When we are in the company of people who are experiencing Jesus for themselves, we are very fortunate indeed. For we are being allowed to see more and more glimpses of the face of God. The Samaritan woman at the well teaches us that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ love. We draw the boundaries. God erases them. Amen.
March 16, 2014
Trinity Church, Hartford
Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
“The Spiritual Dimension of Gun Violence”
In a violence prone society awash with guns I, as a teacher, have to ask the following question: when is it okay for me to shoot a student?
You might well be appalled by the audacity of this question. But in an armed society in which self-defense, and the ownership and use of guns, are legal rights to which I am entitled, shouldn’t I have the right to arm myself against a potentially homicidal student who thinks I have done him or her wrong, such as giving a lower grade than they think they deserve? And since we all have the right to be armed, wouldn’t it be prudent for me to bring a gun to class and to my office in case I’m challenged by a student who intends to do me grievous harm with a gun he or she might be packing?
I’m prompted to raise these questions because of a provocative op-ed piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago by Greg Hampikian, a college professor in Idaho who asked this precise question: “When May I Shoot a Student?” Hampikian teaches in a state that permits students and faculty to carry licensed guns to class. As he says, he used to carry a pen to class and when disgruntled students came to class armed only with pencils, he did not feel outgunned. But now he has asked the chief counsel of the Idaho State Legislature for instruction in the rules of classroom engagement. When an angry student reaches into his backpack how does a teacher know he is going for a paper or a pencil rather than a lethal weapon? Is my fear that he might be reaching for a gun a sufficiently strong ‘stand your ground’ situation that I should have a right to shoot first out of fear that my life is in danger? If hearing loud, so-called, thug music led a man in Florida to kill yet another young black man out of fear, then surely I’m entitled to shoot a student who has already signaled by his angry facial expression as he approaches me that he intends to do me harm.
In Connecticut our gun laws are a bit stronger than those in Idaho, a state which seems to replicating the old West mentality in which virtually everyone went around armed. But while we don’t have a stand your ground law here it is not hard to imagine a legal defense in the case of a shooting based on one’s fear that he suspected someone else of intending to harm him by a gun or a knife.
In fact, in a society in which the possession of a gun is a legal right, some have suggested the only way to curb gun violence is to require everyone to be armed. The presumption is that if we are all armed to the teeth no one will threaten anyone else for fear of being shot down first.
Some of you may note that this is the second time I’ve preached on gun violence since the school massacre at Sandy Hook over a year ago. But two sermons on gun violence in more than a year don’t begin to compare to the number of actual incidents of gun violence during that same time period. Nearly 90% of the population owns guns, gun murders average over 25 per day, aggravated assault with a gun was around 138,000 in 2011, and suicides by gun were nearly 20,000 in 2010. Gun violence has not gone away. And my reason for preaching on it again this Sunday is that for many churches today is the last day of “Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath Weekend”.
There are two simple points I’d like to make on this issue as a Christian, as well as a citizen. First, our legal right to own guns ought not to be the only principle on which to establish a sane policy on their possession and use. And second, beyond the question of legal rights we have to address the spiritual dimension in ourselves in a culture which worships the false god of the Second Amendment. While we must as citizens seek to craft sane and workable laws for the protection of our people against gun violence, as Christians we must also draw upon the spiritual, moral, and psychological resources of our faith for dealing with a culture of violence and fear.
Our faith tells us that the law is not the basis of our identity as children of God. Paul says in this morning’s epistle to the Romans that our salvation does not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. And the Psalm reminds us that it is the Lord who will keep us safe because he watches over us day and night and will preserve us from all evil. The gospel reminds us that God was willing to give his only son over to death, through a brutal form of capital punishment, rather than use violence in self-defense against those who would put him to death.
