“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Or we might say, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, and be ready to pick up and go wherever I go. If necessary, be ready to move!” Uh oh. Maybe it’s not as easy as it looked last week to confess Jesus as the Messiah and follow God’s call.
The prophet Jeremiah, whose lament we just heard, could certainly relate to those words. He’d been a relatively young man, probably having a young man’s good time, when he first heard God’s call to him. “I’ve known you from even before you were born,” God told him, “and I’ve appointed you as a ‘prophet to the nations.’” “But, Lord,” replied Jeremiah, “I’m too young, I don’t know anything about speaking well.” “Never mind,” God said, “I’ll tell you what to say. You just come along, and I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Did Jeremiah know what he was getting himself into and where he would be expected to go, when he agreed to speak for God? I don’t think so. Of course, in the beginning, God’s words, as he tells us, “became to me a joy, and the delight of my heart.” But then God called Jeremiah to try to persuade the king not to enter into a fruitless alliance with other nations, in an attempt to stave off the Babylonians. The religious and political leadership, the other prophets, and even the king himself, loudly derided and scorned Jeremiah for not supporting the king. He was put under house arrest, and even briefly thrown into a well. Unfortunately, his prophecies were right on the mark. The Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and forced the ruling classes and artisans into exile. Jeremiah himself ended up in Egypt with a portion of the exiles. No wonder he was disillusioned with God! No wonder he complains to God that his pain is “unceasing,” and his wound “incurable.” No wonder he accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” Like Jesus’ disciples, like so many of us, Jeremiah had discovered that, while the joy of following God’s call is initially sweet, God often takes us out of our places of comfort and leads us into hardships beyond our imagining.
Yet God did not leave Jeremiah mired in his bitterness and disillusionment. Did you catch God speaking in the second half of our reading this morning? God calls Jeremiah to repentance and promises Jeremiah that, “If you utter what is precious … you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.” In other words, “Don’t lose heart, Jeremiah. Keep testifying, focus on my mission. And people will believe you. You won’t have an easy time, but I am with you forever.” As part of the exile community, Jeremiah was forced to leave his home. He died in Egypt without ever returning to Jerusalem, but, reassured by God’s promises, he continued to speak God’s word for the rest of his life.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is on the move again. With this morning’s reading, we are at a transition point in Matthew’s Gospel story. Jesus is ready to leave northern Israel behind. He has set his face towards Jerusalem and the events that are to transpire there. “It’s settled,” he tells his disciples, “this is God’s plan.” Like Jeremiah, Peter protests. He draws Jesus aside and tries to persuade Jesus to turn back. Still perhaps looking for a military messiah, a mighty king who would throw the Romans out of Israel, Peter can scarcely understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus dying? Jesus, executed like a criminal? Unthinkable! And can’t we sympathize with Peter? He may not have understood what he was saying when he confessed Jesus as the Messiah, but he is rightly terrified at the prospect of his beloved rabbi dying. As are we, when we’re honest with ourselves. The Cross is always scandalous, so much so that many churches, St. Peter’s included, have no crucifix anywhere – not even in an icon!
Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter in the harshest possible terms. Jesus is on the move. He must go to Jerusalem, and he expects his disciples to leave the comforts of Galilee and follow him there. And, just to make sure that all the disciples understand that he meant what he said about dying a criminal’s death, he tells them that they can expect not only to leave their own places of comfort, but also to experience hardship as his followers, as a part of the community devoted to him. In no uncertain terms he reminds them, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, be prepared to move, but don’t expect an easy time.” But just as God reassured Jeremiah that he would eventually be vindicated, Jesus also reassures his disciples of their greater life in him: “For … those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Following Jesus won’t be easy, following Jesus won’t necessarily bring them what they want or expect, following Jesus may take them out of their comfort zones, but if they follow along behind him and with their fellow disciples, they have Jesus’ promise that wherever he leads them he will be with us.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit can also relate to Jesus’ command. They know well where following behind Jesus can lead one. The community was founded in the early 1950s in New York City. All of its sisters, including today’s sisters, gave up other lives to join the community. Originally focused on elementary education, the community occupied a comfortable converted brownstone on 113th Street, not too far from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. However, in 1961, some of the sisters answered Jesus’ call to establish a second school and community in Brewster, NY, about fifty miles from Manhattan. As part of their work in Brewster, in 2004 the sisters were called to establish Bluestone Farm as an example of sustainable living and farming. There the sisters now plant, harvest, and store their own food and weave their own textiles. The farm has attracted resident companions, interns, and volunteers who have expanded its work. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the sisters felt called to gradually turn the ministry of elementary education over to others, and develop new ministries in education about living sustainably, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, and guest hospitality. In 2009, they heard another call: to leave their comfortable old convent and build a new green convent. Through a land swap with Columbia University, the community received a parcel of land on the edge of Harlem. Despite the reservations of some of their well-wishers about locating in a mixed-ethnic neighborhood, the sisters embarked on building a thoroughly “green” convent near 150th street. Complete with roof-top garden, the new St. Hilda’s house now stands as an urban experiment in living in closer community with the earth. Needless to say, none of these moves and developments have been easy. The move from the old Manhattan convent to the new one in late 2010 was particularly difficult for some of the older sisters. Yet even they know that Jesus is with them and their community, wherever he may lead them. Sr. Élise, who at 90 is the oldest member of the community, described the prospect of leaving the old convent. She said, “I really don’t have my roots set down here in this house – I’ll be happy to live anywhere. I already have a reservation in another place.” Or as Meredith Kadet, a recent Bluestone Farm intern, reminded us in a meditation on her own prospect of moving, Christians are a pilgrim people, always on the move with Jesus, always following where God leads them. “We’re on the move, then, together,” she tell us. “We’re on the move because we’re part of a community, part of a universe, part of a body of God that’s on the move toward a promise.”
We’re on the move with Jesus. We’re a pilgrim people, following behind a leader whom we know will eventually lead us to Jerusalem and to the Cross. We may have hardships, we may have to leave our comfort zone, we may have to go to new and unexpected, perhaps even dangerous places. Yet we have Jesus’ promise to be with us, wherever he takes us. And Jesus’ promise is as true for us as God’s promise was to Jeremiah, as Jesus’ promise was to his disciples, and as Jesus’ promise is for the sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. Here at St. Peter’s, to say nothing of the rest of our lives, we too may have to leave behind beloved old structures, beloved ministries, beloved ways of doing things. We may have to begin developing ministries in places where we hadn’t expected to be. But we can do all that and more, because we have heard Jesus’ call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Meredith Kadet closed her reflection with the verse of an old song. Perhaps the song is appropriate for us too.
