"It's all in how you ask the question" - The Feast of Christ the King 2009

Allow me to be the first one to say, “Happy New Year!” and no, this isn’t some sort of Episcopal oddity. Today is the last day of the Church year, the Feast of Christ the King. So for the Church, this is like New Year’s Eve and next Sunday we will begin a new year with the season of Advent. Christ the King Sunday is a day where we pause to ponder endings and beginnings.

I don’t know how many of you noticed, but since All Saints Day, our Sunday readings have taken us back to Holy Week but instead of focusing on what happened to Jesus, our gospel readings are about what Jesus said and did during Holy Week. Today, we are back at Good Friday with Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator appointed by Caesar to govern Judea. If we read this passage from John’s Gospel slowly, we see that while Pilate asks Jesus several questions, Jesus does not answer them. Pilate’s first interrogatory is, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers his question with a question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” … in other words, “Are you thinking for yourself or merely repeating what others told you?” – a rather cheeky response for a man whose life hangs in the balance! Then Pilate asks, “What have you done?” and Jesus again does not answer the question – he answers a different question: “From where does your authority come?” Pilate asks, “So you are a king?” Jesus answers without answering again: “You say that I am.” Finally, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and Jesus is silent.

Pilate’s philosophical question “What is truth?” has been asked down through the ages. The word “truth,” in both the English and Greek languages is a noun. Now I won’t launch into Grammar Rock, but we all remember that a noun is a person, place or thing and “truth” would fall into the category of “thing.” Because it is a noun, a thing, we tend to believe that truth is a thing that we can somehow get our arms around … or at least get our minds around … a thing to be grasped … something we can hold onto. This is the image we have when we ask “What is truth?”

There’s a problem with this image of truth as a thing and indeed with Pilate’s question. When we see truth as a “what,” a thing, we can tend to fall into two main ways of understanding truth. On the one hand, we can fall into fundamentalism. We are familiar with this term from a religious perspective but I want to address fundamentalism in all its forms: political fundamentalism, nationalistic fundamentalism, cultural fundamentalism, and so on. Fundamentalism is the belief that we possess the truth and anyone else who has a differing interpretation or idea is just plain wrong. We see this in the Church when one interpretation of Scripture is held up as being the “truth” and anyone else who sees it differently is labeled apostate or heretic. We see it in the political arena when the left labels the right as “wing nuts” and the right labels the left as “socialists.” Fundamentalists make no space for others to express differing ideas because the fundamentalist knows that truth is a thing they possess, and those who don’t agree obviously don’t know the truth.

We can fall into another kind of flawed understanding when we image truth as a “what,” a thing. It goes something like this: “I have worked out the truth of my life. You might have a different truth and I respect your right to have that, but you have no right to impose your truth on me.” While on the surface it appears more tolerant than fundamentalism, this privatized type of truth is actually intolerant of anyone who challenges my understanding of truth … because it’s mine and I know what truth is … for me! There is an illustration of this kind of privatized possession of truth in a book entitled Resident Aliens which I have been revisiting this past week. The book is written by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon and my favorite cantankerous theological curmudgeon Stanley Hauerwas (I consider Hauerwas the grain of sand in the oyster of my faith). Bishop Willimon tells the story of a confirmation class he was teaching where he paired up the confirmands with mentors and he put together a 14 year old young man named Max with a 30-something fellow named Joe. Joe was a young professional who had a girlfriend but really hadn’t “settled down.” Pastor Willimon thought this would be a good opportunity for Joe to step up to a new level of responsibility and that the relationship would be mutually beneficial. Joe took on his new responsibility eagerly and gave Max his phone number and the address to his apartment. He told Max to feel free to call or stop by sometime and they could go out and get something to eat. Well, Max took Joe up on his offer and went over to his apartment one Saturday afternoon. Joe answered the door and was a bit annoyed at Max’s timing. Max quickly figured out why when he saw Joe’s girlfriend was there and, well let’s just say it was obvious they weren’t watching television! At 14, Max knew what was going on and he told Joe that he had a girlfriend too and maybe it was time he and his girlfriend did the same thing Joe and his girlfriend were doing. Joe blew up and told Max that he couldn’t do that! Max said, “Why not? If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for me.” Joe shot back with, “You’re only 14! Things are different when you get to be my age.” Max replied, “Oh yeah? Well the church says you’re not supposed to do this until you are married!” Hmm … imagine that! Joe, who was holding on to his private truth about what was ok for him but not for Max, was not prepared to be held accountable to the gospel truth … especially coming out of the mouth of a 14 year old.

