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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
All Saints Sunday – Year C – November 3, 2013
Sermon by The Rev. Donald Hamer, Rector
Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31
Last weekend your elected delegates – Janet Wilkinson, Alternate Casey Rousseau and Alternate Marie Alford-Harkey joined Deacon Bonnie and me in representing Trinity at the 229th Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut in Stamford. The theme of this year’s convention was: The Way of Jesus: Growing in God’s Mission.
As we celebrate this All Saints Sunday, 2013, the passages from Ephesians and from St. Luke’s Gospel point us again to “the way of Jesus” and what it means to grow in mission. And as we renew our baptismal vows and, at the 10 a.m. service, welcome two new infants into God’s household, we can remember once again what it means to be a saint.
Let’s look at the passage from Ephesians. The first thing we see in the very first line is that we have obtained an inheritance from God. Now, aside from the fact that it usually means someone has died, getting an inheritance is generally regarded as a positive thing. I mean, who here does NOT want to get a large inheritance? In 25 years of practicing law and 14 years presiding over cases where people were clamoring for their inheritance rights, I can tell you I have yet to see the person who says, “No thanks, you can have my share.”
But this inheritance is not an inheritance like the one we might get from rich Aunt Matilda. This inheritance is not a pile of money we can run out and spend on ourselves. Ephesians tells us that our inheritance from God through the life and death of Jesus Christ is so that WE might LIVE to the PRAISE OF GOD’S GLORY. The writer repeats that one line later: we have been MARKED WITH THE SEAL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT – NOTE TO SELF – THAT IS WHAT WE RECEIVE IN BAPTISM --and that is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory (vv 13-14).
And a couple of verses later we read that with our hearts and minds enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we will know THE HOPE to which Jesus calls us, and we may know the RICHES OF HIS GLORIOUS INHERITANCE AMONG THE SAINTS.
So let’s see. We have this inheritance from God – that means God has given us something of value. And with that thing of value, we are supposed to take it, and use it to praise God’s glory – that’s shorthand for using the legacy that God has given us to glorify God, and what’s more, to make sure that God is glorified among the saints!
Now, who are the saints? Really holy people, right? They write stuff that appears in the Bible. They perform miracles. They distinguish themselves in history somehow. If you look up the word “saint” in the dictionary, the first thing you see is something like “a person formally recognized by the church for exceptional holiness in their life” or “a person of great virtue, holiness or benevolence.” They get a day named after them and, in the Episcopal Church, get an article printed about them in Holy Women, Holy Men. These are exceptional, one-of-a-kind people. It takes someone like them to make sure that God is glorified. We begin to think of saints as someone whose performance and sanctity of life is unattainable for us. And we begin to think of saints as someone else.
And that, my friends, is a mistake. Because when we start thinking that only someone else can be a saint, it is the beginning of giving up that special inheritance that God gives to each of us. And how does God give us that inheritance? Well, in a lot of ways, but the first one is through our baptism. It is through our baptism that we join the community of saints – those who have gone before us, those whom we have loved and see no longer, all of us who are part of Christ’s church, and those who will follow us. All of us form “the communion of saints.”
And what is our task as one of these saints? The Prayer Book – and if it’s in the Prayer Book it’s got to be true, right? It may be in Scripture and we’ll find some way around it, but if it’s in the Prayer Book it has to be true. The Prayer Book sets it out on page 855: It is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever {we} may be; and, according to the gifts given [us], to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take [our] place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.
Representing Christ. Bearing witness to Jesus Christ wherever we may be. What does that look like? Well, a lot of things, but Luke gives us some ideas in today’s Gospel in the sermon on the Plain: Whenever the poor are blessed, whenever the hungry are fed, when those who mourn can laugh or have their burden lifted, whenever we can make the world a better place even in spite of those who may stand in the way. When we love our enemies, when we do good even to those who hate us, when we can bless those who curse us, when we can pray for those who abuse us, when we can give without ceasing – when we do any of these things, Luke tells us that we are representing Christ. We are bearing witness to Jesus Christ – following his way – and when we do that the world cannot help but stop and take notice.
That’s what each one of us is called to do, whatever our gifts may be. We need to use the gifts we’ve got to look more like Jesus. St. Paul tells us that all of our gifts are different, but Ephesians also promises us that each and every one of us has gifts through our baptism.
When we think of saints as someone else, as people set apart, as people with extraordinary abilities, it is so easy for us to tell ourselves, “Someone else will do it.” Someone else can have my share of the inheritance. Someone else will give glory to God. Someone else will feed the hungry, lift up the poor, educate the children, soothe the afflicted. Someone else will help teach church school. Someone else will bring that dinner to the sick person or give the person who doesn’t drive a ride to the doctor’s office. Someone else will step up and tithe to the support of the church. Someone else will bring communion to the person who can’t get out. Someone else will be a witness to the way of Jesus.
And that, my brothers and sisters, is when we begin to walk away from that blessed and abundant inheritance that God has offered to us in the person of Jesus the Christ. And when we do that, we sell ourselves short of the people God has made us to be. And not only do we sell ourselves short, we sell our church short, and the Body of Christ doesn’t look so much like Jesus any more. And when we’re not living up to our inheritance, we’re also selling God short. We fall short of the glory God has set for us, and the world – whatever our world is and whomever is in it – misses the opportunity to recognize Jesus in its midst. We don’t do it for our own glory. We don’t do it for the glory of the Episcopal Church or even the Christian church. We do it for the glory of God – the God who has a mission in the world and who has adopted us – who depends upon us – to be a part of it.
So on this All Saints Sunday, we celebrate our day! We renew our baptismal promises, and remind ourselves that we – each of us – are heirs to God’s grace and blessing. And that inheritance brings with it a responsibility – our responsibility to look more like Jesus, to witness to his love, to shine the light of Christ into the darkness of the world. I pray this day that each of us will look a little more like Jesus every day.
And so I’d like to close as we did at the Eucharist during Convention, by singing together that wonderful children’s song that we all know so well.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
AMEN.
Year C, Proper 25, 2013
Readings: Sirach 35:12-17, Psalm 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14
The Rev. Timothy Hodapp
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
October 27, 2013
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
My dear friends in Christ:
She was at church, making her weekly visit, just a bit behind because her catnap lasted longer than she’d intended. Usually, she’d have been up the long aisle, into her row — six from the front; seated on her chair, four in from the center — by the time the bell in the church tower tolled the three o’clock hour.
But not today. The thick orthopedic shoes she now wore weren’t the heels she preferred and had worn to church for years; yet at 83 she was happy she could plod her way up the church steps, ever so carefully and increasingly more slowly, each Sunday and each Thursday afternoon.
Sunday was her community time. Time to be with her people. Time to pray. Time to sing. Time to sit down after service for coffee, cookie, and always a catch up on the news.
But Thursday, down her aisle and in her row and on her chair, this was her time with God.
This Thursday, she was a few minutes late. As she pushed the heavy door inward, a gust of wind swept up the steps and she caught the lavender scarf around her neck before the fall gust took it away.
“Thank you, God,” she said, “I need this more than you.” She felt the bells in the tower toll the three o’clock hour as much as she heard them as she made her way into the dimly lit church.
“Just you and me,” she whispered as she paused in the narthex. “My God. My church. My chair.”
With one hand on her scarf and another on the back of one chair, moving chair to chair, she slowly made her way up the aisle.
And then stopped. Someone was seated in her row. Someone was sitting on her chair. The entire church was empty except for what looked like a young man in a dark sweatshirt, the hood over his head.
“Who’s that?” she mumbled. “Who’s in my chair?”
