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July 16, 2017
Trinity Church, Hartford
Proper 10, A
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
As both individuals and as a nation we live in a time of great uncertainty; and with that uncertainty comes a pervasive sense of insecurity. Wars and the rumors of war surround us. Terrorists strike without warning and in seemingly random places, killing innocent children and bystanders. Natural catastrophes strike the just and unjust alike. Disease and illness affect both rich and poor. Evil and horror seem to lurk around every corner and none of us are immune.
And yet none of this is new: the forms or types of evil and its wounds to our humanity may differ from age to age, but injustice, cruelty, and suffering have been with us since the beginning of the human race: Cain kills Abel without justification and the fratricidal curse of Cain continues down to the present. What has changed is our ability to rain down evil on others in horrifying proportions. We can unleash nuclear holocausts and bio-chemical warfare upon our perceived enemies. We have also invented new forms of guns and other personally owned weapons, the sales of which we are reluctant to subject to background screening and registration for fear of losing our precious right to own weapons of personal mass destruction.
We also have the ability to destroy others more subtly through less lethal technological means such as public shaming on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We can virtually murder the reputation of others electronically by humiliating, and denigrating them in the public arena of social media. In an extreme case a person was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter for urging her boyfriend through text messages to commit suicide, which he subsequently did.
As a nation we often create laws and public policies which increase the uncertainty and insecurity of those living in poverty or suffering from illness and disease when they have no financial resources to deal with them. We threaten to take away from those with the least resources the common goods of a just society, such as guaranteed education, housing, and health care which are essential to living meaningful lives. We exacerbate the divisions between the most affluent and everyone else through tax cuts to those who least need them. And without these common goods peoples’ lives are devalued and their political and economic power is diminished. That is a form of murder which strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human.
Ironically, however, the more ways we find to do harm to others, the more we increase our own sense of uncertainty and insecurity. We fear that if we make others afraid of our power
and privilege they might eventually rise up in rebellion against us. In response, some have even argued that we should arm everyone so that we sow the seeds of uncertainty in would-be violent people to the point that they wouldn’t dare to unleash their weapons in public places for fear that we will unleash ours on them. This argument built on rampant fear would turn uncertainty and insecurity into virtues that will allegedly calm the waters of division and hatred. And if you can’t by your own power overcome your enemy, whether it be poverty, injustice, or terrorism, then you deserve to be a loser in the competitive race to be and remain a winner.
And yet we look in the midst of such insecurity for a sign of hope. Some will find it in individuals who proclaim their strength and history of being winners who have defeated the losers. Individuals who promise greatness through the power of wealth and privilege will reassure us that we can shrug off of any responsibility to help others who are still suffering and in gratitude for this lifting of such mutual responsibility these winners will be lionized and emulated.
But it is precisely at this point that we who have committed ourselves to the truth of the gospel will find another deeper, truer, lasting, and more certain sign of hope. That hope is one that is rooted in the only power in all of reality that can
really and truly deliver on the desire we all have to be made whole and to flourish in bonds of love and trust with others.
Paul reminds us of that power when he points to the spirit of life found in Jesus Christ, a spirit which is promised to us if we will but accept the gracious act of God in sending Jesus to free us from the law of sin and death. In sending Jesus God is participating in a narrative, a history, which begins in the creation of the universe and will end in the fullness of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. If we are to find hope and a relief from the uncertainties and insecurities of life in the flesh, we have to be willing to place ourselves, our lives and our loves, squarely and unreservedly into the narrative of God’s work in the world. We need to seek out the places in our world where the good soil will take the seeds we sow and bring them to fruition. That soil is not to be found in following false messiahs, or schemes of individualistic self-protection, or in cutting ourselves off from our obligations of caring, compassion, and justice toward others. The fertile soil is the ground watered by communal interdependence, not by extolling the alleged virtues of heroic self-reliance in splendid isolation from the needs of others. Instead of a health care plan that would leave the poorest and the sickest to their own devices because we believe that we can’t afford to help them or because they weren’t able to buy their own way back to health, we need to
embrace a policy of universal health care that makes us all our brother’s keepers, to restore the bond of mutual responsibility between Cain and Abel, because there is no one who is an island unto himself. Why should the fundamental health needs of my brother or sister in Christ be overridden by the desire to have a little more relief from taxes? Do families say that they will care for a sick child only up the point that he or she becomes a financial burden, at which point we cut them off from care? As Christians we are committed to the care of all people within the same human family because we believe that the narrative of history leads to a common interdependent community of all persons. We may never eliminate entirely the rain that falls from the cloud of uncertainty and insecurity that life throws at us. Nevertheless we can, with God’s help, lift that cloud so high above the darkness that it casts down the light of Christ and illuminates the certainty of God’s grace. When we open ourselves to that light we will be given the hope and the strength to do what God expects us to do when we are filled with his life-giving spirit.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A – Pentecost Sunday
June 4, 2017
Can the Church Be Born Again?
Acts 2:1-21; 1 Cor. 12:3b-13; John 7:37-39
Happy Birthday, Church! Today is the Day of Pentecost – or Whitsunday as it has traditionally been known in the Anglican Communion. The word Pentecost is from the Greek word meaning “50” and today bears that name because Pentecost always falls 50 days after Easter.
Many of you may not be aware that our Jewish brothers and sisters also celebrate a Pentecost Feast – in fact, the events we heard about in the Book of Acts this morning took place while the disciples were celebrating that very feast. The Jewish holiday is called Shavuot, also known as the Feast of Weeks, and it marks the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22); and it also commemorates the anniversary of the day YHWH gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai. So Pentecost marks beginnings in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions: It celebrates the giving of the Law to the Israelites, and it celebrates the giving of the Holy Spirit in our Christian tradition.
So why do you think the giving of the Holy Spirit is considered the birthday of the church? Why isn’t it, say, Christmas, when Jesus was born? Or why isn’t it on Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead? I want to propose what may seem like an unusual answer: Those aren’t considered the birthdays of the church because Jesus wasn’t born, and he certainly didn’t die, to start a church. Jesus devoted his life to starting a movement – a revolutionary movement – that was meant to give a glimpse of heaven on earth even during our lifetimes. And ever since the time of Constantine in the 4th century, when the Roman Emperor became a Christian and that movement was adopted by the very culture it was meant to challenge, we – Jesus’ followers – have lost sight of that countercultural movement and instead persisted in establishing a church.
The word “church” can have a number of meanings: It can refer to a building; it can refer to a community of people who claim that building as the epicenter or home base of their participation in the Jesus Movement; it can relate to a particular subset of Jesus purported followers, e.g., The Episcopal Church, The United Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church; or more broadly it can refer to the Church Universal – the collection of all of the institutions in the world that claim to follow Jesus.
But this morning I want to consider that second sense of church – the community of people who claim a building or a particular location as a base of their participation in the Jesus Movement. We often refer to a community like this as a congregation or a parish. And on this Pentecost morning, I would like to share with you a vision – an alternative future for what has become known as “the church.” It is a vision of the Church as the Body of Christ, a vision that will help us let go of many of the trappings of “church” of which we have become enamored but have little to do with the movement that Jesus actually led. This vision is rooted in a definition “parish” or “congregation” that a widening circle of folks– both clergy and lay – have been considering over these past several months. And here it is:
A parish is a community of theological imagination, fed by Word and Sacrament, empowering disciples and apostles in furthering God’s mission. (repeat) Let’s take a few moments to unpack those words.
A parish is a community of theological imagination. We may be frightened or intimidated by the word “theological” in front of the word “imagination.” We shouldn’t be. Professor Anna Williams warned us in seminary never to demean our congregations by assuming they can’t “do” theology. When you hear that fancy word “theology” always remember how St. Anselm defined it: Faith seeking understanding. Theology is nothing other than what we do when we pray – Embracing our faith in God’s merciful love and working to understand it more deeply, more fully. So a community of theological imagination is simply a community of Jesus’ followers that is trying to understand our relationship to God in Jesus Christ more deeply.