I open my mouth to the Lord
And I won’t turn back
I will go, I shall go
To see what the end gonna be.
God willing, we will all faithfully follow behind him.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
You Are the Messiah
How did he know? When Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am,” how did Peter come up with the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?” Even if Peter was speaking for all the disciples, how did he know? Like other Jews of their day, Peter and the other disciples knew their Scriptures. They knew that the prophets, beginning with Isaiah and running right through Malachi, had been promising for centuries that God would deliver the Jews and would inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. Perhaps they also used their reason: they could see, in the way that Jesus healed people, in the way he argued with the religious leaders, and in the way that he taught, that there was something special about him. And too they had had some personal experiences of their own of Jesus’ power. Hadn’t they taken part in Jesus’ feeding of the great crowd? Hadn’t some of them gone out in a boat with Jesus and seen him walk on water? When Peter tried to do the same thing and began to sink, hadn’t they seen Jesus reach out and save him? And when he got back into the boat, hadn’t they said then, “Truly, you are the Son of God?” So when Jesus finally put the question to them, “But who do you say that I am,” perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that impulsive and quick-witted Peter could put Scripture, reason, and experience together and come up with the right answer.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Great is Your Faith
It hasn’t been a good summer. Personally, of course, I broke my arm and had to postpone the trip to Ireland that I’d been looking forward to for so long. While I was catching up on my reading at home, I could contemplate with even greater dismay Congress’s irresponsibly descending into virtual gridlock over the debt ceiling only to finally act with hours to spare. Unfortunately, the last minute agreement didn’t stop our national bond rating from being downgraded and the stock market from going into a tailspin. On the other side of the pond, the Euro zone is falling apart, as the economies of Greece, Italy, and Portugal weaken to the point of their possibly withdrawing from the European Economic Community. In Norway Anders Bering Breivik went on a shooting rampage, killing seventy-seven people in the name of ethnic purity. Meanwhile, in the last three months 30,000 children have died of starvation in the horn of Africa, as that region suffers its worst drought in sixty years. And in the past two weeks, we’ve watched with horror as thugs and out-of-control youth trashed working class neighborhoods in London and other UK cities. It hasn’t been a good summer.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
A Sower Went Out to Sow
The disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” Why indeed? Jesus answers that question in a section between the two halves of today’s Gospel. He says, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given…. The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’” I wonder. To whom is Jesus referring? Jesus goes on to quote from the prophet Isaiah. So perhaps he’s referring to those “wise and intelligent” folks we heard about last week, the ones who don’t think they need any guidance from him. But I still wonder. Jesus was so inclusive and expansive in his ministry. He welcomed all kinds of people, and, of course, he was a gifted teacher. Like any good teacher, he knew that you he had to use different methods to reach different people. So why did Jesus speak in parables? Did he really want to confuse people? I think it was to get his disciples – and us – to think out of the box, to look at spiritual realities in a new way. This parable, familiar as it is, surely does that.
We are now in chapter 13, in the middle of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has begun his third great discourse or sermon. Today we hear the first of several parables that address the growth of the Reign of God. This parable also gives us another chance to think about how people greet prophets, and how they respond when they hear the good news of God’s kingdom. For, as we already know, not everyone greets prophets with enthusiasm. In sending out his disciples, Jesus has warned them about possible rejection: “When they persecute you in one town,” he advises them, “flee to the next.” In chapter 12, he spars with the religious leadership. And, as we heard last week, many in the crowds rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. How to explain people’s rejection of good news? The community for whom Matthew was writing may have asked the same question. They were still a small vulnerable community, rejected by the Jewish religious leadership and discriminated against by the Gentiles around them. Surely they too wondered why the good news wasn’t more attractive.
As he gazed out on the rich farmland of Galilee, perhaps Jesus found an image to begin explaining divine realities to his friends. Perhaps he saw a farmer broadcasting seed, flinging it out by handfuls onto the land. He reminded his friends that the seed goes where it will, but that the sower keeps flinging it out, left and right, left and right. Although the seed won’t produce grain in every square inch of land, the sower doesn’t take special care to see where it goes. He doesn’t care whether some of it lands in the part of the field where there is a layer of rock underneath or a part with weeds left over from last year’s harvest, or even whether some of it lands on the paths between fields. He just keeps flinging until the seed has been spread all over the available land, and his seed bag is empty. Then he trusts God to provide an abundant harvest, perhaps seven-fold, or even ten-fold, if the harvest is exceedingly abundant.
So what is Jesus telling the disciples about possible rejection? What is Matthew’s Gospel telling that early Christian community about rejection? Jesus is telling them to keep flinging the good news around, in every direction, without worrying about where it lands, or where or in whom it bears fruit. Realize that not all the good news will land in places where it will be productive. Never mind, just keep at it. Share what you have experienced with others and trust God to give the harvest. Because if God gives the harvest, it won’t just be seven-fold or ten-fold, it will be thirty, sixty, or even a hundred-fold! As we watch Jesus, it’s clear that Jesus didn’t worry about how his proclamations and teachings were being received, or even whether the people he healed were sufficiently grateful. Everywhere he went, he just kept preaching, teaching, and healing, right to the end. Both this parable and Jesus’ own example became powerful models for Matthew’s community. The message was clear: keep sharing the good news and trust God to make good on God’s promises.
And so for us. We are now Jesus’ disciples. We are now heirs of Matthew’s community and of all the communities of the early church. The bag of seeds is now around our shoulders, and we are now the sowers of the good, life-changing news. And what does God expect us to do as sowers of the word? First of all, the word has to be at work in us. Like the members of Matthew’s community, we too must study our Scriptures, must know the word. By God’s grace, the word will be at work in us, changing our lives in ways that will make others sit up and take notice. Second, we can “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” I know that sounds trite. What I mean is, we can act in such a way that the only explanation for our behavior is that we have been captured by God, that we have put ourselves under Jesus’ yoke, and that we have become fools for Christ. With such witness, and the pull of the Holy Spirit, by God’s grace, the seed flung out by our acts of love will take root and flourish in another person.
Most important, we must give no thought to the outcome of our flinging out of the seed. Yes, I know we’re supposed to be planful, survey the needs of our community, monitor our results, and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. Our participation in the Common Ministry program will surely help us do all that. We will try to do everything with courage and conscientiousness that the Holy Spirit prompts us to do through the program. But sometimes we have to do what this parable suggests: fling seed everywhere and not worry about where it’s going. Sure, some kinds of soil are more productive than others. But it’s not given to us to know what kinds of soil individual people are. Only God knows that, and ultimately, as the psalmist and Jesus himself remind us, it is God who gives the harvest, not us.