“Why God?” she looked up. “There’s a church full of chairs! Why is he in mine?”
The police car had turned off the main drag and onto the street directly in front of the tall, red brick and brownstone church just as he came around the corner.
He pulled the black hoodie over his head and climbed the stone stairs to the church door.
“God,” he said, not in prayer but more like a threat, “that door better be open.”
And it was.
He stepped inside, the door softly closing behind, and stopped. He hadn’t been in a church since he was 14 years old. Gran took him to church the years he lived with her after his parents’ split, and Mama went into endless rounds of rehab.
Every Sunday they were in church together. Gran believed in Jesus. Gran knew Jesus was with her in her church community. Gran knew Jesus was there when she prayed. Gran testified to Jesus presence when she took her little grandson to school, to the grocer, to the church.
Gran believed because Gran knew. Gran knew Jesus.
“But I sure as hell don’t,” he whispered in the back of this old, dark, empty church. Stepping from shadow to shadow he made his way down one of the side aisles.
As he walked, the memories picked away at the hard shell around his broken heart. He was in trouble. Deep trouble. And there wasn’t anyone. No Gran, now long dead. No one, because that’s the way it is.
Deeper into the church he went, the windows in the clerestory glistening in colored glass above sent color onto the stone floor at his feet.
That scent! Like dusty smoke stuck in wood, sulfurous, like after a match is struck, but sweeter… the memory of Sunday with Gran so many years ago.
“It’s cold in here,” he muttered, and pulled the hoodie up over his head. “And dead,” he heard his voice fall as he stepped out from behind one of the pillars, into a row of chairs, where he sat.
Looking up toward the altar, the candlesticks, the gold cross, he chuckled. “I could swipe those and be out into the alley in seconds.” But he didn’t move an inch.
Instead, he stopped as the place continued to spark memories. Gran seated him right next to her. He’d lean into her when he got tired, when the readings went on, when the sermon didn’t shout itself from the pulpit. And Gran put her strong, heavy arm around him, pull him in.
He leaned forward, his thick arms out in front of him, fists clasped, hooded head down, chin on his chest.
“I don’t know you, God,” he started. “I l don’t believe. You left me when she died. I’m on my own… I’m in trouble… and I don’t know who you are.”
He paused. “What am I doing? Who am I talking to? Who cares what I’m saying? Who’s listening?”
The bell in the tower clanged. Three times. He heard something. Then silence.
“Of course it’s quiet,” he thought. “It’s dead in here.” He barely lifted his head, looking up to the altar, to the light through the window above. The colors blurred as the tears began.
“God,” he heard himself say, “God, where are you?” And now, more loudly, fists apart but still clenched, arms raised to the roof above him, shouting to the silent space, “God! Where are you?”
And turning, he saw her, an old woman clutching at her purple scarf, leaning in toward him, her gnarled hand barely touching his shoulder, her tears mirroring his.
Huh. What if today’s parable had ended in another way?
How unlike the prayer of the Pharisee in today’s Gospel from the one that Jesus teaches his disciples earlier in Luke, 11: 1-13.
Jesus’ prayer opens with God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will; and then moves to our need of God for daily bread, forgiveness, and deliverance.
The Pharisee, who by definition is valued by God for the laws he keeps, proclaims his worth.
Of course, it’s one thing to appraise my value by what I bring to the auction floor. It’s something else when I appraise my value by comparing how shiny, bright, new, fresh, complete, and perfect I am in comparison to his or her dull, old, rotted, incomplete, imperfection. At least I’m not the tax collector.”
How differently the parable might have ended if the Pharisee knew how like the tax collector he was. If the Pharisee had dared to get close enough to have seen the tax collector’s tears.
If the Pharisee had been aware that he was beloved of God simply because of who he was as God’s son, not because of his perceived perfection; and that, indeed, his own sin, pride, behavior was puny when placed beside God’s love for him.
And, that he, the Pharisee, could extend the very presence, power, perfection of God’s love to the broken tax collector, folding under the weight of his own sin, weeping in the shadows of the synagogue, seeking the loving face of God.
- I am here today to sing of God’s power and might in my life.
- I am here today to pledge my loyalty to God in the work of this Church by the gifts that I bring.
- I am here today to be nourished by God in this community.
- I am here today, to be sent back out into the world.
We are called to witness to God.
We are called to participate in God’s mission, desire, power to restore what has — by sin, dissension, division — moved so far from what God prefers for us.
We are called to participate in God’s mission to reconcile what has been broken beyond recognition of what God has created for us.
When I step out these doors and onto these church steps or into the parking lot, do I dare be Christ’s disciple in the week ahead?
- Do I dare keep my eyes open for ways to extend the power of God’s forgiveness to anyone God places before me in the week ahead?
- Do I dare fight the urge to judge, compare, give thanks to God that ‘I’m not like him… I’m not like her…” and see, instead, my brother in need; my sister who awaits God’s touch through my hands, in the week ahead?
- Do I dare witness to what I profess I believe this morning?
Before the sun sets on this late fall day, you and I have the absolute thrill to be like God. To be Godlike. To be Godly.
Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.
Cry out if you need to. God’s listening.
Reach across boundaries when God invites you. You are God’s presence in the life of your sisters, your brothers in need.
We meant what we prayed in our opening Collect. Listen again to these prophetic words…
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Pentecost 21 – Year C – October 13, 2013
It was in the sixth century before the Christian era when Jeremiah shares the word of the Lord to the exiled Israelites in Babylon: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:7).
It’s a good Sunday for us at Trinity Episcopal Church to reflect on our relationship with the City that is our home, Hartford, Connecticut. True, we are not exiles here – we are here by choice. And it’s for that reason that we need to pay particular heed to Jeremiah’s words this morning as we contemplate how we as, individually and as a congregation “seek the welfare of the city” where we find ourselves.
Why is this important? Well there are a whole host of social reasons we have learned over the past decades why the suburbs cannot just sit and snuggle as bedroom communities and ignore the welfare of the city. We have come to learn that having vibrant cities as a cultural hub of the surrounding communities enriches everyone’s quality of life in city and suburb. Similarly, we have learned that when cities experience problems, people in the suburbs cannot insulate themselves from those problems.
One of those problems is the remarkable gap in achievement levels between many students in our city schools as compared with their counterparts in suburban schools. There are many factors involved in this reality, and I want to be clear that none of them really have to do with a lack of quality or commitment of the teachers or the staffs who care for our children in our urban schools. It is primarily poverty and the constellation of factors that go along with it that make the challenges of improving educational outcomes in our cities so daunting.
And so as we celebrate Episcopal Schools Week throughout the
Episcopal Church, I want to lift up this morning the tradition we have here at Trinity of supporting education in the city. When you think of it, virtually every major mission initiative that Trinity has made in the past two decades has involved education:
n In our Church School, in our Journey to Adulthood and Confirmation programs, and even in our Adult formation classes, we are blessed with a full cadre of volunteer educators who selflessly devote their time and talents to helping us grow in our Christian faith.
n The Light and Peace program served young children in the Asylum Hill neighborhood with a family meal, an interactive Bible story and activity time for many years before the Boys and Girls Club started serving supper. Until that time, there was a regular parade of children who marched to Trinity from the Boys and Girls Club each Monday evening.
n The TAAP program served older children in the neighborhood with a creative arts focus for several years, ending shortly before I arrived here.
n As long as anyone can remember, Trinity members have volunteered as tutors at West Middle Elementary School and after school at Connectikids and Asylum Hill Learning Zone.
n Since 2001 Trinity has been supporting high school level students at our partner parish in Tabora, Tanzania, making it possible for more than a hundred students over the years to rise beyond a likely future of subsistence farming.
n For more than a dozen years, what is now The Choir School of Hartford has provided a first class musical education to students from throughout the metropolitan area, including piano lessons for each student – and every student receives a full scholarship to participate. Each Sunday we hear the fruits of their work, and this morning we will honor three of our Choir students who are being promoted for achieving new goals in their musical education.
n For the past two years, Trinity has sponsored Trinity Episcopal Day School on Asylum Hill, one of only 15 Episcopal schools in the United States specifically addressing the achievement gap of our urban schools. Together, these 15 schools form the Episcopal Urban Schools Alliance in trying to create a new dimension to traditional Episcopal Education.