Whether one tries to possess truth as a thing and either privatizes it or slips into fundamentalism, both images are wrong and bound in Sin. While their approaches differ, what they hold in common is that truth becomes something centered in my own ego: “I have the truth and you are don’t” or “I have my truth and I don’t want to hear yours.” Both break relationship by centering the truth on our own egotistical understanding and shutting everyone else out.

I am persuaded that Pilate’s question, our question, “What is truth?” frames truth as a “what,” a thing to be possessed and defended and sends us down a path that does not lead to God … because it’s the wrong question. So what is the question? Interestingly, it’s found in Pilate’s question … as found in the original Greek text. The question Pilate asks, “Ti estin alathea” is rightly translated “What is truth?” which works linguistically. But the word ti can also be translated as “who” … “Who is truth?” I believe THIS IS THE QUESTION! Who is truth? Jesus Christ is truth! The man standing right in front of Pilate, the King of the Jews, is truth! John even tells us this at the very beginning of his gospel:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

When we ask “Who is truth?” and are able to see the incarnate truth of Jesus Christ, we can let go of the false image that we can ever really possess truth. It is less a thing to be grasped and more of a mystery into which we live. But where do we start? We begin with Jesus’ command in the 13th chapter of John:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Jesus’ command to love one another as I have loved you is the bedrock of Christian community. When we love one another as Christ loved us God gives us grace to be completely honest with ourselves, each other and God. Bit by bit, living in a loving Christian community allows us to peel away the layers of the false self – the self that likes to think it can possess “truth.” As this false self diminishes we become more willing to hear others when their interpretations and experiences differ from ours. We become less defensive when our friends in the Church lovingly hold us accountable to the greater truth of Jesus Christ. The Christian community of love empowers us to be more honest, more authentic … more real. I truly believe the life’s journey of each Christian is not to become more spiritual, but rather more human. French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our aim is to become authentic, honest, and fully human – to be who we really are in God. This is the journey we are on as Christians and into which we welcome four new companions as they are baptized today and those who are making their commitment to enter this community we know as Calvary.

Changing our focus from “What is truth?” to embrace the real question “Who is truth?” and answer “Jesus Christ is truth” is not a one-time event. It is a process … a journey … the journey of a lifetime to follow Christ the King whose power working in us transforms us into who we really are in God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Proper 24 - Year B - James and John ... or The Office?

In a recent episode of “The Office,” long time sales representative Jim Halpert gets promoted to be the co-manager of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the program, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) is the perennially clueless yet narcissistic boss and Jim Halpert is more of the quiet and thoughtful type. When Jim gets promoted to be the co-manager in charge of day to day operations and Michael is given charge of the “big picture,” there is immediate squabbling about what constitutes day to day versus big picture. This gets especially complicated when the CEO tells them they only have a small amount of money for raises this year and as co-managers they have to decide who gets raises and who doesn’t. Interspersed with their difficulties in cooperating and their bumbling process of deciding who will get a raise and who won’t is the egomaniacal sales rep Dwight Schute who is out to destroy Jim for getting the promotion he felt he deserved.

While this show is a satirical look at the foolishness of inter-office relationships and politics, it seemingly echoes today’s gospel reading about James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he comes in glory … and the response of the other disciples when this request for a “promotion” is discovered.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Beginning with our reading on September 13th (Proper 19) where Jesus tells the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” After this, we hear of the disciples bickering about who would be greatest in the kingdom after Jesus tells them about his impending persecution, death and resurrection. Jesus tells them in response, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus tells the rich young man to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor and then come follow him and ends that teaching with, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And today’s reading follows Jesus’ third prediction of his being handed over to the authorities, condemned to death, killed and on the third day rise again. Clearly, Jesus is painting a picture of discipleship characterized by giving and serving others rather than acquiring and lording power over others.

But, Mark consistently portrays the disciples … well … as clueless as Michael Scott! In spite of what Jesus is telling them about the real meaning of discipleship, today we hear about James and John taking Jesus aside to ask for a place of honor at his right and left hand when he comes in glory. Jesus immediately tells them they don’t have a CLUE what they are asking! They are seeking traditional positions of honor and power while Jesus’ mission and ministry are the opposite of their cultural understanding of these terms. Jesus in essence asks them if they are able to step up to the plate and go through what he is experiencing and will experience. They reply that they are ready … but we are left wondering if they really know what they are getting themselves into! Jesus promises that they will receive the same cup and baptism, but he is unable to promise them the positions at his right or left – evidently there are even some things that are out of Jesus’ “pay grade.” Interestingly, the only other place where Mark uses the terms “on his right” and “on his left” is when he refers to the position of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. Perhaps even glory looks very different from what James and John envision.

