Sunday, July 20, 2014

Where is God

Jacob is on the run. His mother Rebekah had come from the family of his grandfather Abraham’s brother to marry his father Isaac. Jacob was the second-born of twin boys, and he had been born, “clutching the heel” of his brother Esau. Old Isaac preferred Esau, but Jacob was his mother’s favorite. With the connivance of his mother, Jacob had managed both to cheat Esau of his birthright and trick Isaac into bestowing his patriarchal blessing on Jacob. Now, with Esau’s threats to kill him still ringing in his ears, Jacob is on the run. He is running to his mother’s family in Haran, ostensibly to find a wife.

Jacob stops for the night and dreams of a staircase, a staircase like the ones the Canaanites build in order to reach the heavenly abodes of their gods. However, in Jacob’s dream, God’s angels travel up and down, joining the heavenly and the earthly realms. What is even more surprising in Jacob’s dream, the God of Israel, unlike the remote Canaanite gods, comes face to face with Jacob and directly addresses him. In this astonishing first encounter with God, Jacob hears God reiterate his covenant with Abraham and assure Jacob that indeed his descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth. In that promise Jacob also hears implicit reassurance that it was part of God’s plan that Jacob deceive Esau, and that Jacob’s exile from his home will only be temporary. As he awakens, Jacob realizes that “surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” To ensure that others will understand that this is now a sacred place, Jacob upends his stone pillow and anoints it.

“Surely the Lord is in this place.” Have you had an experience something like Jacob’s? Many of us find it hard to pray. For some us, dialogue with God is well-nigh impossible. For others of us, meditation makes no sense. Even in our own room, how can we quiet our minds enough to discover if God is speaking to us? Most of us ignore or can’t remember our dreams. However, some of us have experienced God’s presence in “thin places,” places where we can almost see through the veil and get a glimpse of the heavenly realm, places where God’s presence is palpable and undeniable, places where God personally touches and moves us.

Some of us encounter thin places in natural settings. Some of us, like Jacob, have found God in the vast open spaces of the southwest deserts. For some of us, mountain tops or ocean shores speak of God’s majesty and our own insignificance. Sometimes God breaks in on us in national parks, like Acadia in Maine, where “the mountains meet the sea,” or retreat centers, like Our Lady of the Pines, where I spent the week surrounded by pines, firs, cedars, and many other kinds of trees. And some places seem to draw us more tightly into God’s embrace because generations of faithful people have encountered God there. I think of Iona, on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, where 7th century Irish monks established a monastery to lead the Scots to Christ and where a restored monastery and retreat center now stands. I think of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the end of the Camino Real, to which pilgrims have been walking since the 9th century. I think of the cathedral of Chartres, France, built in the 13th century, whose great labyrinth in the floor still draws pilgrims. One day I walked into St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The scent of incense that met me bespoke the prayers that have been said there for almost two hundred years. And then there are the sacred places of other faiths: the Great Synagogue in London, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Hindu temples, and Buddhist stupas. And beyond these are all the ordinary places in life where God continues to show up: among devoted followers of Jesus in even the smallest clapboard churches, at bedsides and deathbeds, or when one person lovingly speaks truth to another. All of these are places where people have had and continue to have a deep sense of God’s presence. In all these places, when we open our hearts, we know that “surely the Lord is in this place.” In all these places we are privileged, in Meister Eckhart’s words, to “penetrate things and find God there.”1

And when we sense that “the Lord is in this place,” when God grants us the grace of a face-to-face encounter, how do we receive it? Do we distrust such a felt sense of God’s presence, such an intuition of God’s reality and love? “Couldn’t happen to me,” we say, it must have been my imagination. People like me don’t have experiences like that.” Or do we distrust such experiences because they feel too pious and private? Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr rightly cautions us that what he calls “false mysticism,” often feels too much like ‘my little Jesus and my little me,’ and doesn’t seem to make many social, historical, corporate, or justice connections. As Pope Francis says, it is all ‘too self-referential.’”2

But, by the grace of God, sometimes we are enabled to see something greater than ourselves in experiences of God’s nearness. When Jacob encountered God face to face, he realized, perhaps for the first time, that God’s covenant with his grandfather also included him, that he was called to be the ancestor of multitudes, that he would be connected to generations yet unborn. He remained a runaway, a trickster, and a womanizer, siring the twelve tribes of Israel by two wives and two concubines. Nevertheless, from that day forward, his life was forever transformed.