All of these educational initiatives share some uniquely Episcopal characteristics: We make opportunities for students to wrestle with matters of faith – to help them to understand that life-long learning isn’t limited to reading, writing and arithmetic. What does that look like? Well, on one of the unfortunately few occasions when I have made it in to join our Day School students for lunch, one of the students asked me what God looked like. I could have just said I didn’t know, but instead asked the student what she thought God looked like, and that of course led into a lively discussion about the nature of God.
Or there was the day that Mr. Landman asked the students what the word “sacred” meant, and the consensus was that it meant something that you weren’t allowed to go near. That led to a great discussion of what makes something “holy” or “sacred.”
And, oh, by the way – every student in Trinity Episcopal Day School for the academic year ending this past June advanced at least two grade levels in reading and writing skills. That’s making a difference in the achievement gap. That is an example of caring for the city in which we find ourselves. That is an example of the welfare of each of us being improved by tending to the welfare of others.
In our diocese, Bishop Douglas is following in the footsteps of Bishop Smith in calling all Episcopalians to be “God’s people on mission.” That means being attentive to the needs of the communities in which we find ourselves – the communities in which our houses of worship are located. This Tuesday evening, a group consisting of our Vestry and the combined boards of the Choir School and Trinity Day School will gather for a dinner meeting with a representative of Partners for Sacred Spaces, who will discuss with us additional ways in which we at Trinity can use our gifts – our own time and talent, our financial resources, and our beautiful church, our buildings and grounds – how we at Trinity can use all of these gifts from God to advance the welfare of our city and with it, enhance the quality of life not only for our children but for our entire metropolitan area. We take up virtually an entire city block in the heart of the city – we can, and should, be a resource and a stabilizing influence in the City. Programs like the Choir School and Trinity Day School already serve this function, and partnering with others, we are called to do more.
At the same time, our Mission Discernment Group has had its first meeting, and it, too, will be looking at ways in the coming months that we can use our gifts to partner with God in mission in our surrounding community – an effort that is but a first step to a broader effort that should eventually involve our entire congregation.
In this morning’s Gospel, taken from the proper for Episcopal Schools Week, Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, invite the stranger in, give clothes to those who don’t have them, care for the sick, or visit those in prison, we do it for Jesus himself. One of the ways we serve Jesus is through the care and nurture of our children, whether it be in faith formation, in music, or in our day school. Today and every day, I ask your continued prayers for our ministries to all of God’s children. Amen.
Sermon by the Rev. Bonnie Matthews, Deacon
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
September 29, 2013
St Michael & All Angels
Gensis 28:10-17 Psalm 103 Revelation 12:7-12 Luke 16:19-31
Bless the Lord my soul and bless God’s Holy name.
Bless the Lord my soul He leads me into life.
For those of you who read the lessons assigned for any given Sunday prior to the service, you may notice the scripture we heard this morning does not follow the Revised Common Lectionary appointed for today the 19th Sunday of Pentecost. Today the lessons are a combination of lessons appointed for the 19th Sunday of Pentecost and The Feast of St Michael and All Angels September 29th , which this year was moved to Monday.
During the collect for The Feast of St Michael and all Angels, we gave thanks for God’s loving care given to us by the ministries of angels and mortals directly and indirectly watching over us.
When presented with the concept of angels I immediately recall those in my life who have been looking out for me, loving me, caring for me, teaching me and guiding me. But many of my angels have become heavenly angels. They watch over me, guarding me by night and guiding me by day. I imagine that my concept of angels is not unique.
We think often of those we love and who love us as angels. I’m sure when posed with the question “who are the angels in your life” each of us has many whom we have loved and many who we have lost.
But what of the mortals we remember and give thanks for that directly watch over us?
In doing research on St Michael and All Angels I read an article about angels written by James Keifer.
In this article, James writes “In the picture of God sending His angels to help and defend us, we are reminded that God, instead of doing good things directly, often prefers to do them through His willing servants, enabling those who have accepted His love to show their love for one another.”
Perhaps those angels and mortals are part of God’s mission of healing and reconciliation for us as we and those who are less fortunate struggle in our daily lives.
Imagine how expansive God’s love is that it reaches out to all of us.
Psalm 103 demonstrates the breadth of God’s love for us. It reminds us just how broad God’s love is. And it calls us to respond.
Scholars believe that Psalm 103 is a meditation by the psalmist on the goodness and forgiving love God shows us and we are called to Bless the Lord for his love that starts with the inner being and extends to the ends of the earth.
The words of this psalm reach out to and are meant for you and me.
If we take a closer look at the psalm it may also be a call to us, individually and corporately to be the mortal messengers of God’s love for us, urging each of us to carry out God’s mission of love and reconciliation in our daily lives.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, *
and all that is within me, bless his holy Name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, *
and forget not all his benefits.
He forgives all your sins *
and heals all your infirmities;
Verses 1- 4 call us to action. They call us to Bless the Lord remembering all we have benefitted. We are human, we err and we are frail. God still loves us. Through the forgiveness of our sins we have been healed of the illness that eats at us. The Lord redeems us from the grave and showers us with mercy and loving-kindness. God satisfies us through his love, he gives us strength, he renews us.
Is there another psalm that can show us such bountiful love?
Take a minute to imagine with me that Psalm 103 speaks to all of God’s creation.
God is calling us to be messengers. As messengers how do we demonstrate God’s love?
The LORD executes righteousness *
and judgment for all who are oppressed.
Do we respect and give dignity to all? Isn’t attending forums such as last week’s town hall meeting on prejudices a beginning to understanding others? Do we talk with one another to gain understanding about what is going on in our church, in the Asylum Hill community,in the state? Do we help to build relations with our neighbors?
The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, *
slow to anger and of great kindness.
When faced with anger do we respond with anger or do we step back, take a breath and seek peaceful resolutions to misunderstandings.
He will not always accuse us, *
nor will he keep his anger for ever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, *
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth, *
so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.
Do we forgive ourselves and others?
But the merciful goodness of the LORD endures for ever on those who fear him, *
and his righteousness on children's children;
On those who keep his covenant *
and remember his commandments and do them.
Do we respect our God? Do we keep God’s commandments? Do we practice our Baptismal Covenant? Do we love those who transgress and turn to God for help?
The LORD has set his throne in heaven, *
and his kingship has dominion over all.
The Lord has dominion over all, not just those who are privileged. The Lord has dominion over the sick, the dying, those who are living on the margins. His love extends from earth to heaven and reaches out to all that is between.
Bless the LORD, you angels of his,
you mighty ones who do his bidding, *
and hearken to the voice of his word.
Bless the LORD, all you his hosts, *
you ministers of his who do his will.
Are we blessed to do God’s bidding, to do his will? Are we (Trinity Church) God’s messengers sent to bring compassion, understanding and healing through love to all?
Again we are called to action.
Bless the LORD, all you works of his,
in all places of his dominion; *
bless the LORD, O my soul.
