Let Them Praise the Name of the Lord

“O praise ye the Lord! Praise him upon earth, in tuneful accord, all ye of new birth; praise him who hath brought you his grace from above, praise him who hath taught you to sing of his love.” What a wonderful hymn! In singing it, and in saying Psalm 148, on which it is based, we’ve now heard twice the gracious invitation to use all our voices and our musical instruments to join with the heavenly hosts in praising God. Praise God! Shout it with me, “Praise God, Praise God!”

Did shouting, “Praise God,” feel odd? Do you wonder why we should praise God? Do you wonder why God needs our praise? God doesn’t need our praise, but we need to praise God! We need to praise God, because doing so helps us to focus on God and to remember all the ways in which God has been active in our lives, in our communities, and in creation. Do you want a simple but effective spiritual discipline? At the end of the day, take a few minutes to praise God for all the good things that God has given you during the day. Use Psalm 148 or Canticle 12 in the Book of Common Prayer. Praising God is also a way of thanking God for creating us, for enabling us to be co-creators with God, and for sustaining us through the many ups and downs of our lives. And isn’t praise of God also a form of evangelism? As we praise God for what God has done in our lives, we also encourage other people to see the signs of God’s redemptive presence in their own lives. So, “Praise God!”

Are we the only ones invited to praise God? Our psalm makes it plain that all creation is invited to join in the mighty chorus of praise. All the angels, all the heavenly bodies, and all the manifestations of weather – fire and hail, snow and fog, storms – all are invited to praise God. All earthly creatures, sea creatures, mountains, hills, trees, wild and domestic animals, insects, and birds, all join in praise of their creator. We too join that chorus of praise. All of us: royalty and commoners, young and old, male and female, all of us together can praise God from the depths of our being.

We can shout our praise, as we just did, but how, you might wonder, does the rest of creation praise God? Can animals praise God? Certainly they can. They do so chiefly by being themselves, by living out their lives as they were created to be. Can rocks and trees and stars praise God? Certainly they do, if we would but let them praise God and then listen to their chorus of praise. Perhaps you’ve heard the echoes of this chorus of praise in a beautiful natural scene. When you walk into the mountains, or gaze up into a star-studded sky, glimpse a crystal-blue lake, hear the roaring of ocean waves, or see the myriad points of light bouncing off a snow-covered slope, don’t you slow down? Don’t you look and listen more attentively? Don’t you fell yourself in a “thin place,” a place where God seems especially present? Don’t you stand in silence, in awe, and offer your praise to God for what God has created?

How many of you walk for exercise? The next time you do, take God with you! As you see the lovely trees in flower and leaf at this time of year, as you hear the returning birds, and feel the warm sun on your head, offer your own praises to God. Then join in creation’s thanksgiving for God’s greatness. Let Mary Oliver’s poem, “When I Am Among the Trees,” echo in your head:

When I am among the trees, When I Am Among the Trees
When I am among the trees,
Especially the willows and the honey locust,
Equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
They give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
In which I have goodness, and discernment,
And never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
And call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

It is simple. But increasingly, creation is unable to praise God, unable to invite us into the joyful chorus. Increasingly, creation groans in agony. Our creeks are filled with acid mine drainage from abandoned mines. We’re destroying our mountain tops and pouring toxic chemicals into our wells and waterways. Do you want to hear a true story of what we have done to God’s good creation? Read a book called Toms River. It tells in horrifying detail how Union Carbide and the chemical company Ciba-Geigy dumped tons of toxic chemicals into the water around Toms River, New Jersey. Polar ice caps are disappearing, and the oceans are rising. In some parts of the world you’re lucky if you can even marvel at a starry sky, so filled with smog is the atmosphere. We’re driven some species to extinction and cruelly abuse others. Our landfills are overflowing. Do you know that we have a new continent? It’s the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. It’s an area of about ten million square miles, ten million square miles, filled with plastic, trash, and junk, that is deadly to marine life, and that is making the North Pacific unhealthy and unnavigable.

There are no easy answers to these problems, you might say. And you would be right. When we begin thinking about the causes of environmental degradation and, what is more important, how we might restore the environment to something closer to its original created state, the issues are complex. Other nations have a right to develop their economies as we did ours. None of us is ready – or able – to live off the grid. Everyone needs access to clean water. Yet God has given creation into our hands and commanded us to be responsible stewards. We must be concerned about climate change, endangered species, and trash islands. Otherwise, how will creation rightfully praise its creator?

There are no easy answers, but there are actions we can take. We can keep the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch from getting any larger, and possibly help it to shrink. We can use our own canvas bags to shop. We can take our own mug to Starbucks. We can recycle as much plastic as we can. We can use glass and other recyclable materials when possible. We can try to buy things that are not encased in plastic. And we can educate ourselves about the impact of our continued use of plastics.