As it was for Jacob, so it is for us. Teilhard de Chardin reminds us that, “Spirituality is not meant to be an alternative lifestyle, a road to retreat and escape; it needs to be an active leaven of life, feeding the zest and healing the wounds of life.”3 By God’s grace, when we unexpectedly encounter God, we may glimpse for a moment the vast and infinite being of God, the God in whom we and all creation “live and move and have our being,” the God who loves and cares for all more deeply than we can ever imagine. And by God’s grace, we too may be transformed, so that we may have deeper compassion for all humanity, indeed for all creation. By God’s grace, we may be enabled to share with others what we know of the God of love, who showed himself to Jacob, and who shared our humanity in Jesus. By God’s grace we especially may be able to extend to others the care and compassion of that God for all.

If our encounter with the living God, in sacred spaces in nature, in this sacred space, in the sharing of Christ’s Body and Blood, enables us to see more deeply God’s love for us and all of creation, then perhaps too God will show us or lead us to those who particularly need our compassion and care. In the last several weeks, a poignant example of those in need of our compassion and care has come to light: the unprecedented number of undocumented Central American children who have streamed across the U.S. border. There is much that can be said about the impact of undocumented people on border cities, and of what the U.S. government should or might do to secure our borders. Our elected representatives have, for whatever reason, not had the will to enact sane immigration policy, despite the desire of the majority of Americans to fix the immigration system. Seeking a quick fix to the most recent influx, many Americans believe that all undocumented people, whether children or adults should be immediately deported.

Our church has taken a different stance. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori counsels us “to remember these people and their difficult and dangerous position in [our] prayers – today, this coming Sunday, and continuing until we find a just resolution.” Urging us to contact our elected representatives, she reminds us that, “we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, and as a Church, we are asking the United States government to support [a humanitarian] response, grounded in justice and the fundamental dignity of every human being.”4 The Episcopal and Methodist bishops of Los Angeles have gone a step further. Together they visited the child detention center in Port Hueneme, California. They then joined with Muslim and Jewish faith leaders to prepare worship materials for the Interfaith Weekend of Compassion and Prayer for Unaccompanied Migrant Children, to be observed this weekend in the Los Angeles area.

There are no easy answers to the plight of undocumented Central American children, nor to the violence and poverty that impel them to leave their homes. Nor are there easy answers to the poverty of the people around us. If we have experienced God’s nearness, if we have ever been able to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” then surely too we can pray that God will remind us that we are all God’s children, and that God will allow us the blessing of experiencing the renewal of life that comes when we share God’s love especially with the least among us.

1. Quoted in Synthesis, July 20, 2014, 2.
2. http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--The-One-Face-and-the-Everything.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=3Fx3z_67osI, July 18, 2014.
3. Synthesis, 2.
4. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/07/10/presiding-bishop-on-the-crisis-of-unaccompanied-children-at-us-border/

Sunday, July 6, 2014

She said, "I will."


“And they called to Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ She said, ‘I will.’”

A week after I graduated from college, I walked down an Air India jet way to begin a year’s stay in India. I had won a Fulbright fellowship to teach English in India, and, despite the reservations of my parents and the surprise of my friends, I had accepted it. I had travelled in Europe the previous spring and summer, and three of my college classmates had spent their junior year in India. However, aside from the research for one of my spring quarter classes, I knew little about the country. I can still remember the sheer terror I felt as I embraced my parents by the entrance to the jet way. I knew that it would be at least a year before I would see them again. I screwed up my courage, turned my back on them, and walked through the jet way door. Even then, perhaps I had an inkling that going to India was part of God’s larger plan for me. I certainly could not then foresee the teaching and scholarship that would come out of that first year in India. Perhaps in some indirect way, the risk I took that day also even made it possible for me to be preaching to you today!

Did Rebekah face that same mix of terror and courage when she agreed to go with Abraham’s servant and become Isaac’s wife? This may be a new Bible story for some of you. As I explained last week, the Revised Common Lectionary of the mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches carries us through three liturgical years. We’re now in Year A, i.e., the first year of the three. This year we read major portions of the Gospel of Matthew, in Year B we read Mark, and in Year C we read Luke, with John interspersed among them in all three years. During the season following Pentecost, that is the summer and the fall, the RCL gives us the choice of semi-continuous readings from the Hebrew Bible or lections that complement the gospel reading. For this three-year cycle I have opted for the semi-continuous reading of the Hebrew Bible. This means that during the summer most of our lessons will be from Genesis, with readings from Exodus later in the summer and fall. Easter was late this year. Consequently, we missed the earliest readings from Genesis. In one, three mysterious strangers announced to Abraham and Sarah that they would become first-time parents in their old age. In another, God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky. Two weeks ago, we heard of the banishment of Hagar and her son Ishmael, and God’s promise to make a great nation of them as well. And last week, we heard the terrifying story of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac. We come now to the next step in God’s fulfillment of God’s promise: the search for a suitable wife for Isaac and the marriage of the next generation.