Amen
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Pentecost 18 – Year C – September 22, 2013
“One Body in Christ”
1 Timothy 2:1-7
I want to begin by saying I know it will come as a disappointment to some of you that I have decided this morning NOT to take on the challenges posed by the parable of the dishonest steward from the Gospel of Luke. However, this morning I think it more important that we wrestle with the difficult issues post by the first letter to Timothy.
When we citizens of the United States recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we say the words, “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In the beginning of the first letter to Timothy which we heard this morning, the author calls on Timothy and his congregation to pray for everyone, even for kings and others in positions of authority, so that everyone may lead a peaceable life “in all godliness and dignity.” The writer says this is only right because God desires for everyone to be saved, so much so that he sent Jesus as a ransom for all. No exceptions. Take another look at the passage – the word “all” is used a lot.
The prayer for kings and all in authority is particularly noteworthy because the church at the time was heavily persecuted, accepted in neither the Jewish nor the gentile community. How much easier it would have been for them to withdraw in quiet seclusion to live “a quiet and peaceable life.” And yet they decided to pray for good government and sound leadership, even for those who oppressed them, because they desired something more: They wanted to live more fully in the world in order to further the proclamation of God’s radical desire of salvation for all and the accomplishment of that by Jesus Christ’s offering of himself as a ransom for all.
Unlike our Christian ancestors of Timothy’s time, most of us in The United States of America of the 20th Century have lived in relative peace and tranquility compared to the rest of the world. As Christians, we have been part of the fabric of society for centuries. The church and civil government have engaged in a sometimes uneasy but mutually beneficial dance ever since the 4th century when Constantine converted to Christianity and with him, his entire nation. Only with the birth of America did the world see the beginnings of the notion of separation of church and state.
And yet even in America, many of us have a different narrative, a narrative in which God’s desire for all is not mirrored in their experience in civil life. For our brothers and sisters from places like Liberia and Burma, also now known as Myanmar, their escape from political oppression and civil war in their home countries was anything but “quiet and peaceable.” Africans brought to the United States as slaves had to wait until 1861 for Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and it would be more than a hundred more years before state-enforced segregation became illegal. It would be 1920 before women would win the long battle to be able to vote equally with males, and it was not until the 1960s that the same right was specifically enacted into law for men and women of color. During World War II, Japanese Americans – American citizens – were dragged from homes and jobs and herded into internment camps where the government could keep an eye on them. In the Episcopal Church, women were not allowed to be ordained to the priesthood until the 1970s. For the past forty year, the battle for equal rights – both in the church and in civil society – has expanded to take on discrimination based upon sexual orientation.
All this is to point out the reality that even in the United States of America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we do not all share that same common narrative. The letter-writer’s invitation for all to live peaceably “in godliness and dignity” is a challenge to a society that is all-too-prone to acts of violence both in mass shootings that capture headlines and in the less publicized but equally devastating acts of violence that mark our inner cities almost on a daily basis. The reminder that Jesus died for “all” can be in stark contrast to the experience of those who continue to struggle in the presence of prejudice of any kind.
Sometimes those prejudices can be intentional and acted out with a deliberate attempt to hurt. More frequently, our prejudices – and don’t fool yourselves, we all have them – are far more subtle and perhaps even unconscious. Because of the possibility we may not even be aware of them, they can be even more insidious because they are invisible to us.
In the past year, the death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in a gated community in Florida at the hands of a man claiming to be protecting that same community, has highlighted the continuing challenges we face in this country when it comes to matters of race. Even more broadly, these challenges revolve around issues of “otherness.” As citizens, the question may be posed as asking how individuals in a free society can balance the pursuit of their right to a “quiet and peaceable life” without infringing on the pursuit by others of their own right to a “quiet and peaceable life.” Individually, we can ask ourselves, “How do we as children of the One God engage other children of the One God who are different from us? How can we step back from our own narrative – our own understanding of how the world works and what is “normal” – to hear and really try to understand the alternative narrative of people who do not share our own experiences and understandings.
As a community of faith, we are comprised of people from many and varied backgrounds – many ethnic groups, many cultural traditions, many religious traditions; people from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds; people with varying degrees of educational achievement; people with different gender orientations and people of widely differing political views. This makes Trinity a unique example of the Body of Christ in all of its diversity, and it brings to life the image of the Body of Christ which St. Paul describes in his First Letter to the Corinthians in Chapter 12: A conglomeration of parts all of which are different and all of which require the others to form a functioning body.
But this type of body doesn’t just happen. Before a human body can function as a healthy unit, the various parts have to be fully integrated with one another by nerves, muscle and connective tissue and nurtured by the body’s blood to be strong. The organs must be compatible – you are all aware of the phenomenon of “rejection” that can take place whenever part of a human body is replaced by a donation from another human body or by a manufactured part. It is part of the mystery of God’s creation that allows the human body to function as a cohesive unit.
Likewise, corporate bodies like the church are called by God to function as a cohesive unit, The Body of Christ. But as the Letter to Timothy suggests this morning, it takes prayer and commitment to make it a reality. While we as parts of the Body may want to fit together into a cohesive unit, we don’t always know exactly how to do that. We don’t naturally seek to go outside of our comfort zone, or own sphere of familiarity, to explore, to understand, to really appreciate those aspects of the stories of our brothers and sisters that are different from our own.
As your pastor, I have had a unique opportunity to hear and be a part of some of your discussions following the death of Trayvon Martin and the trial of the man who shot him. I have heard the anguish of parents who see in the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death a tragedy that all-too-easily could befall their own sons and daughters. I have heard the stories of old wounds that have been re-opened by the circumstances surrounding this case. And yes, it haunts me that standing in the shoes of Trayvon Martin just as easily could have been any number of our senior acolytes.
As members of the Body of Christ here at Trinity, we are in no position to second-guess how the justice system did its work in Florida. Nor is it helpful to dwell on that issue. It is important for us – as we strive to grow into the full stature of Christ – to be in touch with each other’s stories, with each other’s narratives, and to understand how the circumstances underlying that case impact, in a very real and immediate way, the lives of our fellow parishioners. However we might understand the Epistle’s call to live in “godliness and dignity,” 1 Timothy’s encouragement to pray for all calls us and our congregation to expand our vision beyond our own self-interest and our own narratives to appreciate the different points of view of those whom we call “brothers and sisters in Christ” and to appreciate the context of those understandings.
Each week we come to this table together to nourish our souls with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Now I believe it is important for us to nourish our spirit of community and the fellowship we share one with another. I hope that our Town Meeting this morning will be the first of many conversations in which we become more intentional about growing into the full stature of Christ both as individuals and as a congregation. We will use a process of Indaba, or holy listening, in which we have an opportunity to listen to others -- not to judge or to be judged, but simply to more fully appreciate and understand the speaker’s point of view. In so doing, it is my prayer that we will continue the urging of 1 Timothy to pursue wholeness through the experience of coming to know God more fully and more deeply in the person of each other, in whom we can see the face of Jesus Christ. AMEN.
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Sermon for Proper 19C, September 15, 2013
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
1 Timothy 1:12-17 and Luke 15:1-10
Probably everyone here has had the experience of answering the phone and the friend or family member shouts “I’ve got great news!” “What?” you reply, tell me!” Your mind races with the exciting possibilities.
Likewise, probably everyone here has had the experience of a friend or family member phoning and saying, “I’ve got some bad news for you.”
What do you do? You take a deep breath, sit down if you’re not already and say, “Okay let me have it.” The announcement of bad news is always – well, bad.