Sane laws regarding guns are important and should be pursued through legislation and the judicial process. But good laws can only go so far in reaching the foundations of a violent society. No law is a perfect solution to complex social issues, no matter how much law is necessary in a society riven by factional and competing interests to keep them from being resolved violently. This is not to suggest that we should not continue the fight for sane gun laws but it is clear that they alone will not completely save us from ourselves. In the end reliance upon the gun is a deeply psychological and spiritual condition which reveals something of who we are deep down within. And the fight for legal sanity on guns has to face the political reality that Americans are not going to abandon what they regard as their sacred 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms (no matter how badly that right has been misinterpreted by the courts). But we already know through faith that true salvation does not come, as Paul says, through the law but through trust in God.
Therefore, what if, in addition to working for saner gun laws, we also began to appeal to the moral and spiritual consciences of our fellow citizens as well as of ourselves? Religious convictions are rooted in our consciences, the spiritual dimension of what it means to be human. We can speak to those convictions without being falsely accused of intruding upon the contested arena of politics. (I say this despite the fact that politics is a perfectly justified arena in which to implement our fundamental moral principles with respect to such profoundly moral issues as a living wage, health-care for all, ending poverty, saving the environment, ending sexual and racial discrimination, among other issues of fundamental social justice). But for the moment let us set aside politics and ask, as Christians: do we need to exercise our second amendment right to own guns? Do we even, more radically, need to exercise without qualification our right to self-defense by means of guns or other forms of violence?
Assuming the 2nd amendment will not be repealed in our lifetime let’s ask ourselves: just because I have a right to something, why should I exercise that right? Why do we need to own and use guns? There are only three basic answers: to kill animals in order to eat; to enjoy the sport of target shooting; and to protect my life and the lives of my family. The first two reasons are easily dealt with through regulation: very few people need to kill animals to eat – there are multiple alternative ways of securing food. Target shooting could also be done safely outside the home and in both cases the guns could be stored in a secure facility from which they could be withdrawn only with the proper identification. And this leaves us with self-defense.
Now I’m not going to suggest that Christians give up the possibility of protecting their lives and families by the threat to use violence on the suspected attacker. This is a vexed and controversial issue among Christians. But there are some Christians who have decided, in conscience, that it is better for their spiritual selves if they allow themselves to die rather than take another person’s life. This was certainly the case for Jesus who could have called upon divine power to kill those who were nailing him to the cross. But Jesus knew, and we can know it as well, that if we live chiefly in fear of losing our lives, if that is the worst fear we can imagine, then we become locked into the ever spiraling psychology of fear in which we convince ourselves that we have to use every means at our disposal to avoid the thing we fear the most, our death. We become trapped into the belief that everyone else is a potential enemy and that we need to guard against them by taking their lives before they take ours. But how far is this from the Christian understanding that we are all each other’s brothers and sisters?
Jesus came to reconcile us to each other because we were made one at creation. But we violated that oneness and fell into division and animosity in which the weapon of violence became the common tool we could use or threaten to use against each other. But if we have been reconciled to each other and to God by the saving act of Jesus Christ who gave his life for us why do we still rely upon the weapons of death? The psalm reminds us that it not we who will protect ourselves, but God. It is God, not the gun, who watches us over us and who will not fall asleep while we slumber without fear. It is the Lord, not the gun, who shall preserve us from all evil; it is God, not the weapons of death, who shall keep us safe from the kind of harm that will threaten the body and kill the soul.
Good laws may limit our access to guns but in the end it is only we, through our moral consciences and spiritual resources, who can rise above the need to exercise our legal right to a gun and to say, instead, I will trust my life and the lives of those I love to God. We can say this because God has demonstrated through Jesus that when the worst has been done to us, when we have paid the last full measure of devotion, our lives will go on, transformed through the resurrection that awaits us, and they will go in a heavenly state in which no gun is owned, no gun is drawn, no gun is needed to make our lives whole and healthy and without fear.