Scottish writer Tom Gordon tells the story of Jill, a pupil in Miss Caruthers’s seventh-grade class.1 Every Monday morning Miss Caruthers would fling out the “word of the week.” In some ways Jill didn’t care much for Miss Caruthers. She was matronly, she slammed down a desk lid to get the children’s attention, and every Friday she gave tests that determined where the children would sit the following week. But Jill loved the words. All those wonderful words, a new one each week: “automaton,” “braggart,” “misanthrope,” “hovercraft,” “Wurlitizer,” Jill found a treasure trove in each one. Jill also liked how Miss Caruthers explained the Greek or Latin derivation of the words and compared them with their synonyms, antonyms, or homonyms. She liked the crosswords and games that the children were allowed to make up using the words. Most of all, she loved it when Miss Caruthers would make the children sit down around her, and she would read a story or passage containing the word of the week. When the word of the week was “slough,” Jill discovered Pilgrim’s Progress through the Slough of Despond. Hearing the word “tottering” on the first page of Treasure Island made her want immediately to read the whole book. Every week Miss Carothers flung out her words, and unbeknownst to her, Jill took them all in. From all those words a great love of literature was born in Jill that year. Years later, when Jill interviewed for a new job, she mentioned the effect that Miss Caruthers and her words had had on her. Jill got the job – as a faculty member in English literature at an Oxford college. She wondered what Miss Caruthers would think if she knew that now one of her students had a new word of the week: “professor.”
Miss Caruthers probably never did know where the seeds of her words of the week would sprout, grow, and produce abundantly. She just kept flinging them out, left and right, week after week, trusting in the Spirit to do its work. We’re all like Miss Caruthers. Neither do we know where the seeds that we fling out will sprout, grow, and produce abundantly. Only God knows that. But as God’s sowers, we too must continue to keep flinging the seed, left and right, here and there, day in and day out, not worrying about the outcome, but continuing to trust in God’s abundance.
So as God’s faithful sowers, we must surely pray,
Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word. By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy, grow in love, and share it with others, through Jesus Christ our Savior, who flung out your word to whomever would hear it. Amen.
1. Tom Gordon, “The Word of the Week,” in Welcoming Each Wonder, (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2010), 203-206.
We are now in chapter 13, in the middle of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has begun his third great discourse or sermon. Today we hear the first of several parables that address the growth of the Reign of God. This parable also gives us another chance to think about how people greet prophets, and how they respond when they hear the good news of God’s kingdom. For, as we already know, not everyone greets prophets with enthusiasm. In sending out his disciples, Jesus has warned them about possible rejection: “When they persecute you in one town,” he advises them, “flee to the next.” In chapter 12, he spars with the religious leadership. And, as we heard last week, many in the crowds rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. How to explain people’s rejection of good news? The community for whom Matthew was writing may have asked the same question. They were still a small vulnerable community, rejected by the Jewish religious leadership and discriminated against by the Gentiles around them. Surely they too wondered why the good news wasn’t more attractive.
As he gazed out on the rich farmland of Galilee, perhaps Jesus found an image to begin explaining divine realities to his friends. Perhaps he saw a farmer broadcasting seed, flinging it out by handfuls onto the land. He reminded his friends that the seed goes where it will, but that the sower keeps flinging it out, left and right, left and right. Although the seed won’t produce grain in every square inch of land, the sower doesn’t take special care to see where it goes. He doesn’t care whether some of it lands in the part of the field where there is a layer of rock underneath or a part with weeds left over from last year’s harvest, or even whether some of it lands on the paths between fields. He just keeps flinging until the seed has been spread all over the available land, and his seed bag is empty. Then he trusts God to provide an abundant harvest, perhaps seven-fold, or even ten-fold, if the harvest is exceedingly abundant.
So what is Jesus telling the disciples about possible rejection? What is Matthew’s Gospel telling that early Christian community about rejection? Jesus is telling them to keep flinging the good news around, in every direction, without worrying about where it lands, or where or in whom it bears fruit. Realize that not all the good news will land in places where it will be productive. Never mind, just keep at it. Share what you have experienced with others and trust God to give the harvest. Because if God gives the harvest, it won’t just be seven-fold or ten-fold, it will be thirty, sixty, or even a hundred-fold! As we watch Jesus, it’s clear that Jesus didn’t worry about how his proclamations and teachings were being received, or even whether the people he healed were sufficiently grateful. Everywhere he went, he just kept preaching, teaching, and healing, right to the end. Both this parable and Jesus’ own example became powerful models for Matthew’s community. The message was clear: keep sharing the good news and trust God to make good on God’s promises.
And so for us. We are now Jesus’ disciples. We are now heirs of Matthew’s community and of all the communities of the early church. The bag of seeds is now around our shoulders, and we are now the sowers of the good, life-changing news. And what does God expect us to do as sowers of the word? First of all, the word has to be at work in us. Like the members of Matthew’s community, we too must study our Scriptures, must know the word. By God’s grace, the word will be at work in us, changing our lives in ways that will make others sit up and take notice. Second, we can “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” I know that sounds trite. What I mean is, we can act in such a way that the only explanation for our behavior is that we have been captured by God, that we have put ourselves under Jesus’ yoke, and that we have become fools for Christ. With such witness, and the pull of the Holy Spirit, by God’s grace, the seed flung out by our acts of love will take root and flourish in another person.
Most important, we must give no thought to the outcome of our flinging out of the seed. Yes, I know we’re supposed to be planful, survey the needs of our community, monitor our results, and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. Our participation in the Common Ministry program will surely help us do all that. We will try to do everything with courage and conscientiousness that the Holy Spirit prompts us to do through the program. But sometimes we have to do what this parable suggests: fling seed everywhere and not worry about where it’s going. Sure, some kinds of soil are more productive than others. But it’s not given to us to know what kinds of soil individual people are. Only God knows that, and ultimately, as the psalmist and Jesus himself remind us, it is God who gives the harvest, not us.
Scottish writer Tom Gordon tells the story of Jill, a pupil in Miss Caruthers’s seventh-grade class.1 Every Monday morning Miss Caruthers would fling out the “word of the week.” In some ways Jill didn’t care much for Miss Caruthers. She was matronly, she slammed down a desk lid to get the children’s attention, and every Friday she gave tests that determined where the children would sit the following week. But Jill loved the words. All those wonderful words, a new one each week: “automaton,” “braggart,” “misanthrope,” “hovercraft,” “Wurlitizer,” Jill found a treasure trove in each one. Jill also liked how Miss Caruthers explained the Greek or Latin derivation of the words and compared them with their synonyms, antonyms, or homonyms. She liked the crosswords and games that the children were allowed to make up using the words. Most of all, she loved it when Miss Caruthers would make the children sit down around her, and she would read a story or passage containing the word of the week. When the word of the week was “slough,” Jill discovered Pilgrim’s Progress through the Slough of Despond. Hearing the word “tottering” on the first page of Treasure Island made her want immediately to read the whole book. Every week Miss Carothers flung out her words, and unbeknownst to her, Jill took them all in. From all those words a great love of literature was born in Jill that year. Years later, when Jill interviewed for a new job, she mentioned the effect that Miss Caruthers and her words had had on her. Jill got the job – as a faculty member in English literature at an Oxford college. She wondered what Miss Caruthers would think if she knew that now one of her students had a new word of the week: “professor.”