In the first of two parables today in Luke chapter 15, the parable of the lost sheep, we have an example of both good news and bad news. In fact, in the New Testament, the Gospel, the “good news” is often linked with “bad news.” Sometimes you’re not really sure if what you’re reading or hearing is good news or bad news for you.
Let’s look again at the details. A sheep is lost and the shepherd goes to find it, leaving behind 99 other sheep to fend for themselves. Good news for the one. But what about the 99 others left to fend for themselves?
This same good-bad phenomenon occurs in families with more than one child, doesn’t it. When one child is ill, the other children have to learn to be content with less attention while extra attention is given to the sick one. Sometimes the other children may understand. But many times they don’t. Nobody likes to be ignored in a family setting. It just isn’t fair.
Of course, what’s fair, what’s unfair isn’t just a problem for children in families. What’s fair, what isn’t is an issue in society in general. For example, many people feel it’s unfair to give so much attention and money to the homeless, the jobless, persons on welfare, immigrants.
They say, “Why should we, who work hard, be asked to sacrifice? Why should we pay for others’ medical care and government services? Why should we be taxed for programs we’ll never in a million years have need for ourselves?”
Such questions often arise from the 99 who feel taken for granted, who say, “Come on, it just isn’t fair.”
Back to the parable: If you’ve grown up attending church, you probably know more about sheep than you think you do. For example, you may know that if sheep don’t have a secure fence around them, they’ll nibble their way into lostness in a snap if someone isn’t watching them.
So think about it: if a real shepherd were to go out in search of the one lost sheep, what would happen to the 99? Right. More sooner than later, they’d become lost as well. Then what would you have? You’d have one found sheep and maybe 99 lost sheep.
The arithmetic just doesn’t add up, does it? I mean, wouldn’t it be much, much better to just hang on to those who’ve stuck with you, who don’t need special care, the 99, and simply write off the lost one?
Well – and here’s the reason this parable made it into the Bible – our arithmetic isn’t God’s arithmetic. God’s arithmetic is very different from our arithmetic.
The accompanying parable of the lost coin helps shed light on just how different God’s arithmetic is, and helps make sense of the confusion of good news and bad news.
So, let’s take a look at that. A woman’s coin is lost. It’s a drachma, the smallest of all coins, like our penny. She has ten of those coins, but when she loses one, she lights a lamp, gets a broom and sweeps and sweeps. The parable says that she swept until she found that coin. Terrific. End of story. Or, is it?
However, here’s something Jesus’ hearers would have immediately understood that isn’t at all obvious to the likes of us. In first century Palestine, oil was very expensive, and brooms weren’t cheap either. So, says one commentator interpreting this story, the woman could easily have burned 5 cents of oil and worn out a 10 cent broom looking for a one cent piece.
What kind of economy is that? Why does she persist so in her quest to get the little penny?
Well, here’s the deal, according to the same interpreter. The drachma was more than just a piece of currency. The drachma, you see, had a hole in it. In first century Palestine, a woman would receive drachmas when she got married. She would then make them into a necklace to hang around her neck, much as today we might wear a wedding ring.
So, in this case, as Jesus tells the story, somehow, the necklace got broken and apparently the coins rolled away in every direction. Says she found 9 of them, but she couldn’t find the tenth.
We’d say, “big deal.” Let it go. But she couldn’t: it had sentimental value. It couldn’t be replaced. Standard arithmetic just doesn’t apply in such circumstances where the heart is involved, does it?
Some of you have heard of Clarence Jordan, the Georgia peanut farmer, New Testament scholar and co-founder of Habitat for Humanity. About our passage today, Jordan writes: “Every little human being in this world is part of God’s set. And God just has a sentimental attachment for his set. God doesn’t go by the kind of arithmetic that you and I go by. He has never learned to deal in fractions. God didn’t get that far in school. I think God’s like my father who had 10 children, and many a time I thought, “Well, my goodness, with a family this big, Daddy can’t love me very much. I can only claim one tenth of his love.” But my father loved me with all of his love. It’s just that way with love. There is no fraction in it. You can’t break it up into pieces. And God wants the whole human race. God just can’t deal in fractions. And so Jesus is saying to these people who were griping and mumbling and grumbling about the fact that he was taking in all kinds of people, bums and drunks and the poor folks and everybody, he was saying, “Well, I just can’t help it. God just has a sentimental attachment for God’s people.”
People, maybe you, often speak of finding God in their lives. As if God were lost and could be found only by dint of our own searching efforts.
But, of course, as these parables remind us, it isn’t we who find God. Rather it is God, like the sweeping woman or the searching shepherd, who finds us when we’re lost.
This, then, dear friends is our God: Our God who is attached by God’s heart to the lost; who sweeps and searches until the lost are found. Our God, who, like a good shepherd, searches until the straggliest, most unworthy sheep is found. A God who can’t deal in fractions.
Now, it’s true that if you happen to be one of the 99 left in the fold, at times you very well may feel deserted. You might even wander away and get lost yourself.
Ever get lost?
I’ve been lost from God. Even while I was playing pastor.
You ever get lost from God?
Maybe you have a chapter in your life where you did bad things. Or it may be that a secret festers within that keeps you from feeling worthy in God’s sight. Or maybe your lostness has to do with direction or purpose or meaning.
Or maybe you became lost because someone told you that you were lost and you believed them. “You’re not like us. You’re different. You as a person are wrong.
And, you believed them.
But, then, by God’s grace, you were found. By a relentless God who makes no wrong people. Who just can’t deal in fractions.
A mother of 8 children was asked if she had any favorites. “Yes, I have favorites.” She said. “I love best the one who is sickest, until he is well. I love best the one who is in trouble, until she is safe again. And I love best the one who is farthest away, until he comes home.”
She sounds a lot like our relentless, pursuing, fraction-challenged, loving God.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Pentecost 15, Proper 17, Year C
Labor Day Weekend, September 1, 2013
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
The scene from this morning’s Gospel passage presents us with some interesting ethical and theological issues around humility, justice, and hospitality that also go to the heart of our baptismal covenant. So as we celebrate this morning the baptism of the newest member of the Body of Christ here at Trinity, Levi Everett White, I’d like to take a few moments to take a closer look at a couple of them.
The first thing we see is Jesus sizing up the way the guests at a banquet go about positioning themselves as they enter the room, and he notices that some head immediately for the choicest seats. I’m sure you’ve had that experience yourself, when you go to some types of social gatherings – there is always that initial angst as you enter the room, “Who is going to be there? Where do I sit?” If it’s a business-oriented function, we may be wondering, “Who do I need to connect with tonight to make this a successful evening?” That’s why there is a part of me that is always grateful when there is assigned seating – even if I would rather be at a different table – it takes some of the drama out of the situation.
Now every culture has its own traditions around hospitality and honoring certain guests according to their status – whether that is their position in the family if it is a family gathering or their position in the community if it is a larger social gathering. During my years as a pastor it has been a particular privilege to be invited to celebrate special celebrations with many in my congregations, and it is always a learning experience for me as I see how customs around showing respect and honor to various members of the community play out at these functions.
But how these customs get played out in our everyday lives can be problematic. They can pose serious issues to us depending upon our life experiences, our station in life, or our standing in the particular community in which we are gathered. For some, the seating drama going on in the Gospel story stands for the proposition that God does in fact choose for some people to be winners and some people to be losers, and too bad for you if you wind up at the bottom of the pyramid. That must be where God has planned for you to go. It was that same sort of interpretation of scripture that provided a foundation for Christians to justify the institution of slavery for so long – there is slavery in the Bible, so the argument went, so God must have intended that some be slaves and some be free. It’s God’s will. Of course, this interpretation was embraced only by those people who either owned slaves themselves or who benefitted financially or socially from the cultural climate that allowed slavery to begin with.