Keep if you must the right to own guns and to defend your life by their means, but, when possible and with the spirit of God working within you, pray to find the courage to rise above those rights and learn to live by divine grace and trust, not by the human law based on fear. That courage may be hard to come by but it is there for the taking if we are willing to give our lives over to God and not to the gun.
Lent 1 – Year A – March 9, 2014
Temptations: An Invitation to Grace
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 Matthew 4:1-11
One of the great quandaries of the time before Lent is deciding what to do for some type of Lenten “practice.” Some people feel like they need to give something up, some people eschew that practice in favor of something more classically “spiritual” and others choose to follow some combination of the two. The point of these practices, of course, is not to serve as ends in themselves, but to lead us into a deeper awareness of our own sinfulness – a deeper awareness of those aspects of our lives that draw us away from God – and out of that awareness, a longing for the deeper presence of God in our lives. And I’d like to encourage us to think of all of these practices as “prayer.”
I find that self-denial in the practice of giving up something is actually useful in helping to focus my other spiritual practices. And I will confess that as I consider before Lent what to give up, there is a more than coincidental focus on possibilities that involve food; and here I am not talking about raw carrots and kale. You see, I like there to be a secondary benefit, which almost always has to do with my constant desire to keep my weight down. So, mindful of this morning’s lessons from Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew, this year I have decided to give up the thing that presents the greatest temptation to me in terms of bad things to eat.
Cake. Those wonderful Italian rum cakes we get from Modern Pastry Shop whenever a staff member or office volunteer has a birthday. Bert Landman’s world-famous carrot cake. The Jamaican birthday cake we had last week for D.B.’s birthday – no, that was before Lent. There is something absolutely seductive to me about something that has a soft, cakey texture and is smothered with some type of sugary frosting. It doesn’t matter whether I’m hungry or not, whether I’m on a diet or not. I don’t even need to see it – I only need to know it’s there. It doesn’t matter if someone hides it in the kitchen instead of the staff refrigerator, or in a closet up on the second floor. If I simply know that it’s there -- that delectable, soft on the palate, sweet on the tongue wonderfulness – I will track it down and find it. And eat it.
Now, the relatively silly inner turmoil that I confront when it comes to cake is pretty benign when you compare it to the life-changing consequences resulting from the choices that Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. And let’s be clear: Temptations and acting upon them can and do change millions of lives, perhaps the most obvious example being in the context of addictions and addictive behavior. The story of Adam and Eve is in many ways the story of our human condition – what it means and what it looks like to live a finite, human life in the infinite grace of the One who created us. In fact the story begins with a statement of our human task and what its limits are: We are to till the Garden and keep it. We are called to serve as caretakers of God’s creation, a creation that we receive not as owners but only in trust.
And within that task, God gives us broad freedom in how to do that – there really aren’t a lot of rules or instructions that God provides. The freedom is wide, but it is not infinite. There is one thing we must not do, and if we do that one thing, we will die. But when the serpent gets Eve alone, he is able to subtly twist God’s words in a way that seem to make this one restriction arbitrary and capriciousness. What’s the matter, after all, with trying the fruit of this tree just once? And in Eve’s seemingly harmless dialogue with the serpent, the serpent strikes: You will not die, he says. God has forbidden the tree because God knows that eating from it will make you like God. . . And we know things go downhill from there for Adam and Eve.
In his classic work The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a Christian man – who is referred to only as “The Patient.” It is England during the second world war. The book is written as a collection of letters written by a senior devil, Screwtape, to a junior devil, Wormwood. Wormwood’s task as a junior devil is to be a companion to the patient and to perfect the art of temptation, with the ultimate goal being that at his death, the patient will not fall into the clutches of The Enemy, who, of course, is God, and will instead presumably wind up with Wormwood and Screwtape and their father in Hell. One of the points of this short book is to demonstrate the subtleties and nuances by which our human nature can with so little effort convert even the goodness that God has given us into occasions of evil that can be the first baby steps toward lives that turn us away from God.