Can we do anything as a parish? You bet we can. This past Monday was Earth Day, and June 5th is World Environment Day. The Church of England has embarked on a national environmental campaign called “Shrinking the Footprint,” inviting parishes to sign up for energy audits. The goal is to enable at least 100 parishes to become more energy efficient. As David Shreeve, the Church of England's national environment adviser, reminds us, "Energy use represents a significant proportion of the Church of England's carbon emissions, and energy reduction will help to meet our commitment to protecting God's creation, as well as leading to cost savings. Our case studies show how simple it is to achieve." The program is available online using simple software. Meanwhile, here at St. Peter’s, and in our homes, we can be scrupulous in recycling all our plastic, cardboard, and other recyclable materials. We can turn off lights and adjust thermostats. We can decrease our use of paper and, if we need to print, use the other side of scrap paper if possible. If you’re electronically connected, join the list of the Episcopal Ecological Network, or the Mission 4/1 Earth of the United Church of Christ, or access either group on Facebook or Twitter.

“O praise ye the Lord! Thanksgiving and song to him be outpoured all ages along! For love in creation, for heaven restored, for grace of salvation, O praise ye the Lord!” May all of us join with angels, all people, and all of creation in praise of God our creator!

I Love to Tell the Story

“I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love; I love tell the story because I know ‘tis true, it satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. I love to tell the story! ‘Twill be my theme in glory – to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” Perhaps some of you remember this old hymn. It’s not in our hymnal, although it is in the Lutheran and Presbyterian hymnals, and doubtless others.

I do love to tell the story of Jesus and his love. That’s what preachers do! Really, most preachers have only one sermon, and in one form or another, it’s the story of Jesus’ love and its impact on us. And it’s a supremely important story. There would be no church without it. It’s that story – of their sense of the continued presence and love of the risen Christ – that led Jesus’ first followers to leave their former lives and establish new communities in Jesus’ name.

But there are also some other important stories to tell, stories of change and transformation in people who have been touched by God and by Jesus. In our psalm for today we hear the story of a familiar kind of change and transformation. At first, the psalmist is feeling satisfied with the good life (“I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved’”). Then bad things happen (“you hid your face and I was dismayed”). Instead of falling into deep despair, the psalmist begins to argue with God (“Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?”). Finally the psalmist chooses to trust that God will hear his plea (“Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me, O Lord be my helper”). The result? The psalmist’s despair is turned into joy and gratitude (“Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever”).

Our Gospel reading from the last chapter of John’s Gospel – what some have considered an epilogue to the gospel – tells us of another kind of transformation, here of Peter. In all the gospels Peter is clearly the leader of the first band of disciples who gather around Jesus. And he is the first to give voice to their growing sense that Jesus is God’s anointed one. Yet Peter is often impulsive and clueless. He speaks without thinking or says the wrong thing. Remember “Let us build three booths” after the disciples experience Jesus’ transfiguration? Or “Get thee behind me Satan?” Worse, when Jesus is arrested, Peter denies three times that he even knows Jesus, and he is nowhere to be found when Jesus is executed. Here on the beach in Galilee he seems depressed, perhaps even regretful. You can hear him sigh, “I’m going fishing.” Then the real miracle happens: Peter recognizes Jesus standing on the shore. Fed by Jesus’ presence, Peter is able to emphatically answer Jesus’ questions: “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.” With Jesus’ final “Feed my sheep,” Peter is transformed into a true leader of the fledgling community, a true pastor, who will end up giving his own life for the sheep.

Paul’s transformation from persecutor of the earliest followers of the Way to evangelist to the gentiles is perhaps the most dramatic story. Although he never knew Jesus in the flesh, Paul had a vision of Jesus’ presence so vivid and so immediate that all he could say was, “Who are you, Lord?” Led into the city, he fasted and prayed for three days, until Ananias acted on his vision and took the risk of going to Paul. Having received his sight, Paul was baptized. And then without any seminary education or homiletics course, he immediately began to preach: “He began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogue, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”

Are these stories too far-fetched for us? We generally don’t have altar calls in the Episcopal Church. Yet some people do have dramatic, spiritual experiences. Someone may kneel at the altar rail and have such a deep sense of God’s presence that life is changed forever. Another person may look around them, perhaps at other people, perhaps in a natural setting, and know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God exists. Others are gradually transformed as they are gently drawn into the heart of a vital faith community. And God may want to work other kinds of transformations in us. Not many of us actively persecute our opponents. But could we be on the wrong path in other ways? Perhaps we are selfish, headstrong, stubborn, consumed with our own desires, caught in addictions, and blind to the needs of others. Consider: the person who goes after that promotion so single-mindedly that their marriage falls apart, or their family suffers; the angry young person who can recite all their parents’ mistakes while forgetting everything their parents did right; the person so self-absorbed that they are unable to express love for their spouse or family; the chronic complainer; the enabling spouse who allows another’s alcoholism to destroy a family; the person who disdains those of other faith communities; partisan political leaders without a sense of the common good who are unable to compromise. Do you see yourself in any of these examples? Was there a point in your life where you finally knew you needed to do things differently? When you finally saw the light?