When the disciples hear about what James and John have requested, they get angry. I’m not convinced this was some sort of righteous anger as much as it may have been jealousy – “Who do they think they are asking for a promotion?” I can imagine they were kind of annoyed that they hadn’t thought of asking for this first. Jesus responds to this indignation with a definition of divine greatness: “… whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Life is not about the acquisition of power to rule over others – it’s about right use of power to serve others.
One of the things that make this story so uncomfortable is that we can see ourselves in it. The desire to get ahead, to get the promotion, to climb the ladder of success, to acquire possessions and fame and glory are as much the values of our secular world today as they were in the first century. It’s the stuff of the rat race and, as someone once said to me, “No matter how long you run the rat race in the end … you’re still a rat.” Jesus, in his teaching about true divine greatness, offers a way out of the rat race – give it up and serve others. But how do we even begin to give it up?

I believe the answer begins in one word: love. Our service to others needs to begin and end in love. As you seek to answer God’s call to serve in the days and weeks ahead, check your motivation. Is it love, or something else? Divine servanthood is always motivated by love.

When we ground ourselves in God’s love we can be intentional in noticing God’s call to serve through even the most ordinary of tasks. Whether it is fixing a meal for your family, raking the leaves in the yard, or doing laundry – all can be acts of loving service to others and so can be divine service blessed by God. Seventeenth century Carmelite monk Brother Lawrence captured this ideal in his treatise The Practice of the Presence of God. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for God’s sake – whether that was peeling potatoes or caring for the 100 pairs of sandals worn by the brothers. Every task, no matter how great or small, is to be done for the love of God.

Finally, individual acts of loving service need to be brought to the Church in order for it to become a servant community. Karl Barth spoke of the Church as a “herald of the gospel” – a servant community which proclaims by word and deed the saving acts of Jesus Christ throughout the world. A servant community goes out into the world and serves others for the sake of God’s love for the world, not for the sake of itself. Being a servant church can only happen when we commit our time, our talent and our treasure to being a herald of the gospel.

This all may seem a bit overwhelming to us; after all, if James and John who were with Jesus and heard his teachings firsthand didn’t get it, how can we possibly live up to the measure of divine greatness through servanthood? Fortunately, Jesus’ message ends with hope: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came to give his live as a ransom and free us from our captivity to the secular world’s values of selfishness, greed, and abusive power. In Christ, we are freed from this rat race for a life of loving service to others and although we may fall short in our efforts, Jesus’ death on the cross redeems us all. Amen.

Rogation Sunday - 6 Easter - May 17, 2009

A voice was crying in the wilderness … ok actually it was from the back seat of my Scion xB as we were driving home.

“Mom? I have a question for you.” It was my oldest daughter Claire, who at the time was 10 years old. She sounded a little hesitant, so I said, “Sure honey, what is it?”

“Well … is everything in the Bible true?” ...

Oh boy! One minute you're driving home and the next minute you're on the road to a profound moment in parenting! Kids never seem to give you a "heads up" that something like this is coming, do they? Whether or not I was ready was irrelevant, her question was a good one, an important one … and a courageous one. It took a lot of chutzpah for her to ask her seminarian mother if everything in the Bible is true. But I knew there was something behind it, so I said, “That’s an excellent and important question that deserves more than just a quick answer. But I’m wondering what prompted you to ask me this. Can you tell me more?”

“Well, you know I went to camp last week and when I was there, one of my counselors said that everything in the Bible was true. So I raised my hand and asked him, ‘So do you believe that the universe was created in six twenty-four hour days and Adam and Eve were real people?’ And he said, ‘Yes. The Bible is God’s word and God doesn’t lie. If the Bible says it happened that way, it happened that way.’”

Now I must let you know that this young man was a graduate student at an evangelical Christian institution, so his more literalistic approach didn’t completely surprise me. But his answer wasn’t really sufficient for my 10 year old. Her hand went up again and she said, “Well, if that’s true, how you account for dinosaurs? The fossil evidence says they were around for millions of years before people and that doesn’t make sense if the world was created in six days.”

I thought, “Way to go Claire! Play that dinosaur card!” but I asked, “So what did he say to that?”

“He said if I didn’t sit down and be quiet, he’d send me to the camp director to talk this over with her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I sat down and shut up ‘cause I didn’t want to talk it over with her.”