One of my favorite verses in our Book of Common Prayer (Eph. 3:20, 21) is one of the benedictions from Evening Prayer: It begins, Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
The prophet Joel captured the spirit of this in the passage quoted in Acts this morning: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit; and they shall prophesy.
What does that look like? Take a look at the book of Acts this morning: A rush of a violent wind filled the house where they were sitting. This is a sign of the Spirit – the Hebrew word is ruach, or breath. Remember the story in Ezekiel about the valley of the dry bones? They were dried up and lifeless until the human breathed breath into them, and then they came to life!
What else do we see in Acts? Tongues of fire resting on each of them. That is such a powerful image for me. This is going to sound crazy, but you know at Christmas time when you have the little Santas and Mrs. Clauses and snowmen that are candles. When I see them lit, you know the first thing I think of? You got it – Pentecost. Frosty the Snowman slain in the Spirit!
Beyond the flames, we see people speaking in languages that they have never studied or spoken, and other people hearing their own native languages from people who don’t speak them. And what are they hearing? They are hearing about God’s deeds of power
Ask yourselves, when was the last time we really dreamed about our congregations? When was the last time you looked around and wondered what God’s power, working in us, could do that was infinitely more than we would ever ask or even imagine? In this alternative vision of what a church congregation should be, in the words of Joel, we would dream dreams about what God’s power, working in us, could do.
Fed by Word and Sacrament. By now, all of us have heard about the reorganization of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and many of us have participated in helping to create that. One of the criticisms of these early efforts – and I have been very vocal in this regard – has been that the emphasis on what God is up to “out there” has not given proper attention to the importance of feeding and preparing Jesus’ followers for that work. In this visionary understanding of what a congregation is, we acknowledge the importance of being fed spiritually and intellectually not only to strengthen us in our faith but to better prepare us for the work to which Jesus calls us.
Empowering Disciples and Apostles. As I intimated in that last sentence, it is good for us to be fed regularly by Word and Sacrament. But for far too long, we have been lulled into the belief that our Christian involvement and commitment can be fulfilled by coming to church. And don’t get me wrong, that is super important and a great start. But it’s only a start. As that wise sage Garrison Keillor wisely observed, sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Jesus called ordinary people to be his disciples – to stay with him and learn by his teachings and example what it meant to be one of his followers. Then he commissioned them to be apostles – folks who went out from the home base and, by their words and their manner of life, proclaimed to the world what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. In order to reclaim the power of the movement that Jesus started, it is important not only for each of us to claim our status as theologians, but for us to realize that as member of the Body of Christ, each of us has a role to play as a disciple and an apostle in the Jesus Movement.
We don’t all have the SAME role -- as Paul writes in 1st Corinthians this morning, not everyone has the same gifts. Each of us has our own unique set of gifts, and all of them given by God and coming from that one Spirit that we celebrate today. But as Paul writes elsewhere, it takes us coming together, sharing our individual gifts, pooling our gifts for ministry in a synergistic way that brings us together in the one Body to which we are called. Remember Ephesians – Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Furthering God’s Mission. We need to remember that individual congregations have no mission of their own, no matter how grand their buildings or how important they may think they are. There is only one mission, and that is God’s mission, and we understand that mission to be the one proclaimed by Jesus the Christ in his life and in his teachings. Like individuals who have individual charisms but must work together to become the body of Christ, so congregations have unique charisms based upon the individuals that comprise them. But no one congregation can be all things to all people. It is up to each congregation to discern what unique gifts it has to serve God’s mission in the communities it reaches.
On that first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on those early followers and opened their eyes to the possibilities that God set before them, leading to a movement that changed the course of history. On this Pentecost Sunday 2017, I pray that the Holy Spirit will visit us anew, giving us a renewed sense of the mission that Jesus proclaimed, reflecting on our congregations as communities of theological imagination, fed by Word and Sacrament, empowering disciples and apostles in furthering God’s mission..
Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. AMEN.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Easter 5 – 2017
May 14, 2017
“Becoming Living Stones”
Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2: 1-10
This morning our first three lessons from the Book of Acts, the Psalm and 1st Peter each feature stones – literally or figuratively -- as central to the text. While the images are used differently in each, they all point to the power of God and, in Acts and 1st Peter, -- the power of the resurrected Christ. Together they form a useful groundwork for us to understand the development of the early church and from that, appropriate these new understandings to ourselves and our own situation in the 21st century.
The martyrdom of St. Stephen is the topic of the passage from Acts. St. Stephen was among the first Christian Deacons, and the first one to be martyred. In the death of Stephen – told in the short span of 6 verses, we see reflections of Jesus’ own death and in that, what develops as one of the themes of the Book of Acts: That this young Jesus movement, this offshoot of Judaism, will be persecuted and challenged at every turn by the religious and secular authorities, but not only in spite of it, but perhaps because of that persecution, those challenges -- it flourishes and spreads.
Look at the parallels Acts draws between St. Stephen’s death and Jesus’ own death. On three occasions, Stephen speaks, and in each one of them his words echo those of Jesus:
n When he is arrested, Jesus is taunted before the chief priests and scribes in the hope that he will commit blasphemy. In the same way, Stephen’s persecutors bring forward false witness in the hope that he will blaspheme. Instead, he looks up in the sky and exclaims in verse 56: “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man s at the right hand of God!
n Just as Jesus says from the cross, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46), Stephen says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. (Acts 7:59).
n Just before Jesus dies, he cries out from the cross, Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:24). Similarly, St. Stephen cries out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. (Acts 7:60).
There are other similarities that point to Stephen’s death as a new development in this young Jesus movement. Stephen’s response to death is similar to that of Jesus’ – prayerful self giving in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Like the Good News proclaimed by Jesus, the spiritual change for which Stephen is arguing in the previous two chapters is too much for those to whom he is speaking. It sparks fear in them, and as with the message of Jesus, the violence that leads to Stephen’s death grows out of that fear. It is so strong that they cannot bear to listen to it – they close their ears to what he is saying, shutting out his words even as they raise their voices and rush against him with their own roar, stifling both his testimony and taking away his life.
And yet, in his own death Stephen gives voice once again to the miracle of the resurrection: That despite adversity – yes, even in the face of death – the power of the ever-living God, the ever-loving God, is stronger and prevails over all of the adverse forces of the world trying to stop it or pervert it.
We see that theme also in the First Letter of Peter, who is writing to no particular Christian community – unike Paul – but rather to a number of communities generally in the area now known as Turkey. These communities were being persecuted by the Roman authorities and had probably been banished from their homeland – they are often referred to as “exiles” in the letter. In response to this situation, the author seeks to boost the spirits of Jesus’ followers by emphasizing that they are indeed part of a community – the community of the faithful in the Body of Christ. Being disenfranchised in civil society, made to feel like they are nobody important, those who were hearing this letter must have found the letter’s words comforting. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. . . Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s own people. (1 Peter 2:10).
When I read this passage I am reminded of what the prophet Ezekiel describes in Chapter 37 about the Valley of the Dry Bones. You will recall in that story how God sets the mortal before a valley that is filled with bones, the lifeless residue of what were once living, breathing bodies. The mortal wonders if and how they can ever be brought to life, and to his surprise, God tells the mortal, “You can bring them to life. Prophesy to the bones.” The mortal, being clueless, nonetheless follows the instructions, and behold, the bones slowly come together, and gradually sinews grow on them, and flesh comes upon them, and skin covered them. But there is something missing: Still, there was no life in them. They needed spirit, or breath (ruach) in the Hebrew Bible. And with the Lord’s urging, the mortal invokes breath to come from the four winds upon those that were dead, that they may live. And sure enough, the breath comes into the bodies, and they live, and stand on their feet, forming a vast multitude. The scene concludes with the Lord addressing this vast multitude with the words, O my people, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil, then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.
As with Ezekiel’s dry bones, 1st Peter is reminding us that being filled with the Spirit is essential to our relationship with each other and with God. Long for the pure spiritual milk, the passage begins, and take it in like infants, so that we can grow in the salvation to which the risen Christ calls us.