In the 9th letter, Screwtape observes that it is the “dry” or “dull” or “trough” periods of human life that provide the most fertile opportunities for all sensual temptations. Screwtape writes, “You are much more likely to make your man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as a painkiller when he is dull and weary than by encouraging him to use it as a means of merriment among his friends when he is happy.” And then he adds:
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it’s better style. To get the man’s soul and give him nothingin return – that is what really gladdens Our Father’s heart. And the troughs are the time for beginning the process. (pp. 41-42).
And that’s the devilish thing about temptation, isn’t it? It is a part of our nature that takes all of the good things that God has provided us and turns them to destructive – often self-destructive – purposes. It turns the joyful task of tilling and keeping a beautiful garden, with our every human need met, seem like a bore. It makes the gift of virtually unlimited freedom seem like a prison cell when only one thing is restricted from our grasp. We can relate, I think, to the situation of Adam and Eve.
The situation of Jesus, on the other hand, may seem a little remote to us. None of us, I am willing to venture, have been totally deprived of food for forty days and then offered bread, and many of us have never really known the experience of being hungry and literally knowing where our next meal is coming from. We can learn from those in our midst who have known that situation. And I am also willing to guess that most of us have ever been threatened with being thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge in New York or the Prudential Building in Boston or some similar place. And I know that none of us – no matter our station in life – has even been offered power to rule the world. But each of us understand the temptations of Screwtape and Wormwood: materialism, thinking either too much or too little of ourselves, envy of others, a lack of thankfulness for the good things we have been given, selfishness, a failure to reconcile ourselves to the goodness of God and the creation which we have inherited, to name only a few. We can suffer temptation in relation to matters that are not sensual. In the words of my divinity school friend and colleague, Maryetta Anschutz:
Temptation comes to us in moments when we look at others and feel insecure about not having enough. Temptation comes in judgments we make about strangers or friends who make choices we do not understand. Temptation rules us, making us able to look away from those in need and to live our lives unaffected by poverty, hunger and disease. Temptation rages in moments when we allow our temper to define our lives or when addiction to wealth, power, and influence over others, vanity, or an inordinate need for control defines who we are. Temptation wins when we engage in the justification of little lies, or [so-called] “small” sins, [laughing at a joke at the expense of others].... a criticism of a spouse or a partner or a friend when he or she is not around. Temptation wins when we get so caught up in the trappings of life that we lose sight of life itself. These are the faceless moments of evil that, while mundane, lurk in the recesses of our lives and our souls.
Lenten penitence engages the dark places in our lives that we may come face to face with them, name them, understand them, and seek forgiveness for them. It is not about guilt. It is about freedom from the control that our fears and insecurities have over us all, about the amendment of life and new beginnings.
As we begin this Lent, let us enter with this spirit. Recalling Jesus’ admonition on Ash Wednesday, keep our motivations pure that they and not desire for glory may lead us. If it helps you to give something up, then do so. But let’s be sure that Lent become more than giving up cake. Whatever practice it is you are choosing to assist you in overcoming the temptations of life during this season, I pray that they will draw you more deeply into relationship with your Creator, who is the one who leads us into freedom and new life in the resurrected Christ. Amen.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ash Wednesday, 2014
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
My divinity school friend Maryetta Anschutz tells the story of touring the cathedrals of England with her parents as a young child. She was fascinated with the tin alms boxes that were on the walls, and she delighted in dropping a coin in them. When she did so, she loved the clanging noise that it made, and loved watching other people in the cathedral turn their heads to see what the noise was all about – and to discover that it was about her.
Then one day she noticed a lady approach one of the boxes, apparently on her daily visit to the cathedral. She dropped in a paper bill, and alas, made no sound. No one else turned around to notice that an offering had been deposited into the box. The bill, she realized, had far greater value than her small coin, and yet fell silently, like a feather from the sky. No one recognized the gift – only God, she supposed.