Others look at the Gospel story – again, depending upon their life experiences, station in life or standing in the community, and assume they must be among those who are meant to sit at the lower places. For these folks, they reason, “Jesus says it is better to go to the lower place, right? That’s where I belong anyway. I’m not worthy to be counted among the higher echelon. I’m not good enough, educated enough, rich enough, smart enough, handsome enough, important enough – you name it, the list can go on and on – and so we convince ourselves that we don’t really belong there in the first place or, at best, we belong in the lowest level of seating at the table.
For some of us, Christian lessons about humility lead us across the border of humility into the land of shame. The Land of Shame is not a healthy place, and it most definitely is not a place for Christians. Now don’t confuse shame with guilt. Shame is different than guilt, although we often hear the terms “guilt” and “shame” used together. “Guilt” relates to a feeling we get due to something we have DONE. I cut down the cherry tree so I feel guilty. I swore when I stubbed my toe. I was inconsiderate to a friend. I cheated on the test. All of these are examples of something about which we might feel guilt. And the feeling is appropriate until we do something to fix that which we have done wrong.
Shame, on the other hand, relates to a feeling we have about WHO WE ARE. Shame is a condition that some of us develop over the course of a lifetime, sometimes beginning in our family of origin, sometimes learned at school, in some cases learned over a lifetime of real or perceived slights, insults or failures. We begin to think of ourselves as losers, as unworthy of love and respect. And don’t be fooled – this condition of feeling shame is not limited to those in the world who are on the margins. Many who sit in corporate boardrooms and who serve as leaders in government throughout the world fall victim to the insidious condition of feeling that somehow, no matter what we do, we will just never measure up.
When Jesus is talking about exercising humility in this morning’s Gospel, he is not talking about shame nor is he suggesting that people in the world should think poorly of themselves. The Anglican author C.S. Lewis once wrote that “humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” And that is where Jesus points us this morning. The ethical point of Jesus parable is for us to learn humility – true humility. Now there is such a thing as false humility: We can put ourselves in the lower place because we think we will impress others with our humility. We can put ourselves in the lower place, or act in an excessively humble way, in the hope that we will draw others to heap praise upon us and tell us how wonderful we are.
True humility, on the other hand, is grounded in a healthy understanding of who we are as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. True humility is rooted in the theological statement that Jesus is making in his story, and that statement is grounded in what we read in the second chapter of Philippians, verses 6-8:
He humbled himself who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
True Christian humility is not rooted in shame in who we are or guilt over what we have done. True Christian humility is rooted in the knowledge and certainty that we are made by the same God who chose to take on our own nature, to become one of us, and who modeled a way of life by his own life. True Christian humility reflects the life of the One who calls us “friend” and welcomes us to his own banquet table, without distinctions of wealth, race, education, social standing, gender, or ability. I envision this table as round, where everyone seated has equal standing and importance.
What are modern-day parallels to Jesus’ suggestion to take the lower place? They occur any time we defer to another in a situation when we could claim the upper hand. And so as we connect with the rest of creation in our everyday lives, think of Jesus as sitting on your shoulder whenever we have an opportunity to take advantage of someone else; whenever we have the chance to sneak into that parking spot ahead of the other person who was waiting for it; to leapfrog into the newly opened checkout line at the store ahead of someone who has been waiting in front of you; give the person who is driving a little too slowly in front of you a break. These are some of mine; I’m sure you can think of your own.
And so today, as we welcome young Levi Everett into our community of faith, we will reaffirm in our baptismal covenant those principles of true Christian humility: that we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Jesus Christ; that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves; and that we will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.
Let us pray: Eternal God, whose son Jesus was in the fullness of his power most gentle, and in his greatness most humble; bestow his mind and spirit upon us, who have no cause for pride; that clothed in true humility we may discern the way of true greatness. Hear our prayer through the same Jesus who is now Lord and Christ. AMEN.
Sermon Proper 16C (Luke 13:10-17)
Marie Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
August 25, 2013
Let’s be honest about this. If someone got up right now and started to perform a miracle in our midst, standing at the rail, calling up those among us who are sick or infirm to lay hands on them, I don’t think we’d all be just hunky dory with that, would we? Tell the truth. Before we figured out what was going on, we’d squirm in our chairs. We’d wonder why “someone” didn’t do “something” about this disruption in our liturgy. Because what we do here on Sunday mornings is important to us. Our rituals matter to us. They remind us that we are God’s people and send us out to do God’s work in the world.
I imagine the leader of the synagogue must have felt the just like that. We’re supposed to see this leader as the embodiment of missing the point. But he was charged with safeguarding something precious and important to the synagogue community. And although we realize right away that the synagogue leader is over-zealous in his enforcement of the rule, that might not have been so easily apparent in the moment. This leader was doing his job. He was attending to something that was important to him and to his community. And if this woman had been showing up at the synagogue for 18 years, the leader was probably right. Jesus probably could have picked some other day to free her and heal her. But he didn’t.
Because sometimes, just like in the synagogue, and maybe just like here, sometimes our rituals and our institutions need to be disrupted so that we can remember what’s important.
And what is important, of course, is healing, freedom, and wholeness for all God’s people. Imagine – can you, someone so stooped that she can only see the ground? So bent, that she has to turn her head to see anything around her? Imagine her body, captive in this position for 18 years. She comes to the synagogue, as she usually does on the Sabbath, and Jesus notices her.
I bet she had been coming to the synagogue for most of the 18 years that she’d suffered. People had probably gotten used to her shape. They most likely leaned down to talk to her, and, according to Jewish custom, she was probably well taken care of by the community. But on that Sabbath, Jesus notices her. And he decides that this is the day when she’ll be released from the bondage of her bent body.
He sees her, he goes to her, he touches her, and he tells her – woman you are free! I have had those moments, and I hope you have too, that wonderful moment of freedom when we realize that, thanks to the loving touch of Jesus, we are free from whatever burdens of sadness or shame or guilt or anger or hurt that we are carrying. We are free to put those burdens down and to stand up straight and praise the God who made us. That’s what this woman does, and the whole community rejoices with her.
But the rejoicing only happens after Jesus shames his opponents. The leader of the synagogue and, we assume, the others in charge of the community, protest that her healing has disrupted their religious observance. And Jesus puts them to shame.
Jesus reminded them that this woman was part of their own (and his community). She’s a daughter of Abraham and Sarah – she’s Jewish – and if it’s okay to give our oxen water on the Sabbath then surely it is ok to heal one of our own on the Sabbath.
I like to believe that Jesus’ shaming of them actually spurred them to action. I like to believe that his opponents were able to see Jesus’ point, to change their hearts and their minds and rejoice with the rest of the congregation.
I like to think that because generally, I am more like the synagogue leader in the story than I am like Jesus. I’d be the first person squirming in my seat if some crazy teacher started calling people up to be healed on a Sunday morning. I hope that eventually I would figure it out, and join in the rejoicing.
This insistence that people and their needs trump the needs of our institutions and observances and rituals is the beginning of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus’ very next words are “What is the kingdom of God like?”
That’s a great question to ponder, isn’t it? Think about it. What is the kingdom of God like for you?
Fifty years ago this weekend, the country first heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s answer to the question, “What is the kingdom of God like?” He knew that his answer to the question was shaking the country to its core. He intended to disrupt our institutions until something changed.
Listen to his words,
Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
Dr. King knew the power of disruption. He led a movement that intended to use it. And he told us what the kingdom of God is like.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
Amen!