Miss Caruthers probably never did know where the seeds of her words of the week would sprout, grow, and produce abundantly. She just kept flinging them out, left and right, week after week, trusting in the Spirit to do its work. We’re all like Miss Caruthers. Neither do we know where the seeds that we fling out will sprout, grow, and produce abundantly. Only God knows that. But as God’s sowers, we too must continue to keep flinging the seed, left and right, here and there, day in and day out, not worrying about the outcome, but continuing to trust in God’s abundance.
So as God’s faithful sowers, we must surely pray,
Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word. By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy, grow in love, and share it with others, through Jesus Christ our Savior, who flung out your word to whomever would hear it. Amen.
1. Tom Gordon, “The Word of the Week,” in Welcoming Each Wonder, (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2010), 203-206.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
My Yoke is Easy
Is O.K. for a Christian to practice yoga? A recent article in the Christian Century posed this very question.1 A statement by the Hindu American Foundation had suggested that Americans focus too heavily on the physical exercise aspect of yoga and ignore its deep roots in the Hindu tradition. In response, some commentators flatly denied the connection between yogic practice and today’s Hinduism. However, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological seminary, roundly condemned yoga and other forms of “Eastern meditation.” Mohler also suggested that indeed Hindu beliefs underlie yoga practice, and that Christians compromise their relationship with Jesus by engaging in them. The author of the Christian Century article, John Sheveland, claims that what Mohler and others who agree with him miss is that yoga is a holistic system of control of the body, spirituality, and ethics. In its classical form, articulated perhaps as early as the second century, yoga consists of an eight-limbed path that integrates moral restraint towards the environment, individual practices, physical postures (the “asanas” with which many are familiar), breathing techniques, control of the senses, focus of the mind, meditation, and absorption into a transcendent consciousness. From such a system, Sheveland suggests, we Christians might have something to learn: how to be more mindful and focused in worship, for example, or how to translate spiritual insight into behavior in the world. In the end, as we ponder the riches of our own spiritual tradition, especially our own tradition of contemplative prayer, we might find that we have much in common with serious Hindu practitioners of yoga.
The word “yoga” comes from an ancient root meaning “to join or unite.” One of its very few cognates in English is the word “yoke.” Have you ever seen yoked animals? Typically oxen or water buffalo, occasionally horses, are yoked in pairs, mostly for plowing. For pulling heavily-laden carts, pairs of yoked animals are often joined together in a team. There are actually at least three common kinds of yokes, depending on the kind of animal. Whichever one is used, it must be fitted to the individual animal to avoid bruising or disabling the animal. What associations do we moderns bring to the word “yoke?” Does it connote a kind of submission? Indeed, the word “subjugate” is also cognate with the same root as that of “yoga” and “yoke.” Perhaps too, when we think of yokes, we think of onerous burdens, since yoked animals are so often found pulling heavy loads.
So what kind of invitation is Jesus offering us in this Gospel when he suggests that we take on his “yoke?” Is he offering us an onerous burden which we must submissively accept? Just before the beginning of today’s passage, Jesus has entertained a query from the disciples of John the Baptist: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” He responds by reminding them that people have been healed, and that “the poor have good news brought to them.” He then vents his own irritation to the crowd – yes, Jesus had negative emotions too – by complaining that neither John, who practiced an ascetic lifestyle, nor he Jesus, whose ministry was more expansive and inclusive, received the welcome that they deserved as prophets. The “wise and intelligent,” those who were sure they understood the demands of the Law and followed the sacrificial system to the letter, seemed especially sure that they had no need of either John’s baptism or the new way offered by Jesus, and they therefore welcomed neither.
In this narrative interlude between Jesus’ second and third great sermons in Matthew, Jesus does indeed suggest that he has something new and different to offer, especially to those who are able to admit that they might need guidance, those who are willing to submit themselves to his leading. Jesus offers them a new “yoke,” one that “fits well,” which is a better translation of the Greek than “easy.” This is not a one-size-fits-all yoke. It is one that is tailored to individual disciples and their particular circumstances. It is different from the yokes borne by oxen and buffaloes, or imposed on people by the keepers of sacrificial ritual. The yoke offered by Jesus is not burdensome but is easy to bear. However, like the yokes of oxen and buffaloes, Jesus’ yokes join us together in pairs and teams to bear each others’ burdens and to help each other grow spiritually. Most important, if we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus’ guidance, rather than feeling constrained or imprisoned, we will truly be free to grow spiritually.
So what keeps us from joining with others and becoming part of Jesus’ teams? What keeps us from accepting his guidance? Is it that we think we can pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps, that we can go it alone spiritually? Do we resist incorporation into a community? Perhaps we wonder how a mature person can take guidance from others. “I don’t need a spiritual director,” you might say, “I’m a mature adult, able to figure things out for myself.” Or perhaps we fear that Jesus will guide us into being as inclusive as he was, that we too will have to eat with the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day, with the poor and homeless, with the alkies and ex-felons.
Or perhaps we’re bound by other kinds of yokes. Perhaps our yokes are the expectations of others. Do you find it hard to say “no,” when someone asks you to volunteer for something you don’t want to do? Do family or friends pull you in directions that hinder your spiritual life? Do others expect your house to look like a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens, your son to be an Eagle Scout, or your daughter to be first in her class academically? Or perhaps your yokes are your own expectations of yourself. How many times have you said, “I have to…. Fill in the blank: lose ten pounds, eat more healthfully, exercise more, drink less, quit smoking. Do you think you should have a cleaner house? Do you wish you could go back to school? Do you think you must work a sixty-hour week, in order to make ends meet? Do you have to have the latest gadgets, go on the best vacations, regardless of how far into debt you go? Do you have to hold on to the social and political convictions you had as a teenager? To what are you yoked?