You get the definite sense here of growth and development – not a static state of being, but a dynamic movement that is ever changing. And then he uses another image – the image of the risen Christ as a “living stone.” But how does a stone grow? Isn’t a rock the quintessence of something that is inert and lifeless?
In the passage from Acts, they are used as weapons of destruction to hurt and to kill Stephen. But in Psalm 31, they are used as a symbol of strength and fortitude in the Lord ( “Be a rock of refuge for me . . . You indeed are my rock and my fortress, for your name’s sake lead me and guide me . . . (31”:2b. 3).
Ad so it is in First Peter. But Peter uses this rather odd image of rocks that grow and evolve, and he applies the term not only to Jesus the Christ, but to us, his followers, as well. When I think of a living stone I have this image of those stalactites and stalagmites you find in caves, that grow over time with the mineral deposits dripping over them. And maybe that’s not a bad image for us. Stalactites are those pointy outgrowths of calcite that form on the ceilings of caves. As water drips down, it slowly deposits the minerals on the side of the stalactite, making it grow ever-downward to a skinny point. If water continues to drip off the stalactite and onto the floor, it, too, begins to develop what is known as a stalagmite, which grows from the ground up.
Now stay with me here, because this sounds a little weird. But just like those stalactites and stalagmites that grow with the constant nurture of the minerals, so 1st Peter is saying that we as followers of the risen Jesus can grow into that holy priesthood that Peter envisions. But in order to experience that growth, we first need to understand that we are but spiritual infants, in need of pure, spiritual milk to nurture us into healthy, mature Christians.
On this mother’s day, the idea of all of us needing “pure spiritual milk” is especially meaningful. The mother of a newborn has milk to offer, but it takes a partnership of the mother and the infant to make what seems to be a natural process really work. While the infant instinctively has an inclination to search for the breast, it often takes the guidance of the mother to find the right place, to suck hard enough for the milk to flow yet not wear themselves out in the effort. In the first weeks of life, mother and child must work together to find the rhythm that makes this work for them.
But we can’t do it ourselves! Look what the passage says: “Come to him, a living stone . . . AND LIKE LIVING STONES LET YOURSELVES BE BULT INTO A SPIRITUAL HOUSE. What does this NOT say? It does NOT tell us to build a spiritual house. It tells us TO ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE BUILT INTO A SPIRITUAL HOUSE.
What’s the difference? The first one is OUR work – our planning, our resources, our design, our materials. The second one is God’s work into which Jesus invites us to be partners. The first one is something that we do. The second one is something Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is doing with us.
On this 5th Sunday after Easter, our lessons remind us of the power of the Resurrected Christ and that while this power is God’s free gift to us, we need to open ourselves, like infants, to be nurtured and fed with that spiritual milk that nurtures us into spiritual maturity. As with the development of the stalactites and the stalagmites, it may be a slow process, but it is steady, sure and the work of a lifetime. But it is the only way that we can grow into “Christ’s chosen race, Christ’s royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that we may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. AMEN.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A – Easter Sunday
April 16, 2017
John 20: 1-18
“But he did not go in. . .”
There is an awful lot of activity going on at the beginning of this morning’s Gospel. Mary arrives at the tomb to discover Jesus’ body is gone – and she runs to tell Peter and the disciple that Jesus loved. The two disciples run to the tomb to check it out, and Mary with them. The disciples leave, and Mary has her encounter with the angels. But as I read this familiar passage again this week, I was struck by something that does not happen. In verse 4 we are told that the two disciples were running together to the tomb, but the disciple that Jesus loved got there first. In verse 5 we read: He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Peter, of course, who was never particularly troubled about just barging into something, walks right in and observes the cloths that had been covering Jesus’ body. And then we read in verse 8, “Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
What can the Gospel be telling us here: on the one hand, the disciple saw and believed, but yet they did not understand? What are we to make of this?
You know, it has been observed, correctly, I think, that there can be no resurrection without Good Friday. And since I don’t recall seeing this many people at our Holy Week services this week, I think it is valuable for all of us – whether we were there or not –to revisit how we have journeyed with Jesus through the events of this past week.
We began last Sunday, Palm Sunday, when we recalled Jesus’ being hailed as a savior as he entered into the City of Jerusalem from the east, even as the Roman Procurator, Pilate, was entering Jerusalem from the west – Jesus on a donkey, surrounded by people crying, “Save us!” Pilate on a .warhorse, surrounded by a cavalcade of soldiers whose purpose was to keep the Jewish population in line by force if necessary. It sets up the trial that will take place later in the week.
Then this past Thursday, nearly 80 of us celebrated a unique Maundy Thursday, one in which we shared a common meal that some of us share each month with the guests of the Loaves and Fishes Ministry on the corner of Woodland Street. Over dinner we heard the Gospel stories about Jesus’ institution of the Holy Eucharist, the giving of himself as servant to his own disciples as he insisted on washing their feet.
There followed Good Friday, enshrined remarkably as a state holiday here in Connecticut, where we again heard the story of Jesus’ trial, passion, death and burial. The story ends with Jesus’ words almost breathless words, “It is finished. . .” And so it seemed to be to his disciples and close companions.
But were we ready for the resurrection yet? No. Last night, as we observed the Easter Vigil, we heard the stories of the Hebrew Bible that were the very seeds of Jesus’ own tradition, his own life and ministry. We heard the story of God’s creation, passionately related in the words of James Weldon Johnson by Michael Okeke – the story of how God took a formless void and created beauty and life out of nothing. Next we heard the story of how God made a new creation out of the devastation of a flood, giving the sign of the rainbow as God’s assurance of hope for the future. Next we heard the story of the Exodus, God’s miraculous act of rescuing the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt by parting the Red Sea to make a way for them. And the final reading was from the Prophet Zephaniah, writing about how the Lord rejoices in the gathering of God’s people, safe from adversity and poised to enter into a new sense of community.
Do you see the pattern here, my friends? Each of these stories in some way relates the saving acts of God that bring a people from bondage to freedom, from peril to safety, from physical or spiritual death to physical or spiritual rebirth. And we remember those stories because between the experience of Jesus’ death and the realization of Jesus’ Resurrection, it is important – spiritually important – that we pause and reflect on the context of this central belief of the Christian faith – that Jesus, the Christ – the messiah that the Jewish people had long-awaited – actually died and was resurrected from the tomb.
And it is hard to get our heads around, isn’t it? It’s ironic, I think, that on the biggest observance of the Christian year, we are asked to embrace what is certainly one of the most difficult affirmations of the Christian faith. But then again, maybe that’s what the Gospel writer was getting at when he writes in verse 8, “Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” I think there are a couple of important lessons for us here.
The first is to understand the difference between belief and understanding. You know, it was St. Anselm, an archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th Century, who defined the practice of theology as “faith seeking understanding.” Anselm assumed, as does the writer of this morning’s Gospel, that faith must be a basis for understanding, and not the other way around. Understood this way, we can now make some sense of the statement that the disciple saw and believed, but as yet he still did not understand.
It’s a good lesson for we who live in a world defined by the Enlightenment, a movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized reason and individualism and thus placed faith in an inferior position. It is the influence of the Enlightenment that makes us in western society leery of things we don’t understand. We make like the idea of faith in Jesus as the resurrected Christ, we may even profess it; but when it comes to actually act on that belief, to go somewhere or to do something that actually requires us to put our trust in God, then we pull back, hesitant to take that step when we don’t know the pre-determined outcome.
And that brings us to the second important lesson from this morning’s Gospel. The disciple whom Jesus loved initially just looked into the tomb – he didn’t enter in. But until he took that step, he was just an observer. It was only when he took that step into the tomb – to meet the reality of Jesus’ death – that he was able to believe what Jesus had promised would happen – he was no longer there, but was risen, and going on a head of them to Galilee.