Of course, this would be an arranged marriage. When we think about marriage, we think about passionate, romantic love and personal fulfillment. However, in the ancient world marriage was more about joining families and ensuring the survival of clans and tribes. Moreover, ancient Israel was a patriarchal society, with the economic, social, and political leadership in the hands of the most senior men. Our Bible stories reflect the dominance of men and mostly overlook women. Just think of the Old Testament names that come most readily to mind: Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and Jonah. Although we do hear the stories of Esther and Ruth, women were not important characters for the editors of the Hebrew Bible. Even so, women were central to God’s achievement of God’s purposes: they had to agree to what God asked of them! Just as much later, Mary had to accept Gabriel’s announcement to her that she would give birth to a savior, so Rebekah had to agree to marriage with a member of Abraham’s family for God’s plan to succeed. Without Rebekah’s “yes” there would have been no next generation! Of course, the Bible doesn’t record her feelings, but don’t you think that she too might have been terrified to leave her family, her community, literally everything she knew, to go off and marry a strange man? Yet, she had the courage to say “yes.” As she left with the blessing of her family, she willingly opened herself to the new life God was laying before her and let God’s plan to go forward.

We too are like Rebekah. God also calls us to play our part in God’s plan. We too may feel like insignificant players, but we are all part of God’s great design, God’s inexorable will to bring in God’s reign. And God can and does make great things happen through us. But God never coerces us. Nor does God threaten us or lay a guilt trip on us. Rather God invites us. If we say “yes,” if we allow ourselves to be led by God, God can work through us. And, let’s admit it, following God can be downright scary: sometimes we don’t want to leave everything that we are familiar with to go off in a new direction. Think about those times when you prayed you were doing the right thing, when you screwed up your courage and ventured down that jet way. When you started a new job or program of study? When you traveled abroad for the first time? When you asked for baptism? When you got married? When you adopted a child? When you came to an Episcopal church for the first time? When we say yes to God’s new direction in our lives, God can continue to work out God’s plan through us. And we can be assured, as Jesus assures us in the Gospel lesson, that God will indeed lead us when we put God’s yoke on, when we team up with Jesus.

What is true for us as individuals is also true for us as a parish. We may be a small parish, but here in Gallia County, we too must have the courage to play our part in God’s plan. That is what being a church means!

So let me tell you about another parish, not so different from us, who took the risk of following God’s leading. Some years ago I visited the parish of St. John on Bethnal Green, in the Diocese of London in England. St John’s had been built in the early 19th century in the East End of London, as the Church of England was expanding into working class neighborhoods. It had been built by a famous architect, John Soane. Even though its façade desperately needed repair when I saw the church, one could still see its original beauty. However, what was important about St. John’s was not its physical space but what was happening inside and outside the church. The neighborhood around the church had greatly changed over the years and now was home to an assortment of Bangladeshis, other South Asians, and Somalis, most of them Muslims, a few Jews left over from earlier generations, and a goodly number of drug dealers and what the Brits euphemistically call “working girls,” i.e., prostitutes. Instead of throwing up their hands and despairing of having anyone to whom to minister, the people of St. John’s courageously decided to follow what they had discerned to be God’s leading. While continuing to be a vital center of worship, the parish began ministries to the drug addicts and prostitutes and to the poor, regardless of their faith community.

On the day we were there, a clothing giveaway, with hot tea and sandwiches, was taking place on the front porch. Through St John’s outreach to the community, many had given up their addictions and their work as prostitutes, and some had begun ministries of their own through the parish. God’s reign was definitely being realized in Bethnal Green! More important, St. Johns partners with other East End parishes and even other faith communities to run food banks, night shelters, soup kitchens, debt counselling centers, outreach work with disaffected youth, groups for mothers and children, youth clubs, after school clubs, and day-care for the elderly. They host Alcoholics Anonymous, mental health groups, ESL instruction, and activities that enable ethnic communities to maintain their language and traditions. With the support of the local community, St. John’s even raised the funds to repair the façade of the church building. Not content simply to dodge the scaffolding for several months, the parish also received grants to have artists decorate the scaffolding. The design: a colorful rendering of the visit of the three men to Abraham announcing Sarah’s pregnancy!

Am I suggesting that we should begin ministries to drug addicts and prostitutes? I’m sure they could be worthwhile endeavors, but they may not be for us. We have our ministry of Loaves and Fishes. We are experimenting with Church in the Park. A parish on Long Island continues to send us children’s clothing. We helped meet the need for warm clothing this past winter by giving away hats, scarves, and gloves. Could we add some form of clothing give-away to our monthly diaper distribution or to our winter give-away? We regularly take leftover food to Serenity House. Could God be calling us to a more intentional relationship with them? At the very least, God is asking us to pray for ourselves and for our parish. God willing, as we discern the next steps in our ministry, we will have the courage to embrace our part in God’s plan. We will let ourselves be led by Christ, even if we feel as if we are going to “another country” to be married to a stranger.

“And they called to Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ She said, I will.”