Jesus assures us that, whether our own yokes are externally or internally imposed, we don’t have to submit to them. We can let go of all that binds us and let Jesus be our guide. One way to do that is to team up with others in the spiritual quest. We can enter into a traditional relationship of spiritual direction. Or perhaps we can let Jesus guide us through shared Christian formation. Or we may find Jesus’ guidance through different forms of prayer. Christians have long known that prayer and meditation enable us to get free of the burdensome yokes that bind us. Prayer and meditation help us to hear Jesus’ guidance and follow his lead. Ironically contemplative prayer has many elements in common with classical yoga. As we relax our bodies, focus on our breath, and let go of our preoccupations as we enter the silence, we open ourselves to God’s indwelling. By God’s grace, we are then able to sense Jesus’ deeper presence in our live. There are many different paths to experiencing God in this way. In the quiet day I plan to offer later this summer, I’d like to help us experience one or two of them. For now, though, listen to what one writer experienced in a form of prayer called “walking meditation.” Poet Tess Gallagher walked with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk. In her poem about the experience, she describes slowly following the monk up a mountain with about fifty other people. She says,
Our meditations
waver and recover us, waver
and reel us in to our bodies
like fish willing at last to take on the joy
of being fish, in or out of the water.
When we gather at last at the summit
and sit with him
we know we have moved the mountain
to its top as much as it carried us
deeply into each step.
Going down is the same.
We breathe and step. Breathe,
and step. A many-appendaged being
in and out of this world. No use
telling you about peace attained.
Get out of your feet.
Your breath. Enter
the mountain.2
Walking meditation, such as Gallagher experienced, centering prayer, lectio divina, Ignatian meditations, body prayer, saying the daily offices, and many other ways of praying all have the same goal: to free us from the yokes that bind us. All prayer ultimately enables us to open ourselves to Jesus’ presence in our lives and to follow his leading instead. And as we follow his guidance more closely, our lives change, for as so many of the saints remind us, as we pray, so also do we live. God willing, our lives are led by Jesus and none other.
1. John N. Sheveland, ”Is yoga religious?”, Christian Century, June 14, 2011, 22-25.
2. Accessed at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/thichnhathanh/poems-walkingmeditation/ .
The word “yoga” comes from an ancient root meaning “to join or unite.” One of its very few cognates in English is the word “yoke.” Have you ever seen yoked animals? Typically oxen or water buffalo, occasionally horses, are yoked in pairs, mostly for plowing. For pulling heavily-laden carts, pairs of yoked animals are often joined together in a team. There are actually at least three common kinds of yokes, depending on the kind of animal. Whichever one is used, it must be fitted to the individual animal to avoid bruising or disabling the animal. What associations do we moderns bring to the word “yoke?” Does it connote a kind of submission? Indeed, the word “subjugate” is also cognate with the same root as that of “yoga” and “yoke.” Perhaps too, when we think of yokes, we think of onerous burdens, since yoked animals are so often found pulling heavy loads.
So what kind of invitation is Jesus offering us in this Gospel when he suggests that we take on his “yoke?” Is he offering us an onerous burden which we must submissively accept? Just before the beginning of today’s passage, Jesus has entertained a query from the disciples of John the Baptist: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” He responds by reminding them that people have been healed, and that “the poor have good news brought to them.” He then vents his own irritation to the crowd – yes, Jesus had negative emotions too – by complaining that neither John, who practiced an ascetic lifestyle, nor he Jesus, whose ministry was more expansive and inclusive, received the welcome that they deserved as prophets. The “wise and intelligent,” those who were sure they understood the demands of the Law and followed the sacrificial system to the letter, seemed especially sure that they had no need of either John’s baptism or the new way offered by Jesus, and they therefore welcomed neither.
In this narrative interlude between Jesus’ second and third great sermons in Matthew, Jesus does indeed suggest that he has something new and different to offer, especially to those who are able to admit that they might need guidance, those who are willing to submit themselves to his leading. Jesus offers them a new “yoke,” one that “fits well,” which is a better translation of the Greek than “easy.” This is not a one-size-fits-all yoke. It is one that is tailored to individual disciples and their particular circumstances. It is different from the yokes borne by oxen and buffaloes, or imposed on people by the keepers of sacrificial ritual. The yoke offered by Jesus is not burdensome but is easy to bear. However, like the yokes of oxen and buffaloes, Jesus’ yokes join us together in pairs and teams to bear each others’ burdens and to help each other grow spiritually. Most important, if we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus’ guidance, rather than feeling constrained or imprisoned, we will truly be free to grow spiritually.
So what keeps us from joining with others and becoming part of Jesus’ teams? What keeps us from accepting his guidance? Is it that we think we can pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps, that we can go it alone spiritually? Do we resist incorporation into a community? Perhaps we wonder how a mature person can take guidance from others. “I don’t need a spiritual director,” you might say, “I’m a mature adult, able to figure things out for myself.” Or perhaps we fear that Jesus will guide us into being as inclusive as he was, that we too will have to eat with the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day, with the poor and homeless, with the alkies and ex-felons.
Or perhaps we’re bound by other kinds of yokes. Perhaps our yokes are the expectations of others. Do you find it hard to say “no,” when someone asks you to volunteer for something you don’t want to do? Do family or friends pull you in directions that hinder your spiritual life? Do others expect your house to look like a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens, your son to be an Eagle Scout, or your daughter to be first in her class academically? Or perhaps your yokes are your own expectations of yourself. How many times have you said, “I have to…. Fill in the blank: lose ten pounds, eat more healthfully, exercise more, drink less, quit smoking. Do you think you should have a cleaner house? Do you wish you could go back to school? Do you think you must work a sixty-hour week, in order to make ends meet? Do you have to have the latest gadgets, go on the best vacations, regardless of how far into debt you go? Do you have to hold on to the social and political convictions you had as a teenager? To what are you yoked?
Jesus assures us that, whether our own yokes are externally or internally imposed, we don’t have to submit to them. We can let go of all that binds us and let Jesus be our guide. One way to do that is to team up with others in the spiritual quest. We can enter into a traditional relationship of spiritual direction. Or perhaps we can let Jesus guide us through shared Christian formation. Or we may find Jesus’ guidance through different forms of prayer. Christians have long known that prayer and meditation enable us to get free of the burdensome yokes that bind us. Prayer and meditation help us to hear Jesus’ guidance and follow his lead. Ironically contemplative prayer has many elements in common with classical yoga. As we relax our bodies, focus on our breath, and let go of our preoccupations as we enter the silence, we open ourselves to God’s indwelling. By God’s grace, we are then able to sense Jesus’ deeper presence in our live. There are many different paths to experiencing God in this way. In the quiet day I plan to offer later this summer, I’d like to help us experience one or two of them. For now, though, listen to what one writer experienced in a form of prayer called “walking meditation.” Poet Tess Gallagher walked with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk. In her poem about the experience, she describes slowly following the monk up a mountain with about fifty other people. She says,
Our meditations
waver and recover us, waver
and reel us in to our bodies
like fish willing at last to take on the joy
of being fish, in or out of the water.