For the past several weeks our Sunday Gospel has led us through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as related by Matthew. On this Ash Wednesday, the passage has Jesus turning to the subject of personal piety. That is fitting, because in this season we are asked to focus particularly on how we maintain our relationship with God through prayer. He starts with a general principle: Good works are done privately for the love and honor of God, not publicly to attract the attention and admiration of other people. And he uses three specific examples of good deeds or acts of devotion that would have been familiar to his Jewish audience: the giving of alms, prayer and fasting.
Jesus assumes his audience already does these things; his purpose in reviewing them is to draw their attention to their own motives in practicing them. As was the case in his earlier discussion of the summary of the Law, Jesus is more concerned with the inner, spiritual dimension of these acts than the outward evidence.
Somewhat ironically, our lectionary, in its attempt to make this point, skips over 10 verses of this chapter, and they happen to be Jesus lesson on how to pray – the prayer that we know as the Lord’s prayer. And in skipping over this prayer, we may easily miss a central point that Jesus is making.
In that prayer, we ask God to provide us with our daily needs. “Give us this day our daily bread.” The season of Lent can provide us with a special time to reflect on how generous our God is, and to contrast that with the frequency, and the generosity with which we give back to God. And in the very next phrase, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In seeking God’s forgiveness, we can reflect on how many times we have asked and received God’s forgiveness, and compare that to the number of times and ways that we have failed to be reconciled with our brother or our sister, or with the good creation that God has given us.
This entire section of the Gospel of Matthew, then, gives us an opportunity to reflect on our relationships with God, and our relationships with one another. During this season of Lent, our Outreach Committee has provided us with a template for addressing both. We invite you to join us in a season of prayer as we ourselves renew our relationship with our Creator. And we invite you to join us in building up our relationships with one another and to all those with whom we come into contact in acts of service and human kindness. On the information tables you will find a purple sheet which contains a calendar and some initial suggestions for acts of human kindness. We invite you to journal your seasonal acts of kindness on your calendar – they may serve as a useful reference as we pass from Lent to Eastertide. Along with whatever other prayer or devotions you may find useful during Lent, consider your acts of kindness as yet another dimension of your prayer life.
Our Lenten journey is a beginning, not an end in itself. I invite you to a Holy Lent, not because it is what we think we are supposed to do at this time of year, but so that we can more fully know that to grow in relationship with our God who sees and knows in secret is what leads us into life. AMEN.
Sermon Delivered Sunday, February 23rd, 2014, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Matthew 5:38-48
The Rev. George A. Chien
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
In the Name of God, who Creates, Redeems, and Sustains our lives. Amen.
Today’s Gospel contains a verse which has come, for me, to encapsulate something at the core of Christianity. At the heart, at the foundation of Jesus’ message, is this image of God’s all-encompassing benevolence: “God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus speaks here of the divine refusal to hold our sins and shortcomings against us. He speaks of the infinite compassion and mercy of God, offered to all, not because it is deserved, not because it has been earned, but because it is the nature of God to give it.
He speaks of amazing grace. And that grace operates in our lives most powerfully through forgiveness. As Gandhi famously remarked, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and pretty soon the whole world is blind and toothless.” Jesus points to another way. “Be perfect,” he says, “As your Heavenly Parent is perfect.” That’s all he asks, just perfection!
But the perfection of God is forgiving, reconciling love. And as children of such a Heavenly Parent, we are invited to forgive as we have been forgiven. Forgiveness is a lubricant that allows the machinery of our common life to function smoothly. It is rain that waters the garden of our spiritual growth. Because we are merely human, we will require both to be forgiven and to forgive, and on a regular basis.
Now, I come from a tradition, the Methodist church, which values the idea of perfection. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, believed in and taught spiritual perfection. At ordination, as clergy candidates stand before the congregation, the bishop asks us, “Do you believe you are going on to perfection?” And the correct answer, if you want to be ordained, is “Yes.” Also the bishop asks, “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life-time?” And again, we answer, “Yes.”