What was the light that finally helped you to see life differently? Was it a friend, or a partner, or a child who took the risk of telling the truth? Did you wake up in the middle of the night and finally feel the emptiness in your own soul? And where was God in that change? The mystics teach us that God often initiates transformation. Sometimes God acts directly. Jesus showed up on the beach. God graced someone with a life-changing sense of God’s presence at the altar rail. Mostly God acts through others. In retrospect, we can often see that God gave the friend, partner, or child the courage to speak the needed word. Even without the blinding light, we might also admit that God opened our ears, or our eyes, or our hearts, to finally accept the truth and begin the hard process of change.

Now, here’s the hardest question of all. Can we share our story of conversion and transformation with others? Peter surely did. The stories from the book of Acts show us a Peter who is a skilled and convincing preacher, transformed by his relationship with the risen Jesus. Ii Acts we also see a Peter who is not afraid to go to the house of the gentile centurion Cornelius and preach the gospel, and a Peter who can help broker the compromise between those who would keep the Way of Jesus a sect limited to Jews and those who like Paul were ready to spread the good news to all, Jew and gentile alike. Paul also told his story, probably many times. We hear it again in his own voice in Acts 22, and he also alludes to it in the beginning of his letter to the Galatian Christians. One wonders how Peter and Paul felt telling their stories. Did their retellings make Jesus present to them again more deeply?

How about us? Can we tell the story of our life-changing experiences of God’s reality, of how we came to believe in the risen Christ and his love for us? Can we talk about how God continues to work within us, continues to change and transform us? “Not me!” you might say. Yet telling your own story can be a powerful experience for both the teller and the hearer. If you feel comfortable writing, one way to begin reflecting on your story is to write it down. You might begin by prayerfully reflecting on your life, especially on the places where you experienced a deeper kind of conversion or transformation. When and how did it happen? Who was the change-agent? Where was God? You can also review your day or week, in writing or in meditation, with the same questions in mind. Where was God in my day? How did I experience God’s transformative power and love in this day? Who or what helped me see God more clearly?

Perhaps we can also begin telling our stories to each other. With whom might we share our story? Are we embarrassed to do so? To whose story might we listen, and where? Can we listen to another’s story attentively and respectfully, listening for how God might be at work in another person’s life? Doesn’t telling our own story or listening to that of another deepen our understanding of God’s great love for us? My sisters and brothers, I know this: telling our own story is a powerful tool of evangelism. Do we want to strengthen the bonds within this community? Do we want it to be a vital cell in the body of Christ? A good way to begin is to share our experiences of God’s work among us. I invite you to ponder with me how we may begin telling our stories.

I love to tell the story of Jesus and his glory. I also love to tell the story of lives transformed by God’s grace, of the risen Christ at work in the people around us. “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.” Is that your story too? If so, shout out your joy!

Receive the Holy Spirit

“He breathed on them.” You weren’t there. Neither was I. None of us will see – in this life at least – what the disciples saw that first Easter Sunday. But can we imagine what they must have been feeling that evening? Their beloved friend and teacher, Jesus, was gone. And they were scared to death. Despite Peter’s denials, the authorities knew they’d been followers of that seditious rabbi. Would they be next on the cross? Would a locked door even keep the soldiers out? As they huddle together, in through that locked door walks Jesus! Let yourself feel the shock, the joy they must have felt. Let your mouth hang open. Get up and hug him! Then start hugging each other!

After they’d quieted down a little, Jesus spoke. He gave them a greeting of peace and a commission: “As Abba God sent me, so I send you.” All of a sudden, the joy changed to fear again. Do what he did? Go where he went? Minister to the people he ministered to? Love as he had loved? No way! Then the gospel writer tells us that Jesus breathed on the disciples. How did that feel? Were they actually close enough to him to feel his breath on their faces? Or did the risen Jesus have super breath? As they received his life-giving breath into their own bodies, what did it smell like? Could they smell the flowers of spring – or the joys of heaven – in it? Did the scent of his last meal with them, the bread and the wine, or the fish, bread, and olives of all his other meals with them, linger in his breath? Could they smell the sour wine he had drunk while hanging on the cross, or the spices with which they’d anointed his body? Was there a mix of death and new life in his breath, just as there was in his risen body?