When we gather at last at the summit
and sit with him
we know we have moved the mountain
to its top as much as it carried us
deeply into each step.
Going down is the same.
We breathe and step. Breathe,
and step. A many-appendaged being
in and out of this world. No use
telling you about peace attained.
Get out of your feet.
Your breath. Enter
the mountain.2
Walking meditation, such as Gallagher experienced, centering prayer, lectio divina, Ignatian meditations, body prayer, saying the daily offices, and many other ways of praying all have the same goal: to free us from the yokes that bind us. All prayer ultimately enables us to open ourselves to Jesus’ presence in our lives and to follow his leading instead. And as we follow his guidance more closely, our lives change, for as so many of the saints remind us, as we pray, so also do we live. God willing, our lives are led by Jesus and none other.
1. John N. Sheveland, ”Is yoga religious?”, Christian Century, June 14, 2011, 22-25.
2. Accessed at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/thichnhathanh/poems-walkingmeditation/ .
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Are Prophets Welcome Here?
Are prophets welcome here? If a prophet walked in right now through the red doors, would we politely explain that this is a house of worship, and that we’re in the middle of a worship service? Eastertide, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday are now behind us. We’ve put on our green paraments and vestments, and we’ve entered the season of flowering and growth – our growth as Jesus’ friends and disciples. In the first half of the liturgical year, the year that began way back last December, we focused on Jesus and his life. In Advent, while we considered the end times, we also prepared to receive at Christmas the shocking news that the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. During our long Epiphany tide, we reflected on all the various ways Jesus’ true identity became clear to those around Him. In Lent we sorrowfully pondered our own sins and the events that led up to Jesus’ death. In Easter tide we too joyfully greeted the risen Jesus, watched him leave behind for good his earthly existence, and let the Holy Spirit blow over us.
Now the focus of the liturgical year shifts from Jesus to us. In this green, growing season, along with the flowers, grass, and crops, we too are growing and developing spiritually. We too may hope to harvest the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In the opening weeks of this year’s Pentecost season, the overarching theme of our Gospel lessons is our response to Jesus. For the next several weeks, our Gospel lessons will ask us to ponder who Jesus is for us, how and where we see him, and how we act, both as individuals and as a Christian community, on our vision of him. Today’s Gospel reading asks us to ponder how we respond to prophets, to those who speak in God’s name, who bring God to us, and who provoke us to think about what God wants for us and from us. Next week the Gospel reading will show us different ways that the people around Jesus responded to him. We will then hear several parables, illustrative stories that reflect Jesus’ prophetic ministry. You will hear the parable of the sown seeds two weeks from today, and others while I am gone. August presents us with two miracles that further confirm Jesus’ true identity: Peter’s walking on water and the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter. The final two Gospel lections in this series lead us to explicit statements of Jesus’ identity, as we hear Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus’ confirmation of Peter’s insight, with an allusion to the consequences of Peter’s confession.
So now we are at the beginning of this series of lections. We begin at the very end of chapter ten of Matthew’s Gospel. We are in the second of Jesus’ five great sermons in Matthew. If we had started at the beginning of this chapter, we would have heard Jesus deliver what is called the “missionary discourse,” i.e., Jesus’ charge to the seventy or so disciples whom he sends out to preach the nearness of God’s reign. He explicitly reminds them that they are going forth as his emissaries, and that if someone welcomes them it is the same as welcoming Jesus himself. Then, the Gospel narrative has Jesus suddenly shift gears and ask the disciples – or perhaps others standing around – to reflect on how those who bring God’s word are received.
Jesus asks his hearers – and by extension us – to consider how we receive three different kinds of people who might bring God’s word to us. The first are the prophets. How do we receive prophets? Our Hebrew Bible lesson, taken from the Book of Jeremiah, suggests that, when prophets tell the truth, they are often rejected. Indeed, much of the Book of Jeremiah deals with Jeremiah’s struggle to make the political leaders to whom he was preaching hear the truth of the desperate situation they were in. Jeremiah especially wanted to get the king and his advisors to see that the alliances that they hoped would avert conquest by Babylon and eventual exile would not work. Echoing Jeremiah’s struggle, a Talmudic saying suggests that, “A rabbi whose congregation does not want to drive him out of town isn’t a rabbi.”1 Do we do any better? Did anyone want to listen to Rachel Carson, when she warned us in Silent Spring about the overuse of pesticides in agriculture? Did those who risked – and lost – their lives in the Civil Rights movement fare any better? How long did it take us to realize that HIV-AIDS was a disease that affected everyone – and still creates thousands of orphans in Africa? Are we listening to today’s scientists who warn of global warming and climate change? Are we willing to hear that the church must do ministry in a new way if it is to survive in this century? Who are the prophets who speak God’s word for you? Do you act on what you hear?
What about the righteous ones? Who are the ones who model a deep commitment to God, and how do we receive them when we meet them? Many people thought St. Francis was insane. Even today, some people wonder whether Mother Teresa really had genuine faith. Is it OK for Episcopalians to take the writings of Evangelical theologians or commentators seriously? Is it OK to read Rob Bell’s book on salvation? Do Pentecostals really have anything to teach us about spirituality?
Most perplexing of all, who are those “little ones,” who deserve a cup of water from us as they bring us God’s word? And how do we receive them? Bryan Findlayson tells about a mission trip to a rural area on the east coast of Australia. The community was poor and isolated, and the team was put up in houses that lacked such basic amenities as indoor plumbing. The small church had long ago lost its old weatherboards and was clad in metal siding. Nevertheless the congregation flocked to the church on Sunday afternoon to hear Findlayson and his team preach God’s word. Who knows whether anyone committed themselves to Christ that day, Findlayson asks? What mattered was that the messengers – and hopefully their message as well – were welcomed.2
Sometimes too we may meet some of those “little ones” in chance encounters. As one writer suggests, sometimes God’s word comes to us when we least expect it. A sentence in a sermon may leap out at us. A chance meeting with a stranger, perhaps a comment on an elevator, or at a gas station, or overheard at dinner, may be God’s word to us. Unless we listen carefully, and attend to the Spirit working in our lives, we may never realize that the reign of God has come near to us, and that we have heard God speaking to us.3
And then there are the “little ones” in our midst. Most of us shy away from contact with those who aren’t of our own social class, who aren’t as educated as we are, who perhaps have been incarcerated, or who don’t look, act, or smell as we do. Yet many passages of Scripture in addition to this one remind us of our obligation to welcome strangers. Abraham welcomed angels, who then blessed him by announcing that Sarah would bear a child. The book of Leviticus reminded the Israelites to love strangers as themselves, “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” On the road to Emmaus Cleopas and his friend welcomed a stranger into their home, and realized that they had welcomed the risen Jesus as he broke bread with them. Several of Paul’s epistles bid the new Christian communities befriend strangers. Monastic communities have an ancient tradition of welcoming all, and the Rule of St. Benedict is particularly explicit that all strangers are to be treated as honored guests.