On this Easter Sunday 2017, Jesus invites us to take just such a step. We can celebrate the holiday of Easter and, like the disciple, remain an outside observer, safe and secure in our own little world. OR, we can take that step to meet Jesus where he calls us. We can confront those part of our lives that we would like to change; those habits or aspects of our lives that draw us away from Jesus and one from another; avoiding those choices that on the one hand pose some risk, and on the other offer the promise of living more deeply into the promise of Resurrection Life that Jesus offers, the possibility of growing to be the person God desires for us to become rather than settling for things as they are.
My prayer for each and every one of us this day, and throughout this Eastertide and beyond, is that we take that step forward, following in the footsteps of Jesus’ beloved disciple. Let’s take that step out of our heads and allow the risen Christ into our hearts. Let’s commit ourselves in this holy season to move beyond simply celebrating Easter and truly embrace the new life to which Jesus calls us in the Resurrection.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
AMEN.
April 9, Palm Sunday, 2017
Trinity Church, Hartford
Zechariah 9:9-12; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 21:1-11; 26:14-27:66
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
This Palm Sunday is the start of Holy Week, also known as the passion of the Christ. The word passion is a complicated one and when we unpack it, we find a number of different but related meanings which can shed light on its significance for our lives today. Its significance, however, leads to some surprising and even radical subversions of many of the things, persons, and practices we currently seem to value in contemporary society. Exploring the depths and nuances of the notion of passion can both unsettle as well as ultimately reassure us.
Of course the first thing one thinks of upon hearing the word ‘passion’ is an extreme, often romantic, feeling for something. One feels passionately about someone or something. One is in the throes of passion. One dedicates oneself to something with an abiding passion. The emotional force of a passion exceeds and sometimes upsets our attempt to rationally master the world around us. This sense of passion has both positive and negative connotations. It’s a good thing when we feel passionately about something that is good and worthy. But we can also be consumed by passion and lose all sense of perspective and reason.
A second thing the word passion implies is undergoing something in which one is submerged by forces beyond one’s control. It is related to the word ‘passive’ which means to be acted upon by others or things outside of oneself. It is also the root of the word for suffering; which again is an undergoing of something in which one is being acted upon by something other than oneself. One is overcome with passion but one does not rationally choose to feel passion or to master it: passions act upon us, we are the recipients of feelings we don’t originate or determine. I don’t wake up in the morning and rationally decide what passions I will feel today, what mood I will choose to be in. Passions are not matters of human choice. They come upon us: we do not create them at will.
The corollary words related to this sense of passion as an undergoing are passivity, pathos, patience, and pathetic, all of which tend to carry negative connotations. And they do so because they represent us as ‘victims’ of forces outside of our control, and no one wants to be a victim. In our present value system it is far more important to be seen as an autonomous controller or determiner than as a subject being controlled or determined by others.
Passion indicates vulnerability to forces we don’t determine, being humiliated into subjection by superior forces.
The opposite of passion, of course, is self-originated force, action, initiative and the ability to determine by one’s own power what happens to oneself. Self-determining agency is considered of much higher value than being determined by the power of others. It is true, of course, that we do have a responsibility within the limits of our power to act against the instrumentalities of injustice. There are times when we must exercise coercive force judiciously and thoughtfully. But there are also times we must accept the reality of powerlessness. Jesus in his passion takes us into the reality of worldly powerlessness and forces us to see it in its awful fullness. But he does so only in order to bring us out the other side renewed and redeemed by a very different kind of power.
As the son of God, of course, Jesus represents the supreme power of the universe: God. And yet in this week of his passion he becomes the victim of powers he does not control and suffers the humiliation of absolute worldly powerlessness, crucifixion on a cross, a means of death inflicted on the weakest members of society. So we are right to ask, how can an all-powerful God allow his son to be a subject or a victim of forces that drive him into submission to merely human authority?
The words subject, submission, subservience are all related to the words that connote the undergoing of that which is bearing down on us – an undergoing in which we are the ones being acted upon by forces greater than we are. They are all preceded by the word ‘sub’, which means under the power or authority of someone greater than us.
In our desire to wield power over others we have learned to fear submission; to fear being subjected to passions and agencies that we do not create or control.
Some have noted that this is particularly true of men: men often define themselves by how much worldly power they deploy, whether financial, military, sexual, or simply physical. It is said that men would rather die of a heart attack than from cancer. Heart attacks at least suggest that those who have them are power exercising doers; cancer suggests they are passive victims over something they haven’t actively mastered or controlled.
This aspect of passion also relates directly to the experience of suffering, which is also derived from the notion of undergoing experiences as a patient which one does not choose but to which one is subject. These experiences are especially those of loss, pain, grief, and defeat.
The negativity of passion and suffering is put in stark relief by its alleged opposite: force, control, and domineering power. These are the ingredients that go to make up what are often referred to in contemporary political discourse, as winners. Those who do not win by controlling their own and the destiny of others, are losers and no one wants to be a loser: we all want to be winners whose victories and gains testify to our successful use of coercive force. Winning means dominating the losers and rejecting them as unworthy of our concern. That’s why we so often marginalize the poor: they represent the extreme negative value of powerlessness. They haven’t successfully manned up and taken control of their own lives as winners, not losers they are and who do not deserve our respect or concern.
Often associated with the approval of winners is the endorsement of what is called ‘hard’ power, meaning coercive power exercised over others, getting them to submit to the demands of the wielder of power. The opposite of hard power is soft power and softness indicates weakness, subservience, and passivity, often, in a still sexist society, associated primarily with women.
In the context of this value scheme associated with passion we find Jesus and the passion he is undergoing: a loser in many respects whose exercise of worldly power seems rather soft, even non-existent. He does not attack his persecutors: he does not fight back against the authorities who condemn him to death. Jesus is a man whose career path and route to temporal power is cut short before his mid-thirties; he is financially poor and politically powerless; rejected by the religious leadership of his time, convicted and executed by the political authorities; crucified ignominiously alongside thieves; forsaken by some of his closest followers. A man who left no estate, property, or financial assets, no army, no political party, no philanthropic institution, no government policies. A man who suffered both physically and humiliatingly at the hands of others. A man whose passion was inflicted upon him and over which he exercised no countervailing resistance.
What, then, we ask, is going on here? The only answer that makes any sense is that the passion of the Christ is initiating a radical subversion of what we normally think of and value as power. The passion of the Christ is power but in a form where one would least expect it. It is the soft power of worldly weakness; but it is the hard power of compassion and sacrifice in the face of the domineering power of hardness and the imposition of force through domination, coercion, physical, economic, and even military might. If we have eyes to see there is real power in the events of Jesus’ passion. But it is not visible to the value system which currently dominates our contemporary society. It is not power as we normally understand it: it is power based on the profound but subversive truth that true victory over what we fear comes through service in submission to others; that fulfillment consists in conforming or subordinating ourselves to God’s underlying intention as it is woven throughout reality, if we only have eyes to see it. That underlying intention is not domination but reconciliation; not the exercise of hard power but the exercise of compassion, pity, empathy, and love. The divine intention, which is hard-wired into reality despite the attempt to disguise it under the ideology of force and domination, is an intention found most commonly in communities of tolerance, diversity, and the acceptance of others for the quality of their being, not of their wealth or gender or race or ethnicity or sexual identity or orientation.
This then is the subversive meaning of the passion of the Christ: only by undergoing to its fullest extent the cruelty of the hard power of the world does one overcome that destructive and life-diminishing power. It does, of course, take faith or trust to believe that when we are at our weakest, when in the world’s eyes we are losers, when we are at our most vulnerable to the forces of evil, when we lie in submission under the forces that currently dominate us, faith reminds us that we are in the hands of a loving God whose love will ultimately overcome all that is currently arrayed against us. Passion is worldly weakness and vulnerability. Jesus took worldly powerlessness to its utter depths in his weakness and vulnerability and subverted it to reveal the true power of the ultimate victory of God over everything that threatens to undo us. The passion of the Christ vividly reminds us that out of weakness comes strength, out of adversity and suffering, come hope and resurrection. Let us then, through prayer, meditation, and biblical reflection, use this holy week to find our own way into weakness and offer it up to God for healing and renewal as we work our way to the day of the Easter resurrection and victory over death and the grave.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A – Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 26, 2017
1 Samuel 16: 1-13 Ephesians 5:8-14 Psalm 23 John 9:1-41
Who is Blind? And Who Can See?