So am I running off into trivial, naïve literalism? Then perhaps we are not meant to take this account literally. Nor do we need to do so. Remember that in Hebrew “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind” are all the same word. Remember too that in Scripture the “breath” is the animating principle, that which gives life. Do you remember God’s action in the second creation story in Genesis? “So YHWH fashioned an earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and blew into its nostrils the breath of life. And the earth creature became a living being” (Gen. 2:7, The Inclusive Bible). Or Isaiah’s description of God’s Servant: “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one, in whom I delight! I have endowed you with my Spirit that you may bring true justice to the nations” (Is. 42:1). Many of us rely on God’s promise relayed to us by Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26). And of course there are the dry bones, the bones of the whole house of Israel. God said to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the wind; prophesy, mere mortal, and say to it: ‘Thus says Sovereign YWYH: Approach from the four winds, Breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live’” (Ezek. 37:9). And how can we forget God’s promise spoken by the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit on all humankind. Your daughters and sons will prophesy, your elders will have prophetic dreams, and your young people will see visions” (Joel 3:1).

Jesus too reminded us that God’s wind or breath or Spirit was what truly animates us. Remember his conversation with Nicodemus earlier in John’s Gospel? “You must be born from above,” Jesus tells him. “The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound it makes, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit” (John 3:7-8). Perhaps most important of all, in the course of that long last meal with his friends, as John tells it, Jesus made another promise. “If you love me and obey the command that I give you, I will ask the One who sent me to give you another Paraclete, another Helper to be with you always – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept since the world neither sees her nor recognizes her; but you can recognize the Spirit because she remains with you and will be within you” (John 14:15-17).

So what we are really meant to understand from this image of Jesus’ breathing on the gathered disciples is this: in Jesus all God’s promises are fulfilled! Fulfilling his own promise to them, in his risen life Jesus re-animates this frightened band of friends by filling them with his own Spirit. Through his gift of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, Jesus enables this hapless group of deserters to calm down and become courageous. He enables them to be bold, and joyful. What is more important, in giving the disciples his Spirit, Jesus also gives them the power to carry out their commission, the commission that is at the heart of all the gospels. In effect, Jesus gives them the equipment they need and the authority they need to speak words of peace and healing to all, to extend God’s mercy and forgiveness to all, and to carry forward Jesus’ work of creating new communities united in love.

My sisters and brothers, this is truly the good news in this gospel story. We too are part of that new community created by Jesus’ Spirit. Just like the disciples of old, we too are part of that re-animated band. Through our baptisms, we have been included into the group gathered into that locked room, and we too have been gifted with a share of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has breathed on you and me. His breath is now in ours, his voice is now in ours. We too breathe him in in prayer and breathe him out in our speech and our movements. We speak as Jesus would speak, not only to bring judgment, but, more importantly, to bring grace. We attempt to do what Jesus did, not to win brownie points with God, but because Jesus is working in the world through us. And here’s the most important part. When Jesus commissioned his friends, when he said to them, “As Abba God sent me, so I send you,” he didn’t say those words only to Peter or the Beloved Disciple. He didn’t say those words only to priests. All the people who received Jesus’ breath into their own bodies, all the people who heard his commission, were ordinary, working people: fishermen, former prostitutes, peasants, merchants, tax collectors, and who knows what else. If we are part of that company, then Jesus has commissioned all of us. Do you think that clergy are the only ones who can speak in God’s name? My ministry and role are emblematic of yours! The most important thing that my collar symbolizes is that I should ideally be serving as a model for what all of us are called to do. Believe me, you too are commissioned, you too have been re-animated by the Holy Spirit.

In his risen life, Jesus has transcended the limitations of human life. When he comes to us, when he breathes new life into us, Jesus enables us to also break free of our own narrow experience. He enables us to live differently, to go to places we had not foreseen, to minister to people we had not known, and to offer God’s love in ways we had not thought possible.

Examples abound of those animated by God’s Spirit. Most recently, some of us have been remembering Rosa Parks. A new complete biography of her has recently appeared. Most of you know her story: how she helped start the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, and how that boycott initiated a decade-long struggle for civil rights for all. Some of you may also know that she did not act alone, but was part of a community of African-Americans who worked together to effect change. What most of us forget about Rosa Parks was that her activism grew out of her devotion to Jesus. She was a staunch Christian, carried her Bible everywhere, and was an active member of African Methodist Episcopal Churches in Montgomery and Detroit. Taught by Scripture and empowered by the Holy Spirit, she fought against racism, even facing down death threats with long periods of prayer.

Just as Jesus breathed God’s Spirit into the dispirited disciples and into Rosa Parks, Jesus breathes on, with, and through us. We too are animated by his breath, and we too go out from here, ready to proclaim him to the world and to spread his message of justice and peace. “Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.”