Did we get there? Did we arrive at King’s dream? The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. And I can tell you this. We weren’t there some 10 years later, in the red hills of Georgia where I lived in 1973, when I learned that, “Little white girls don’t invite little black girls to their birthday parties.” I only realized in reading Dr. King’s speech years later what an eerie echo those words were.
So are we there now, 50 years later? Have arrived at Dr. King’s dream?
We’ve made progress, certainly. In current society overt racism isn’t as tolerated as it was in 1963 or in 1973. If I were 7 years old today in Georgia, I’d probably get to invite my whole first grade class to my birthday party.
But covert racism can be much harder to eradicate. Racism is still alive and well among us. But we want to pretend that it isn’t. We are tired of talking about it. So we don’t talk about it. We hope that if we don’t talk about it, we might not disrupt our institutions and our rituals. But we can’t change what we don’t talk about. Recent events – like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, or the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman – have forced us to talk about racism.
There’s a group of pastors in Sanford, Florida, where Martin and Zimmerman are from. They are white and African American and they came together during the Zimmerman trial to try to help heal their community. They worked hard not to take sides. One of the white pastors describes it like this,
This particular shooting, it happens everywhere in this country, but for some reason this one was highlighted, and I believe it was by the hand of the Lord…We saw pastors come out of the woodwork who normally would never get together, and … in some respects, we were almost shamed into action.
What is the kingdom of God like? I think it’s like this. One of the black pastors said,
Pastors, both black and white, have said, you know what, forget about our denominational differences, forget about our racial differences, forget about even some of the things that we were born into. How about we develop relationship? You learn more about me, I learn more about you, and we can develop a relationship over the long haul.
What is the kingdom of God like? I think it’s like this. From a white pastor,
And as you get them into the same room, people hear the hearts of others and as they hear their heart, then we’re able to then talk about those things, then we’re able to discuss those things, and we really see, and it opens the door for healing to take place.
Oh yes! Oh let’s disrupt the polite agreement to not talk about it. Let’s hear each other’s pain. Let’s hear each other’s hearts. Let’s bring some healing into this painful place!
What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like a woman being freed of her bondage standing up straight and praising God. It’s like freedom.
It’s like this, says Dr. King,
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Quotes from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech are from this source.
Quotes from the pastors in Sanford, FL are from PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly transcript here.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
13th Sunday After Pentecost
August 18, 2013
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56
I’ve sometimes thought that there ought to be a saying that goes something like this: when the rector’s away the lectionary will play . . . . . . with the mind of the supply priest. What are sometimes called the ‘hard’ sayings of Jesus are generally scheduled for the summer months when rectors are away and other clergy come in to help out only to be challenged by the harsh language of the Gospel attacking all forms of immorality. That is particularly true about this morning’s gospel. For a religion that strives for reconciliation, peace, unity and concord among people, these words of Jesus are extremely unsettling. In an apparent state of great anger Jesus thunders to his hearers: Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
So much for the pious platitudes of those folk extolling the unity of the family in its traditional nuclear form as the supreme value of human life. Now, of course, taken literally and out of context these harsh words of Jesus may seem as if they are fundamentally devaluing family life as something alien to God’s mission for the world. That would be, I think, a profound misreading of what Jesus is up to in this morning’s gospel. What he is suggesting, I believe, is the importance of choice: of making decisions about how we structure our life that are grounded in basic values for trying to follow God’s call into and for the world, a world which God redeemed through the bloody death of Jesus on the Cross.
The unknown author of the epistle to the Hebrews reminds his hearers that many of the earliest Christians made hard choices for living in response to that crucifixion, choices that led them to suffer mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented. Those were choices whose consequences were clearly very costly to those who made them.
One of the great dilemmas for those of us living today in the first and highly developed world is that choosing to identify ourselves with Christianity, especially in its institutional form, hardly ever leads to these costly and often fatal outcomes, though it certainly does in less westernized and less affluent parts of the world.
The late lay educator in the Episcopal Church, Verna Dozier, in her book “The Dream of God”, talks about a number of ‘falls’ that have led to our present predicament regarding the viability of the Church as an instrument for carrying out God’s mission to the world. One of those falls was the embrace of the outward trappings of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. Constantine brought Christianity from a state of being persecuted by the secular power to a state of being privileged by it. Before Constantine it was not safe in worldly terms to be a Christian: but after Constantine it was not safe or at least not advantageous to be anything else but a Christian. But with privilege comes moral risk.
The hard edge of many of the prophetic denunciations of corrupt political and economic power found throughout the Old Testament, tends to get blunted. The harshness of Jesus’ claim that he has come to bring fire and division to the earth have been dulled, tamed, and marginalized. Jesus’ words have often been spiritualized and mystified into airy and harmless bits of psychological advice with no social or prophetic bite remaining in them. As an institution the Christian church has learned how to play ball with the reigning political and cultural powers that be. The Church has even, on occasion, aped and copied the hierarchies of power that exist in the dominant worldly powers: bishops and archbishops have become, in some traditions, the princes of the Church and are, note the word, enthroned in their hierarchical positions.
But the Church has paid a high price for emulating and cozying up to the power structures of the world: and that price is often the price of acquiescence to, complicity with, and silence about the continuing injustices that political and economic structures of the world underwrite and condone. In some societies Christian Churches accept establishment by the state. In other societies, such as ours, churches have to survive, at least as measured by membership numbers and donations, by finding a message that will be the least provocative and off-putting as possible to present and future members. In either case, churches find it hard to challenge the prevailing social values of the dominant culture.
Now no one is seriously calling for Christians to seek out ways to return to the pre-Constantinian time of persecution and martyrdom. We have too much invested in our culture to abandon it entirely or to shirk our responsibility for it. As privileged members of our society, we have the opportunity, which the martyred Christians did not, to use what social power we do have to make a difference to the policies and practices that define our life together as a society.
It would be irresponsible to abdicate that power in the name of a purist, absolutist, and unrealistic option of withdrawal and powerlessness. But it would be equally irresponsible to wield what social power we do have to dictate to the society policies and practices which continue to protect our privileges. Many in our society are rightly suspicious of Christian groups seeking to gain political power in order to advance a purely sectarian agenda. We live in a political culture that encourages consensus in the public square and the finding of common ground, not one that seeks to advantage one religion at the expense of others.
Jesus’s words in this morning’s gospel should remind us that the Kingdom of God, for whose realization we should always be working, is not simply a name that consecrates the world as it presently is. We are not called out of that world but nor are we called to be fully of the world. We are called to be in but not of it: to be full participants in the worldly structures we ourselves and our forebears have helped to create, while at the same being critical prophets or prophetic critics who are courageous enough to point out its shortcomings and to call it to task when it fails to advance the Kingdom but without insisting on the right to impose the Kingdom on others without their full participation and consent. And in our role as wise and critical prophets we need to identify those divisions in the social family that still exist and not to paper them over with pious clichés and abstract spiritualizing.
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman clash, for example, many sincere and well-intentioned people said we should now put this issue behind us. They joined a chorus of voices calling for us to believe that we now live in a post-racial society in which race is no longer an issue. That may be true for some people but we would be blind if we did not understand that race and racism still fester in large parts of our country and to some extent in each citizen of that country. Much of the continuing hostility to the President of the United States of America is not just based on ideological differences but on a pervasive and continuing sense among many people that as a Black American he is not one of “us”. And yet the President spoke forcefully and candidly when he reminded us, to our shame, that as a black man in America he could have been Trayvon Martin. Suspicion of young black men, wherever they are, still lingers in the American consciousness and leads almost daily to their humiliation at the hands of police and even, tragically, to death in some instances. So Jesus is right to remind us that simply crying peace, peace, or family, family, when there is division in our national family and between families within our society will not resolve the divisions that still exist. We cannot wish them away with the rhetoric of peace and tranquility but only with a realistic confrontation with racist realities on the ground.