Gracious God, illumine our hearts and minds in the Scriptures, so that by the power of your Holy Spirit we may see what is good and right and true. And seeing, help us to do what is pleasing to you, so that your glory becomes visible in our words and deeds. In Christ’s name we pray. AMEN.
This morning’s words from Holy Scripture reflect a common theme around eyesight or, more broadly, vision or perception. The passages from the 1st Book of Samuel, the letter to the Ephesians and the Gospel of John all make specific references to being able to see and how we see it. We make a mistake, however, if we hear these words and take them at face value. We would be just scratching the surface of their richness if we don’t delve further into what the writers want us to hear.
In the 1st Book of Samuel, Samuel is being tasked for the second time to identify a king for Israel. He is nervous -- the first time didn’t go so well – it wound up with the selection of Saul, who quickly lost God’s favor.
This time, the Lord tells Samuel to go interview the sons of Jesse, and there he will find the man that God has selected to replace Saul. To which Samuel understandably responds, “How can I go? If Saul finds out, he will kill me!” (16:2). And in the Lord’s response, we find our first reference to sight, although the word is not used. The Lord says, take a heifer with you, invite Jesse to the sacrifice, “and I will show you what you shall do…” Samuel is essentially flying blind, depending only on the guidance of the Lord. He’s going without a plan, relying only on God.
Then in verse 6, we have a second, but slightly different reference to sight. “When they came, he looked on the oldest, Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “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 we all should know how the story ends – Samuel interviews all of the sons that Jesse has presented to him, and the Lord has rejected each and every one, leading Samuel to ask Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” (v.11). And of course, they are not. Jesse summons the youngest son whom he didn’t even invite to the sacrifice but left to tend the sheep. It is David, the youngest, whom the Lord chooses to succeed Saul.
The Gospel passage for today is that wonderful story from the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John in which Jesus restores the eyesight of a man who was blind from birth. The passage is 41 verses long -- and yet only 2 of those verses are about the healing itself. The rest of the passage is not about the healing, but about the reaction of the rest of this man's world: His neighbors and those who had known him as a blind beggar; the disciples; the Pharisees; and even his own parents!
n His neighbors and those who had known him as a beggar don’t even recognize him. Imagine that, we don’t know how old he is but we do know he is an adult. And to these neighbors and casual passersby, he was only recognized by his blindness. He was essentially dehumanized of all other characteristics – he was the blind beggar.
n The disciples, following popular belief of the time, thought the man’s blindness was someone’s fault, the result of someone’s sin. They ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” And Jesus’ reply is that no one sinned – he was born that way so that God’s works might be revealed in him. And with that, Jesus restores his sight.
n The Pharisees refuse to believe that the man was born blind until they talk to his parents. They actually ask the man three different times to describe what happened and to admit that Jesus is a sinner. He replies in frustration, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
n The man’s own parents refuse to get dragged into this debate, knowing it is a no-win situation for them. If they take the son’s side, they risk being thrown out of the synagogue. So they simply respond, “He is of age. Go ask him.”
So the irony of this Gospel passage is that while the young man had been blind from birth, by the end of the passage the only two people who can see are the man himself and Jesus. Everyone else is blind to the truth that Jesus is offering. Jesus says as much at the end of the passage: I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. And when the Pharisees ask, “We are not blind are we?” Jesus replies, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
What do you think Jesus is trying to tell us?
At this point I would ask you to consider friends or acquaintances you may have who are, in fact, blind. I remember well a high school friend of mine, Kathie, who was blind from birth – I was actually good friends with her brother. Until I got to know her, I kind of pitied her, not being able to imagine life without eyesight. In fact, her life was rich and full: To be sure, she had to learn a large measure of adaptation to navigate in a world that is designed around those with eyesight. And she had to teach us – teach us how to live with her – LIVE with her, not change her. That was OUR blindness – even if we were to blindfold ourselves for a day or a week or a month, or develop some later loss of vision, we who have experienced eyesight can NEVER know what it is like to be blind from birth.
This is a delicate point, but it is necessary for us to wrestle with it if we are going to enter into this passage. It calls us to consider blindness as a state of being or a place to be, not an ethical world of sinfulness or being less than fully human. Professor Anna Carter Florence of Columbia Theological Seminary reflects:
What is it like to be born into one experience of the world that will never change or, we might add, seems like never will? What is it like to live and move among others whose experience of the world is so radically different? What is it like to try to understand their world, and describe ours to them? . . . Before we can enter this text, we have to try to place ourselves there – in a world that is radically different from the one we know.
This is a question that is much broader and deeper than physical eyesight. It applies equally to any condition of life, and it is a factor to be considered in our churches, in our communities, and in our country. It is at play in our local, state and national civic life. The same dynamic that Jesus addresses with the blind man can be applied to any other demographic that society traditionally places on the margins -- the poor, the homeless, those lacking a basic education, those belonging to a racial group other than Caucasian in the United States, those who are members of the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims – I could go on and on.
That is one of the things that have always troubled me, for example, about church groups who think that by sleeping in a box on a cold winter evening they can better understand the plight of the homeless. To do this exercise is not only unrealistic – all it proves is that it is cold to sleep outside in a box in the winder. Worse, it mocks the realities of the very demographic that the church group is trying to understand. They can’t begin to experience the hopelessness of being stuck in a situation and having no clue, no plan, no means, no resources to make things different. Those of us who do not belong to one of those groups can never reproduce the experience – we can only begin to enter into an appreciation of it by seeing as God sees -- not just the outer person and his or her physical characteristics, but the inner person, the child of God, and to listen to that person’s story.
In his recounting of this story, John is trying to get us to understand that moving from blindness to sight is not just about eyesight. In Jesus miraculous healing, the blind man experiences a conversion not only of body but of spirit as well. Going back to Transfiguration Sunday, we might say the man was transformed or even transfigured – and to those who saw him through God’s eyes, and not human eyes, they were able to perceive the person he really was. The problem was that without an inner conversion, the disciples, the Pharisees, and even the man’s parents could not see.
Maybe this passage is more about transitions than it is about status. John is calling us out as being in the position of the Pharisees and the disciples. We are the ones who still experience blindness, and we are the ones who need conversion. John is calling us to acknowledge that it is more important to confess Jesus than to be able to understand him or explain him.
Let us pray: Lord God, why is it that we look, but do not see? Bring us again and again into your light until your ways become visible to us. Touch us so that we are utterly changed, a “before” and “after,” a “now” and “then”; that we may also say, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
(sung) Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound.
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind, but now I see.
AMEN.
Second Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2017
Trinity Church, Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
In this morning’s text from Genesis the Lord says to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” It is hard to fully appreciate the unsettling effect these words must have had upon Abraham and Sarah. They are being commanded by God to literally uproot themselves, to unsettle the settlement which they had established, to move on from that place and the kinship ties on which their identity had been staked. In ancient times calling a piece of land one’s own was at the very center of one’s sense of self and meaning in life. And here is God directing Abraham to move from the place of his well-established identity to a place unknown. This must have been initially terrifying in the extreme.
This story raises a whole host of equally unsettling questions for us today. It compels us to ask whether we might be prepared to move from where we are, both geographically and mentally, and to alter our current practices and ways of thinking and to be born again to new ones. There is something reassuring in the certainty of remaining where we are. Why would we want to change?
As we anticipate our waning years Liz and I have just built a room on to the back of the first floor of our house to keep us as long as possible in the place we have lived for over 43 years. We raised two children in this house and it fits us comfortably as we try on the meaning of retirement. The last thing we want to hear is a voice from God saying “get out and move from this house of yours to an unknown place that I will show you.” No thank you, God, if it’s all the same with you. But for Abraham it apparently was not all the same with God who sent this very old man and his wife away from their home to a place they had not chosen for themselves. The only response Abraham could make to God’s call had to be made in faith, not in the certainty of a humanly devised travel-agency certified road-map of where they were going and what would happen when they got there.