My colleagues and I have smiled at these questions. But now, looking back over some 25 years, I have come to believe they point to something profound and real. They encourage me to think of perfection as a verb and not a noun, as a process, and not a state of being. I am, we are, going on to perfection. I am, we are, being made perfect. Every day, every relationship, every decision, is an opportunity to grow, maybe just a little bit, maybe quite a lot—but to grow in forgiveness, to grow in compassion, to grow toward the perfection in love of a God who sends sun and rain on the good and bad, the just and unjust.
I am not in a position to tell you that you must forgive, who you should forgive, when you have to forgive. I am not Christ. Nor should you take this Gospel as license to demand forgiveness from others, or for others. But you can, I can, we can, bear witness to the power of forgiveness to liberate us from the past. It is possible for us, each in our time, and in our way, as God leads, guides, and empowers us, to forgive, and so to allow God to make us that much more perfect, bring us that much closer to being the people we were created to be.
Anger, resentment, grudging, holding onto hurts we have experience, cherishing the memory of wrongs, clinging to betrayals—all these things disfigure our souls and enslave us to the past. We can reduce ourselves to the status of victims, without agency, without power. We can imprison ourselves in shame and regret for things done, and things left undone. But forgiveness sets us free.
Life will offer us many opportunities to practice the art of forgiveness. Because we are merely human we will fail each other and ourselves, and repeatedly. Our families, our communities, our neighbors, our fellow church members, our nation, the world, our own bodies and our own behaviors, will provide us occasions to choose to be forgiving. And the good news is that we can. We don’t need others to good enough, sorry enough, worthy enough to receive our forgiveness. We just need to choose to be forgiving people. We can forgive ourselves for our own failures, shortcomings, betrayals, disappointments, which may loom larger in our self-assessment than they do in others’ experience of us.
In the church of my youth, I was taught to count my blessings. And the counting of blessings is a good and fruitful spiritual discipline. I would also encourage us, however, to bring our hurts, wounds, failures, disappointments, our losses and our grief to conscious awareness. Not to wallow in them. Not to cherish them. Not to define ourselves our others by them. But to recognize them, and to let them go. Forgetting is not forgiving. And denial is not healing. When we pretend that all is for the best and couldn’t possibly be any better, that doesn’t make the bad stuff go away. It just places it in the shadows, where it weighs us down, hinders us, deforms us.
Forgiveness can bring healing, not just to situations of egregious violence, betrayal, and abuse, but even to places where no hurt was intended, and where no real moral wrong was done. We can, for example, forgive our parents for not being the all-wise, all-loving, all-competent beings our young selves looked to them to be. We can forgive our spouses, partners, lovers for not being the solution to every one of the problems our needy selves brought to them. We can forgive ourselves for holding such false expectations. And as we forgive, the past loses its power over us. It is not, and may never be easy, but it is necessary.
Nelson Mandela, whose passing the world has recently mourned, modeled forgiveness on a world-changing scale. When Mandela came out of Robbin Island, he made the choice, the hard choice, the choice inspired by teachers like Gandhi, like Jesus—he chose non-retaliation, non-violence. He chose mercy, even to those who had shown so little mercy to him. And he encouraged all sides in his bitterly wounded country to do the same. And so, in spite of youthful excesses, and excesses committed in his name, and in spite of the many real problems that continue to plague the land, Mandela is rightly honored as the father of the new South Africa. He showed a people the way to put the past behind them.
Now, if Nelson Mandela could, after the years he endured in unjust imprisonment, abuse, hard labor, come to his inauguration as president, and invite his jailers to be with him on the platform, could we not perhaps consider, in our own lives, in our families and communities, in this church, how we might become more forgiving people? We can, if we choose, let go of that which limits us, and, in opening ourselves to each other in mercy and compassion, open ourselves as well to the future which God is preparing for us in love.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