Families are marvelous things and can be the communities within which love, trust, compassion, mercy, and justice are developed and experienced most fully. But families unfortunately can also hide dysfunctionality, bitterness, resentment, and even abuse. The only family beyond corruption is the one that is founded on the love and mercy and grace of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. Our human families can, at best, approximate such a holy family. And until the Kingdom comes in its fullness, we are obligated to both care for and to critique, both lovingly and prophetically, those family structures, as well as political and economic structures, that fail to advance the mission of God for the redemption and justice of the world. Love makes a family, and when love is absent (or when families define themselves solely in gender restrictive terms), then division between families and within families can be expected. Family structures in their present form are not unblemished exemplars of divine love but a prophetic critique in the name of love can move them, however slowly and imperfectly, toward greater love and the healing of division.
Trinity Church, Hartford, August 11, 2013
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 14C
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Last Sunday the chief message in our scripture lessons was the futility of acquiring possessions independent of a generous and Christ-filled spirit. In today’s lessons the emphasis is a little different. Jesus asks those who would follow him to sell their possessions. This seems to go a step further than simply not considering possessions as essential to living a Christ-filled life. Today’s lessons point us to what happens once we have given up our psychological reliance on those superfluous possessions. What today’s lessons suggest is that when we give up our reliance on possessions we can begin to enter the Kingdom of God when the Son of Man appears.
The letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Abraham was promised both the power of procreation (and this for a man and his wife long after their child-bearing years: the text actually calls him one as good as dead) and he is promised entry into the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. It is significant that the biblical text uses the word ‘city’ to capture the fullness of God’s promise. And it is distinguished from the nomadic life in moveable tents which Abraham has lived up until the moment God sends him on his new mission.
There are, I think, a couple of points that can be drawn from these texts that apply to our life today.
First is the gratuitous or gracious nature of God’s promise to Abraham. Abraham had done nothing to earn God’s grace and he could only receive God’s promise as a matter of faith, not a matter of right. And yet Abraham is asked to accept God’s gift without knowing where it will lead and without having earned it. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” What God promises him goes beyond anything human beings have any right to expect even on the basis of righteous behavior. We might remember this point when people come seeking comfort from those of us who constitute God’s community in the world today, especially when they are in the midst of broken lives for which they may even be in part responsible. They bring nothing of merit or worth to those from whom they seek assistance and yet we should follow God’s example and grant it to them regardless of merit. God has the freedom, which he exercises constantly, to grant the promise of the Kingdom to anyone, no matter how messed up they have made their lives and the lives of others, if they receive that promise in faith. If they come in faith to us seeking our help we can do nothing less than grant it to them.
And faith, in this context, means trust: trusting that God will deliver on his promise even when he doesn’t give us a fully-developed, detailed game plan or annotated itinerary of how our lives are going to go in the future. Abraham had no idea of where the promised land was. “When he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” So the first step is to trust that obeying God’s command can initially take us over uncertain, unchartered waters.
The second step is trusting, in faith, that where we are being led is toward the fulfillment of the divine promise. God does not command things simply for the sake of being obeyed. Obedience to God’s call is part of the larger, more inclusive, divine grant of human fulfillment to the creation which he loves and for which his Son Jesus died so that we might live more fully. The logic of the universe is simply this: God has our best interests in mind (even when those interests have been perverted by us, even when they are the opposite of what we think in our selfish greed-obsessed lives is best for us). And God knows that whatever he commands is in service to those essential God-given interests. Faith is not blind: it is the sure and certain hope that in putting our lives in the hands of the one and only power in the universe who can fulfill and satisfy our most basic nature, we are on the way to fulfilling that nature, a nature which as the lessons today and last week point out does not consist in the ownership of possessions or the acquiring of more stuff. But once we’ve put our lives into God’s hands, faith is the confidence that even when we don’t know the details of how we are going to get there, we will get there, we will eventually arrive at the banquet which God has spread for all those who will follow him.
And yet we do have an inkling, albeit in metaphor and symbol, about where the “there” is, the Kingdom, to which God is calling us. It is called a city, which in Biblical times was the place where people came together, as a body, as persons and tribes joined together into a community of common interests, ideally working out their differences in harmony. It was not a bunch of solitary, withdrawn, or private little enclaves in which people turned away from each other in order to meditate solely on their private relationship with God. While that personal relationship with God is a prerequisite for all healthy interpersonal relations, it is not for the sake of the solitary self in and for itself but always for the sake of others. The promise to Abraham was not that Abraham would live independently in the splendid isolation of a mystical relation with God but rather that through the procreation of children Abraham and Sarah would extend God’s promise of blessing to descendants who would be, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." Only the image of a city to which many are called captures this profoundly social interpersonal understanding of what God’s promise will lead us to.
Why is this important today? Because cities in some form are our future, especially cities that look outward to a global world in which the world’s population becomes increasingly urban, and interdependent, financially, culturally, agriculturally, and interpersonally. The promise of the city is the promise of life woven together, lived humanely and justly and with sensitivity to the needs of all others. Now to be sure, cities can be dysfunctional, corrupt, dirty, confusing, overly complex, and even frightening to some who shy away from messy and uncomfortable contact with the “teeming masses yearning to breathe free” who have come to our cities from their own places of origin, often coming by faith. But they come to cities because that is where life has the possibility of being lived most robustly and fully in the complex of a diverse set of relationship with others. Cities are where we can experience the riches of human life most intimately and most fully. Cities are where people have to come together to work out their relationships, to accommodate their differences, to share their lives, their views, their insights, in short, to struggle for a common good that will enrich all who participate in it. Cities are the crucibles, the testing ground, in which people can build up the common ties which make life richer and more robust than anywhere else. Cites are where our complex interdependence is made most clear.
Jesus knew the promise of cities even though he knew their downsides. That is why he set his face toward Jerusalem in order to complete his mission to us. Surely Jerusalem and Rome were messy, noisy, complex, teeming places for 1st century people. And yet Christians lived and flourished in them. Many come to our cities today with the same faith that guided Abraham as he headed out on his journey: with the faith that is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Whether they have come north from the south, from the countryside, from rural isolation, or from other countries, people come to our cities for the promise of a better life even if they have not yet seen that to which they are coming. And if cities are beacons of hope to thousands of people we don’t have the moral right to abandon them by retreating into enclaves cut off from responsibility for the city. This may not mean that we all will live in cities but we don’t have the luxury of neglecting our cities by cutting off financial support for them. City, suburb and rural areas are bound together in a moral bond of mutual support. That is why Jesus does not shy away from using the image of the city as the symbol for the Kingdom of God which was itself a symbol for God’s gift to us of the redeemed life.
And if this is the case, then we have to regard today’s city as capable of redemption and renewal, even when that requires a faith at least as strong as Abraham’s. Rather than being discouraged at the outset at the enormity of the task of redeeming those places where our fellow human beings are working to bring civility and justice and decency and a sense of belonging and working together for a better future, we should approach the task of redeeming our cities with the same faith as Abraham had: willing to step forward in trust even when the details of the road map or the game plan are obscure. We have not yet seen the fullness of the redeemed city but we can be sure, by faith, that, by God’s grace and the divine promise, the redemption of the city is possible and that we can contribute to its arrival.
It is far better to be found working for the Kingdom and the city of God than having gone to sleep or become preoccupied with possessing more things that we think will protect us from others. And this requires constant vigilance: for as Jesus reminds us all: “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." AMEN