A similar call to leave one place and journey to another, in this case not related to land but to frame of mind, is found in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus. Jesus calls him to change his way of thinking and to be born again in the Spirit. For many of us in the older generation it may be even more difficult to change our settled views than to change our place of settled residence. For an older generation, in the twilight of its time on earth, newness is not especially appealing. Haven’t we earned the right to the comfort of our present beliefs and convictions when they have been hard-won through a lifetime of struggle with opposing points of view?
Nevertheless, like Abraham we can face these challenges to our settled states of mind and place only on the basis of faith. We have to believe that God is not yet done with us no matter where we are in our journey of faith, whether at the beginning, the middle, or near the end.
We often hear in Scripture the anticipation of time when we will be able to rest from our labors. But there is a tension between resting from our labors and being prepared to pick up and move on from where we are.
There are moments when we simply want to stop time: to hold in place an experience that we would love to preserve unchanged forever. Think of those times of sheer joy when seeing beauty all around us in the light of the rising sun, or sitting quietly with a child or grandchild reading or talking. We don’t want those times to end: we want to hold them in a strong embrace that we wish would go on forever. We hope that by stopping time we might freeze in place the things that bring us joy and fulfillment whether they be the satisfaction of an experience, or a place, or an idea. But the finger of time does not grant us that luxury: it continually moves on leaving our ever fleeting experiences relegated to the past as ever new but always transitory present moments, of both joy and sorrow, envelop us. As the 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, author of the much quoted Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, once said:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
(I might note parenthetically that were this great world-renowned poet alive today he would be denied entry to our country because he was both Muslim and Iranian).
But his insight into the vicissitudes of time suggest that there is only one way to respond to these existential dilemmas of time and that is the way of faith. Perhaps the greatest challenge to our faith is finding a way to experience the joys that time brings without holding on to those times so fiercely that we smother them or wrench them out of their place in the span of time that constitutes the narrative of our life.
Faith, however, is a double-edged sword. It is destabilizing, decentering, discomfiting, and disorienting. It is also the rock-solid, never changing ground on which we walk through the perishable times that constitute the historical arc of our life. No matter how strong and persistent they are, the ever flowing changes of time cannot erode the permanence of faith or the transcendent source from which it comes. Faith does not erase or stop time but it gives us the power to experience the fluidity of time with confidence and a certainty that God will never abandon us to the erosion and dissolution that time brings.
Holy Scripture is a narrative all about historical and temporal change in the context of a permanent relationship with an unchanging God. Living that relationship in faith is what brings us through times of uncertainty and change. In our Psalm this morning we hear the promise that:
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; *
it is he who shall keep you safe.
8 The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, *
from this time forth for evermore.
This is the profound truth contained in the words of faith we so frequently affirm when we say: God is good all the time. All the time God is good.
We might well ask, however, where do we see such faith today? I’d like to suggest, without stereotype or condescension, that we see it most vividly and strikingly in the people who are today’s refugees and migrants. Think about how extraordinary their faith must be to embark on their journeys to a new land? They know in their bones what it’s like to leave the country where they lived and started families and were known by their neighbors and kindred, and to go on a perilous journey to a new land where they don’t know the language or the culture and where there is a current mind-set that often receives and surrounds them with suspicion and fear.
Pilgrim people may not have chosen to embark on this journey from one land to another but the sheer tenacity and courage with which so many of them are facing the journey ahead even without a clear and certain vision of where their journey will take them, is literally awe-inspiring and humbling to those of us who have never been called beyond the comforts of our present homes and experiences. We should be humbled by the testimony of their pilgrimages and in our humility be willing to open ourselves to whatever new thing God may be calling us to do to aid and assist them.
And not all is negative in embracing the call to change. In moving on from our present locations and possessions we have a chance to declutter our lives: to discover and appreciate those things that make life truly meaningful and rewarding: not ‘things’ in a material sense, but values and relationships with people whose presence in our lives enriches and rewards us. These are the things we can take with us wherever we go.
We must, of course, retain our ability to discern the realities of the places or ideas to which we are called: there are scams, and false utopias that call out to us. We must not think differently simply for its own sake. We must never give up our duty to evaluate false messiahs who offer us pie-in-the-sky unrealistic promises that can never be redeemed. Moving on from where we are is not movement for its own sake but for the sake of finding, even helping to create, a new time and place that more fully allows us to be the people God called has called us to be. A people of love, compassion, and justice.
We must not move to places that promise us a sure-fire defense against the sufferings and injustices of the world. It is truly a utopian fantasy to think we can wall ourselves off from the plights of our brothers and sisters in God no matter where they presently live. We must not move to places that surround themselves with walls and fences to keep out the victims of war and injustice which we have at least partially helped to create.
New ways of thinking should be rooted in and moving us toward better, more fulfilling ways of being human. We can be born again to valuing our social lives together with more emphasis on community and less on advancing the desires of our individualistic selves who seek their own gain at the expense of others. We can be born again to an understanding of ourselves as people who share in the travails of others; as people who are called to relieve the sufferings of others without first deciding whether that generosity is compatible with our economic self-interest.
We have all the resources necessary, given to us by God in scripture, prayer, and fellowship, to challenge and resist the siren calls to selfishness and to free us to march boldly into newness of thought and of location because, by faith, we can and will know the power of God’s grace and steadfastness through all the contingencies of time and place.
First Sunday in Lent A March 5, 2017 Trinity Church, Hartford
In between the dramatic stories of the serpent confronting Adam-Eve and the devil challenging Jesus, there is one verse in this morning’s lessons that struck me as if I had read it for the first time.
Here’s the verse: “The free gift is not like the trespass.” (Romans 5:15)
It is a very short verse from the fifth chapter of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In his teaching for the Christians at Rome, whom he had not yet met, Paul wrote extensively to make the point that what God has done and given us in Christ Jesus is completely different from anything the world has ever known before.
It’s as if he holds up two things, one in either hand.
On the one hand, there is disobedience of God (the story of Adam-Eve), which is trespass, sin, and leads to death.
On the other hand is God’s free gift (the story of Jesus Christ)— which is just the opposite from the other hand; this hand is new life..
Earlier in the fifth chapter, Paul tumbles on and on about the free gift. It comes from Christ Jesus. Rather than enmity with God which trespass brings, the free gift brings peace with God. We’re flooded with grace, righteousness, in which we stand, he wrote. And in everything we have hope, hope in sharing the glory of God: us, you and me. More: through this free gift, love the greatest gift is poured into our hearts — poured into our hearts — through the Holy Spirit, which also has been given (freely) to us.
And so we can stand before God, rescued, cleansed, reconciled! Given life abundant and eternal! And that’s a gift which is free.
You think Paul meant to underline that? We heard the phrase “free gift” no less than five times in today’s epistle: Free gift. Free gift. Free gift. Free gift. Free gift. He made his point.
(15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. 16 For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. 16And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.) (not read in sermon)
Let’s go back to the “beginning” — “the trespass” — the Eve-Adam story, parts of which we read this morning. The setting is Eden which God had planted. There they were, Adam-Eve all made in the image of God, placed in Eden’s garden to till and keep it. From Genesis:
1 Now God (also) had made the serpent, which was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ 2The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ 4But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of that tree your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
What were they to do? What they really needed and didn’t have at that moment was a fact checker. For what the serpent had said. It was true that if they ate of the tree, they would be more like God, discerning good from evil — which they didn’t recognize in the serpent. But it wasn’t true that they would not die. That was — how shall we call it in this day — an alternative fact. Truly, fake news. And there wasn’t anything to check back to, no laws, no manuscript, nothing written down, no video clips of the meeting with God. So, trusting, they did what I think any of us would have done: not knowing, the fruit looking mighty delicious, and nutritious, and believing it would make one wise, they both ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil..