So how do we welcome those “little ones?” How about those who receive our diapers at the mobile food pantry? Could any of them be Christ-bearers for us? How about the “little ones” who walk through the doors of our parish hall for Loaves and Fishes? Are they honored guests? How do we treat them? Do they bring Christ to us? Do they perhaps have even deeper faith than we do? Might we learn something from them? Can we see Christ in them? Can we join our prayers with theirs? And what other opportunities to welcome “little ones” are we missing? Are there others who need our resources of time, space, and money? What other “little ones” might the Holy Spirit be sending our way, if only we could see them? As we begin to ponder where the Holy Spirit might be leading St. Peter’s, as we continue to pray daily for our parish – are you still doing that – let us also pray that God will show us other “little ones” whom we are called to serve.
O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.
1. Synthesis, June 26, 2011, p.2.
2. Bryan Findlayson at lectionarystudies.com, quoted in Ibid.
3. Forward Day by Day, June 16, 2011.
Now the focus of the liturgical year shifts from Jesus to us. In this green, growing season, along with the flowers, grass, and crops, we too are growing and developing spiritually. We too may hope to harvest the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In the opening weeks of this year’s Pentecost season, the overarching theme of our Gospel lessons is our response to Jesus. For the next several weeks, our Gospel lessons will ask us to ponder who Jesus is for us, how and where we see him, and how we act, both as individuals and as a Christian community, on our vision of him. Today’s Gospel reading asks us to ponder how we respond to prophets, to those who speak in God’s name, who bring God to us, and who provoke us to think about what God wants for us and from us. Next week the Gospel reading will show us different ways that the people around Jesus responded to him. We will then hear several parables, illustrative stories that reflect Jesus’ prophetic ministry. You will hear the parable of the sown seeds two weeks from today, and others while I am gone. August presents us with two miracles that further confirm Jesus’ true identity: Peter’s walking on water and the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter. The final two Gospel lections in this series lead us to explicit statements of Jesus’ identity, as we hear Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus’ confirmation of Peter’s insight, with an allusion to the consequences of Peter’s confession.
So now we are at the beginning of this series of lections. We begin at the very end of chapter ten of Matthew’s Gospel. We are in the second of Jesus’ five great sermons in Matthew. If we had started at the beginning of this chapter, we would have heard Jesus deliver what is called the “missionary discourse,” i.e., Jesus’ charge to the seventy or so disciples whom he sends out to preach the nearness of God’s reign. He explicitly reminds them that they are going forth as his emissaries, and that if someone welcomes them it is the same as welcoming Jesus himself. Then, the Gospel narrative has Jesus suddenly shift gears and ask the disciples – or perhaps others standing around – to reflect on how those who bring God’s word are received.
Jesus asks his hearers – and by extension us – to consider how we receive three different kinds of people who might bring God’s word to us. The first are the prophets. How do we receive prophets? Our Hebrew Bible lesson, taken from the Book of Jeremiah, suggests that, when prophets tell the truth, they are often rejected. Indeed, much of the Book of Jeremiah deals with Jeremiah’s struggle to make the political leaders to whom he was preaching hear the truth of the desperate situation they were in. Jeremiah especially wanted to get the king and his advisors to see that the alliances that they hoped would avert conquest by Babylon and eventual exile would not work. Echoing Jeremiah’s struggle, a Talmudic saying suggests that, “A rabbi whose congregation does not want to drive him out of town isn’t a rabbi.”1 Do we do any better? Did anyone want to listen to Rachel Carson, when she warned us in Silent Spring about the overuse of pesticides in agriculture? Did those who risked – and lost – their lives in the Civil Rights movement fare any better? How long did it take us to realize that HIV-AIDS was a disease that affected everyone – and still creates thousands of orphans in Africa? Are we listening to today’s scientists who warn of global warming and climate change? Are we willing to hear that the church must do ministry in a new way if it is to survive in this century? Who are the prophets who speak God’s word for you? Do you act on what you hear?
What about the righteous ones? Who are the ones who model a deep commitment to God, and how do we receive them when we meet them? Many people thought St. Francis was insane. Even today, some people wonder whether Mother Teresa really had genuine faith. Is it OK for Episcopalians to take the writings of Evangelical theologians or commentators seriously? Is it OK to read Rob Bell’s book on salvation? Do Pentecostals really have anything to teach us about spirituality?
Most perplexing of all, who are those “little ones,” who deserve a cup of water from us as they bring us God’s word? And how do we receive them? Bryan Findlayson tells about a mission trip to a rural area on the east coast of Australia. The community was poor and isolated, and the team was put up in houses that lacked such basic amenities as indoor plumbing. The small church had long ago lost its old weatherboards and was clad in metal siding. Nevertheless the congregation flocked to the church on Sunday afternoon to hear Findlayson and his team preach God’s word. Who knows whether anyone committed themselves to Christ that day, Findlayson asks? What mattered was that the messengers – and hopefully their message as well – were welcomed.2
Sometimes too we may meet some of those “little ones” in chance encounters. As one writer suggests, sometimes God’s word comes to us when we least expect it. A sentence in a sermon may leap out at us. A chance meeting with a stranger, perhaps a comment on an elevator, or at a gas station, or overheard at dinner, may be God’s word to us. Unless we listen carefully, and attend to the Spirit working in our lives, we may never realize that the reign of God has come near to us, and that we have heard God speaking to us.3
And then there are the “little ones” in our midst. Most of us shy away from contact with those who aren’t of our own social class, who aren’t as educated as we are, who perhaps have been incarcerated, or who don’t look, act, or smell as we do. Yet many passages of Scripture in addition to this one remind us of our obligation to welcome strangers. Abraham welcomed angels, who then blessed him by announcing that Sarah would bear a child. The book of Leviticus reminded the Israelites to love strangers as themselves, “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” On the road to Emmaus Cleopas and his friend welcomed a stranger into their home, and realized that they had welcomed the risen Jesus as he broke bread with them. Several of Paul’s epistles bid the new Christian communities befriend strangers. Monastic communities have an ancient tradition of welcoming all, and the Rule of St. Benedict is particularly explicit that all strangers are to be treated as honored guests.