And the wrath of God broke loose. Harsh confrontation over the truth. Harsh judgment: exile for both. Before they could also eat from the tree of life and live forever, God forced them out, setting up fearsome creatures and a flaming turning sword to prevent their ever returning to Eden. Disobedience, even in innocence: sin, leading to Condemnation: Enmity, with God and with creation, bringing murder and death.
So we see the complexity of what it is to live knowing good and evil: rights and wrongs became more and more codified, and had to become more and more specific, with rewards and punishments, and judgment was more clearly determined, and there was no way before God or one another that anyone can live up to the righteousness of God.
The difference, Saint Paul wrote the Romans, came in Jesus Christ. In him was the love of God, his teaching, his person, his example, most especially in his dying — condemned by law gone wrong — and above everything in the victory over that condemnation: his Resurrection. All that had been of condemnation he took on, and something new was born which is given freely and has the power to move us into a new dimension and joy of living — rather than trespass, sin, enmity and death — rather,to growth and life and God living in us and us in God.
And it’s free. Not like a reward which has to be earned, or condemnation which is a consequence deserved, but a free gift, growing up in a new life lived in Christ, and with one another: a free gift freely offered by God to all.
“The free gift is not like the trespass.”
So what takeaway for Lent can there be in all this?
For me, there are two things I will share — in the hope they might open something for you.
First, getting back to Scripture. For decades I have struggled with the Anglican practice and expectation of praying Daily Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer from the Prayer Book. I would sit in the morning, look up the lessons and psalms, mark out the pages each day, find the correct antiphons, check the Lesser Feasts and Fasts for saints’ commemorations (did you know that yesterday was Paul Cuffee's Day?) and then work my way through the rite and the lessons and the offer prayers from a little journal book, and my mind would wander, and I might doze, or become impatient to get on with the day, and it was really not satisfactory to me nor, I think, to God. As i went through the day, I couldn’t remember what i had read in the morning. So more often than not, I gave up. Sure, I pray during the day and at night, but without daily Scripture I have felt more and more distant from, neglectful of, God.
Today’s lessons woke me up: when the serpent tempted Adam and Eve in the garden, they were adrift without the touchstone and witness of Scripture but when the devil came to take on Jesus in the wilderness it was Scripture which time and time and time again was the template, the touchstone weapon if you will, to answer, parry, the temptations and for Jesus to move deeper into righteousness and the call of God’s ministry.
So, learning from Adam-Eve, and taking the example of Jesus, I’ve come back to Scripture, and have begun reading just the gospel appointed for each day in the morning. Our fact-checker withy God. What joy! It’s just the Word, not cluttered up by all the other stuff of the Rite of Daily Morning Prayer, and I now spend morning time, fifteen or twenty minutes, just with the gospel story, fresh with Jesus, exploring, imagining, questioning, remembering,
The second take-away from these lessons is the thought of asking someone else — I’m not sure who that would be — to challenge me specifically and directly to grow in the new life we have in Christ Jesus, given so freely as a gift.
Traditionally Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance. But self-examination can only go so far. Often spiritual counseling or direction depend on what “I” bring up and want to explore. But what if in Lent I were to invite someone else — someone deeply trusted and living in God’s love — to nudge me in ways which would lead to repentance, to newness of life? The thought’s a little scary. “Where do you think I should grow?” Would you allow, or ask, someone you know to be that specific with you, from his or her knowing you to encourage you to grow spiritually in new ways, challenge you to move into a relationship with God that is different from where you are now?
In a sense, that’s what the devil did for Jesus: his confrontation with our Lord in the desert actually made Jesus face temptations which may have been very real, and from the victory of that encounter, Jesus then moved into his public mission . This thought isn’t asking someone to lead and one of us into temptation, but rather to open the way for deliverance from evil!
I hope in Lent this year, in Scripture and worship, and perhaps from a trusted relationship, there is something that strikes you, maybe for the first time. And opens you, and me, each of us, in different new ways, maybe life-changing ways, to the unbelievable free gift which God gives us in Christ Jesus — that we may grow more fully into the fulness of grace.
The free gift. It comes from Christ Jesus. Rather than enmity with God which trespass brings, the free gift brings peace with God. We’re flooded with grace, righteousness, in which we joyfully stand. And in everything we have hope, hope in sharing the glory of God: us, you and me. More: through this free gift, love — such love — is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which also has been given (freely) to us.
All this freely given through Jesus Christ, to whom be our adoration and praise, now and forever.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Hartford, Connecticut
Ash Wednesday, 2017
Reconciliation. It is a word that we hear quite frequently, particularly in religious circles. It means to bring together, to bring into harmony, to bring two objects or people or concepts or sets of data that are not in harmony naturally to be compatible with one another.
When celebrity couples get divorced, the reason is often – as it is here in the State of Connecticut – “irreconcilable differences.” This literally means that the two people are so estranged on virtually every conceivable aspect of their relationship that these two people who once deeply loved one another cannot possibly find common ground to put their differences aside and bring it all back into some form of harmony.
We encounter this word “reconcile” in another venue of our lives – balancing our checkbooks. At the end of each month, we need to check our bank statements to make sure that everything you THINK you spent is accounted for or – more usually – that you didn’t forget about something that you did spend. The process of bringing these two disparate concepts together – what we think we have and what we actually have is called “reconciling” the account.
And so Paul tells us this morning that “reconciling” ourselves with and to God is a major theme of the Christian life. “On behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” Paul writes. Paul himself was trying to be reconciled with the members of the church he founded in Corinth, having been challenged by the teachings of others. And one of the reasons reconciliation is so important to Paul is that he recognizes that reconciliation was the primary work of Jesus – in fact, Paul writes, that is why Jesus came to earth, or, as Paul writes, God “made him to become sin who knew no sin.” That is why Jesus was born, and it is the reason he died.
Going back to the divorce analogy, God surely had plenty of good cause to want to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences. But instead of cutting us off as a stern judge, God instead acted as creator and became one of us and sent his son, Jesus to be one of us in all things but sin, so that he might reconcile us to God once again.
And so our project for the Lenten season is to work on our relationship with God. We need to work on the relationship between ourselves and God, in the one-on-one of our daily lives. But to do this takes work. Couples going through a tough time in their marriage can often benefit from marriage counseling – which is a process that helps them to identify problem areas and begin to explore questions related to those areas.
But it’s hard for us to ask questions, particularly if they cause us to look deeply at parts of ourselves that are uncomfortable or hard to look at. Many couples in troubled relationships never seek counseling because they feel like that is admitting failure. We all probably have a friend or relative who will never go to the doctor because they are afraid of what the doctor might find. And credit counselors and attorneys will tell you they have had clients facing bankruptcy who will admit that they have not even opened many of their bills for months. The theory is the same in all of these cases: ignorance is bliss – but only temporarily. When the arguing becomes incessant, when our bodies finally break down, when the sheriff comes to the door to serve the papers – we pay the price for sticking our heads figuratively in the sand and ignoring the problems that eat away at our spirit and stifle our soul. No one likes to admit mistakes, but pretending they don’t exist gets us only a temporary reprieve. There is an old saying that is as applicable to our lives as it is to the payment of debts: Pay me now, or pay me later with interest. We can run, but we can’t hide. We can close our eyes, but that’s like playing the childhood game of “peek-a-boo” – with the same results. The reality remains the same.
No one likes to admit mistakes – and no one likes to confess sins. But that is the work God calls us to in Lent. That is what Paul means when he writes, “we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.” Jesus came to heal the relationship between us and God, and when we call ourselves “Christian,” we bind ourselves to that mission, not just when it is easy or convenient, but especially when the going gets tough.
Today we begin the season of Lent, and St. Paul calls us into reconciliation with God and God’s mission in Jesus Christ. Just as with illness, we can’t know the cure until we have asked the right questions about the illness; Just as a troubled couple cannot begin to address their differences until they agree to get help and ask the right questions; so it is with our spiritual health and our relationship to God. We can’t experience God’s healing mercy and grace unless and until we identify and understand the causes of our estrangement from God.
And so as we enter this season of Lent, I want to suggest that we apply to our prayer life what we learned about the transfiguration. May our prayer life consist less in trying to change God’s mind to do what we want, and make it more about opening ourselves to seeing Jesus for who he really is. Let us pray that God so opens our hearts to the Spirit’s moving that we can honestly look at those places where our relationship with God is hurting and pray that God open our hearts to more align ourselves with the life and teachings of Jesus. Lent is a great time for us to enter into that work. With God as both judge and therapist, we know that God wants a good result. All we have to do is accept God’s invitation to enter into the conversation.
I wish you a blessed and holy Lent. AMEN.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A -- Last Sunday After The Epiphany
February 26, 2017
Exodus 245:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17: 1-9
Transfiguration: The Ultimate Epiphany
God our light, make us attentive to your Word as to a lamp shining in a dark place, that seeing your truth we may live faithful lives until that great day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. AMEN.
Today is the last Sunday in the season after the Epiphany. During these past weeks we have studied and preached about the numerous and varied ways that Jesus was gradually revealed to the Jews and to the Gentiles alike as the Messiah who had been promised throughout the Hebrew scriptures. And as we will through most of this year, we have been viewing the Christian take on this through the eyes of Matthew, a faithful Jew writing to a Jewish audience aiming to make connections between the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus of Nazareth. His description of the Transfiguration continues this theme.
The transfiguration story itself ties together the whole of the Hebrew Bible with Jesus, who will become the Living Word. On the mountaintop, Jesus is not alone: He appears with Moses himself – symbolizing The Law – and Elijah – symbolizing the prophets. There it is: The ultimate Epiphany. It doesn’t get any better than this, right? Jesus is there, side by side with Moses and Elijah, standing there in all his glory as the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, the One that Jewish history had been pointing to.
The three disciples don’t know quite what to do. Peter, in his inimitable style, suggests building three dwellings as if he wants to preserve this image, like a photographer who’s got the perfect shot and preserve it forever. But God has other ideas. While Peter is still speaking, the voice of God cuts him off from a bright cloud with the words, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased; listen to Him!” And with that, the disciples fall to the ground overcome with fear. And then there is Jesus, standing there by himself, touching them gently and telling them, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
This turns out to be a transformative moment in Peter’s faith journey, something he will look back on among all of his incredible moments with Jesus that, eventually, helps pull the Jesus story all together for him. Remember how this story begins – “Six days later…” Later than what. Well, if you go back to the previous chapter, it is six days AFTER Jesus has had another remarkable interchange with Jesus. After hearing about all the speculation about who Jesus was, Jesus has asked his disciples, “But who do YOU say that I am?” And Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” A seeming moment of brilliance, but short-lived. You know what happens next. Jesus begins to tell them, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story – that he is going to have to “go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Peter may have gotten the glory part, but he didn’t get the suffering part. He argues with Jesus that this can’t be, and Jesus reacts with his strongest recorded rebuke of anyone: “Get behind me Satan.” For sure, this exchange, along with all of Peter’s lapses throughout the events leading up to and culminating in Jesus death and resurrection, indicate that even to the end of Jesus’ life, Peter still didn’t get it.
But over the years, the experience of the Transfiguration took it’s place at the center of Peter’s belief. Now it is almost certain that the 2nd letter of Peter as presently contained in our Bible was not written by Peter itself, but it is written by a follower of his and echoing his beliefs and teachings. So we should pay special attention to the closing words of this morning’s passage: We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. The Transfiguration allowed Peter to see Jesus in a new way, a way he only understood much later.
But here’s a question for us today: How important is it to us that this
event described by Matthew actually happened as he tells the story? What if Jesus actually didn’t change at all? What if Moses and Elijah were not physically present with Jesus on the mountaintop? What if they only thought they heard the voice of God? What if, in that miraculous moment, whatever happened, Peter, James and John were just finally able to see Jesus as he actually was, what had always been there, but their eyes were opened and they just saw him in a new way? What if the change wasn’t in Jesus, but it was in them?
You know, we Christians think of Transfiguration as a religious term because this story appears in every one of the Synoptic Gospels. But the more general definition of “transfiguration” is “A striking alteration in appearance, character or circumstances,” “a change in form or appearance” or “an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.” Have you ever had the
experience of transfiguration in your life?
I know I have, some minor, some of more significance. My mother will tell you that she sent me to college in Washington, D.C. as a Republican and a Roman Catholic and I came back as a Democrat and an Episcopalian. I like to think that every day I experience something or someone who opens my eyes or my mind or my heart to experience life in new ways.
One experience that will always remain with me is one when I was 22 years old. It was the summer of 1973, and I was about to go to law school and I needed a summer job. Being blessed with friends with connections, I landed an unlikely job in the Connecticut Department of Corrections as a correctional officer at the old Seyms Street Jail in North Hartford. Yes, for 5 months your pastor was a guard in a jail. One night I had recreation duty outside, and a dispute arose between a group of inmates over the ownership of a store card. The last guy holding the card was named Charlie – I do remember his last name – and as was my duty, I asked to see the card to see whose name was on it in order to resolve the dispute. Charlie wouldn’t’ give it up, a couple of other guys said Charlie had taken the card, and so I and another officer had the duty to “write him up” for failing to comply with an order and, as it turned out, stealing the other guy’s card.
What I didn’t know was that Charlie was considered one of the meanest, orneriest, violent guys in the jail, and he didn’t go down easy. I remember it took six guys to get him down to what was known as “deadlock” which was kind of like a purgatory holding cell where you stayed until things cooled down. As I was about to go off shift at midnight, an inner voice – perhaps God’s? – was telling me to go down and reach out to Charlie. And I did. I went down and told him I was sure he was – I’ll change the language a bit – angry with me for the way things went down, that I was going to go home and pray over how things might have gone differently and I hoped he might do the same. He cursed me and with that I left for two days.
When I returned, Charlie was back in the regular population and at supper that night. He came up to me and told me he appreciated the fact that I had come down to see him that night and invited me up to his cell because he wanted to show me something. Now, I have to tell you it occurred to me that what he might want to show me was the knife he had fashioned out of a spoon in the mess hall and he wanted to run it through my gut. But being the naïve fool that I was, I discounted that possibility and agreed to visit him in his cell.
And then I had a transformative experience, because the walls of Charlie’s cell were papered with beautiful, meticulous, inspired artwork that he himself had created. I shared my admiration of it, particularly since stick figures are a challenge for me. We became friends and developed a new respect for each other. Was there a change in Charlie? Maybe. But the bigger change was in me, as for me Charlie was transformed from a caricature -- the meanest guy in the jail – to a multi-dimensional human being, a child of God for whom Jesus lived and died just like me, a child who if born into different circumstances I might never have met, a child with an inborn goodness and talent that life’s circumstances could bruise but not destroy. That experience has forever changed the way I look at other people.
My seminary colleague and friend, The Rev. Maryetta Anschutz, writes that “The Transfiguration offers the disciples the paradox that while there is nothing they can do to save themselves from suffering, there is also no way they can shield themselves from the light of God that sheds hope in their darkest moments. The mountain was the way for God to prepare a human band of companions for the sacred journey, to offer something to hold onto when they descend into the crushing reality of the world below.”
Perhaps the significance of the biblical transfiguration is not that Jesus changed, but how the experience changed the disciples and opened their eyes to more fully know their friend, the God/Man Jesus. The writer of 2 Peter, recalling Peter’s own experience, wants his readers to remember who they are, and who they are called to be. Maybe that is why he talks about the story of Christ’s identity in the Transfiguration and not in the Resurrection. It is a story about who he has become, how he is blessed, and what he is called to do, in spite of the challenges that lie ahead.
And now, as we approach the season of Lent, we, like the three disciples, must descend from the mountaintop of epiphanies to face the crude reality that lies ahead for Jesus, and for ourselves. Are we prepared to be changed by the Transfiguration? Are we anxious about what that might mean? We shouldn’t be, because that is precisely the moment when Jesus comes to gently touch us and summon us with the words, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” AMEN.