So how do we welcome those “little ones?” How about those who receive our diapers at the mobile food pantry? Could any of them be Christ-bearers for us? How about the “little ones” who walk through the doors of our parish hall for Loaves and Fishes? Are they honored guests? How do we treat them? Do they bring Christ to us? Do they perhaps have even deeper faith than we do? Might we learn something from them? Can we see Christ in them? Can we join our prayers with theirs? And what other opportunities to welcome “little ones” are we missing? Are there others who need our resources of time, space, and money? What other “little ones” might the Holy Spirit be sending our way, if only we could see them? As we begin to ponder where the Holy Spirit might be leading St. Peter’s, as we continue to pray daily for our parish – are you still doing that – let us also pray that God will show us other “little ones” whom we are called to serve.
O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.
1. Synthesis, June 26, 2011, p.2.
2. Bryan Findlayson at lectionarystudies.com, quoted in Ibid.
3. Forward Day by Day, June 16, 2011.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Blown by the Spirit
Why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? [Query a few people.] Is it because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Is it because coming is what God expects of me, and I want to please and serve God? Do you seek weekly nourishment in the Eucharist? Do you hope thereby to become more like Jesus? Do you seek strength for the journey, the sustenance you need to keep going in life? Or are you perhaps looking to satisfy some deeply-felt need for authentic community? What brought you here?
My friends, none of these reasons is why you are here. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here, and no longer any social approbation for rousing yourselves and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus’ disappearance is behind us, we’ve crossed over the threshold, and the Holy Spirit is rampant in the world. But the Holy is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known. Some of us can really resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions. We know too that in Scripture fire is also a signal of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai? When Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and enlivening. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing. For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” Paul went on to remind the Corinthian Christians that collectively their community possessed many different kinds of gifts, not just that of speaking in tongues, and that all their gifts had come from the same Spirit. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. Much as we love the Episcopal Church, perhaps we can learn from Lutherans, or Roman Catholics, or even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts needed to build the kingdom of God. We have a lot to learn from each other. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us all, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there’s kind of a paradox here. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor solely to enable us to feel at peace with ourselves, valuable as that may be, or at ease with the world. Strength for the journey, maybe. But, as one writer observed, the real truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us, that, in fact, may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After they stepped over that threshold, there was no going back to the old life for the disciples. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in unexpected directions.
And so too for us. Having stepped over that same threshold, we know there is no going back to what this parish once was. There is no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. In a recent speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks challenged his listeners to give up our American pre-occupation with self-fulfillment and instead make a “sacred commitment” to service to others. “Most successful young people,” he wrote, “don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem which summons their life…. They are called by a problem which then helps them create self-identity.” Isn’t that true for us as well? The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young or old, women or men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we can discern it. The Spirit calls us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
Most of you know that I like icons. I especially like this one of the descent of the Holy Spirit from the Cathedral of St. Sophia. You remember that icons are not realistic pictures but rather attempts to capture spiritual realities visually. This icon is different from what we might expect such an icon to be, in that it shows the apostles at rest, perhaps being gently bathed by the light touch of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen has written movingly of the way in which this icon reflects the Spirit’s role in creating Christian community, by drawing us into the community of love created by the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But two other things strike me about this icon. The first is how different all the apostles are. At first glance, they may look alike. However, if you look closely, you can see that the icon tradition has visibly represented the diversity among them. They are different ages, they are dressed differently, some are bearded and some are not, and their postures differ. In effect, the icon gives us a visual representation of the diversity of gifts among that first apostolic community. Second, and perhaps more important, each figure has in his lap a book or other object. Tranquil as this scene may be, we have the sure sense that the apostles will shortly rise from their chairs to go out to serve the church in the various paths on which they will be led.
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. The Spirit has given us all gifts. The Spirit has given us the responsibility to rebuild and revitalize this parish. And so therefore we pray most earnestly, that the Spirit will continue to shower her gifts on us, so that we may continue to bring God’s reign nearer. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and light us with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.”
My friends, none of these reasons is why you are here. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here, and no longer any social approbation for rousing yourselves and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.
Jesus’ disappearance is behind us, we’ve crossed over the threshold, and the Holy Spirit is rampant in the world. But the Holy is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known. Some of us can really resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions. We know too that in Scripture fire is also a signal of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai? When Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”
To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and enlivening. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing. For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.
However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” Paul went on to remind the Corinthian Christians that collectively their community possessed many different kinds of gifts, not just that of speaking in tongues, and that all their gifts had come from the same Spirit. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.
As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. Much as we love the Episcopal Church, perhaps we can learn from Lutherans, or Roman Catholics, or even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts needed to build the kingdom of God. We have a lot to learn from each other. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us all, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.
My friends, there’s kind of a paradox here. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor solely to enable us to feel at peace with ourselves, valuable as that may be, or at ease with the world. Strength for the journey, maybe. But, as one writer observed, the real truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us, that, in fact, may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After they stepped over that threshold, there was no going back to the old life for the disciples. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in unexpected directions.
And so too for us. Having stepped over that same threshold, we know there is no going back to what this parish once was. There is no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. In a recent speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks challenged his listeners to give up our American pre-occupation with self-fulfillment and instead make a “sacred commitment” to service to others. “Most successful young people,” he wrote, “don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem which summons their life…. They are called by a problem which then helps them create self-identity.” Isn’t that true for us as well? The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young or old, women or men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we can discern it. The Spirit calls us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
Most of you know that I like icons. I especially like this one of the descent of the Holy Spirit from the Cathedral of St. Sophia. You remember that icons are not realistic pictures but rather attempts to capture spiritual realities visually. This icon is different from what we might expect such an icon to be, in that it shows the apostles at rest, perhaps being gently bathed by the light touch of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen has written movingly of the way in which this icon reflects the Spirit’s role in creating Christian community, by drawing us into the community of love created by the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But two other things strike me about this icon. The first is how different all the apostles are. At first glance, they may look alike. However, if you look closely, you can see that the icon tradition has visibly represented the diversity among them. They are different ages, they are dressed differently, some are bearded and some are not, and their postures differ. In effect, the icon gives us a visual representation of the diversity of gifts among that first apostolic community. Second, and perhaps more important, each figure has in his lap a book or other object. Tranquil as this scene may be, we have the sure sense that the apostles will shortly rise from their chairs to go out to serve the church in the various paths on which they will be led.
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. The Spirit has given us all gifts. The Spirit has given us the responsibility to rebuild and revitalize this parish. And so therefore we pray most earnestly, that the Spirit will continue to shower her gifts on us, so that we may continue to bring God’s reign nearer. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and light us with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.”
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