“Smart move. There’s an old saying, ‘You gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em’ and you knew when to let it go.”

But this encounter left her with the question: Is everything in the Bible true?

It may seem odd for me to talk about what the truth of Biblical witness means on Rogation Sunday where we traditionally focus on our relationship with creation; however, given the impact of global climate change on God’s creation, I believe it is more important than ever to find a way forward which integrates the truth of scientific discovery with the truth of Biblical witness. But to do this, we must first ask the same question Pilate asked of Jesus, “What is truth?”

It has only been in relatively recent history that our cultural definition of truth has been tightly bound to factuality. In this paradigm, if something is “true” it must be “fact.” It further develops to say if something is fact it also must be true. This view of truth largely comes from science, a discipline built on what is factual, observable, replicable, and measurable in our world. We are the product of a scientific age which has blessed us in countless ways, but its interpretive lens has narrowed our definition of truth so as to seemingly be at odds with the Bible.

The problem with defining truth as only what is factual is that it fails to give us the full spectrum of what truth encompasses. It’s as if we could picture truth as a rainbow, but then we decide to ignore all the colors except red … and then we say red becomes the definition of what a rainbow is. Pretty silly, right? It is this narrow definition of truth which on the one hand can make hard scientists want to throw out the Scriptures as irrelevant and on the other hand make Biblical literalists want to ignore science as “Godless.” Both are falling into the same trap of narrowly defining truth.

Our pre-scientific ancestors who wrote the Biblical accounts did not approach the holy story with this narrow bandwidth description of truth. In their world, truth was not limited to “just the facts ma’am” but instead included story, metaphor, image, symbol and even sacrament. They saw the whole spectrum, the rainbow, of what truth is. I am persuaded that recapturing this broader definition of truth as something more than mere fact is at the heart of reconciling the truth of scientific discovery and our faith in the truth of the Bible. But how was I going to make sense of that to my 10 year old in the back seat?

I told Claire, “Truth is a pretty deep concept. Truth is more than just facts, but sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that truth is only facts.” At this point, I thought I’d use an illustration that made more sense to her. “You read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Remember what happened towards the end when Professor Quarles (who was overcome with evil) touched Harry? What happened to him?”

“He disintegrated, Mom.”

“Right! And then Harry wakes up in the infirmary at Hogwart’s School and Dumbledore is sitting on his bed explaining what happened: What did Dumbledore tell Harry about why Professor Quarles disintegrated?”

“He disintegrated because Harry had love in him.”

“Right! So … is it true that love conquers evil?”

“Yeah!”

“Right … but … Professor Quarles isn’t a real person … and Dumbledore and Harry aren’t real people either. But was the story true?”

“Yes!”

“So yes, the Bible too is true, but it is more than just facts. I believe the creation story of Genesis says a lot of true things about God creating everything and how it was good, but Adam and Eve don’t have to be real historic people to make it true. And maybe God’s first words weren’t, ‘Let there be light.’ Maybe God just said, ‘BANG!’”

“So my counselor was right – everything in the Bible is true.”

“Yes honey, he was right.”

“And I was right about the dinosaurs too, huh Mom?”

“Yes you were … and the Lord God made them all.”

Amen.

Epiphany 6 - February 15, 2009

If you had told me back in 2001 when I started my journey towards ordination that I would be where I am today, I wouldn’t have believed you. See I had it all planned out, yessirree! I was going to attend a good Episcopal seminary, probably VTS. After that, I would likely be called to be an assistant at a program sized parish for a few years and later I would seek a call to be the rector of a large pastoral to program sized congregation. Yep, that’s how it would all happen, right?

Well, not exactly. Instead of going to VTS, I ended up going to a Lutheran seminary (and I received an excellent education there!). And instead of a full-time call to be an assistant rector somewhere, my first call out of seminary was to close a congregation. That sure wasn’t in the plan. It also wasn’t part of the plan to face unemployment before the first anniversary of my ordination. And it wasn’t in the plan that I would end up serving a Methodist church part-time because there are no full-time calls open in the diocese. No, that wasn’t going to happen! I had it all planned out, you see?

It’s said that we make plans, and God laughs. I guess I’ve made God ROFLOL (that’s “rolling on the floor laughing out loud” for those of you not familiar with texting lingo). Things don’t always work out the way we think they will, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think about outcomes or get emotionally invested in how we think things should be.

Naaman had that problem. He was a powerful man, very important general to the King of Aram, but he had leprosy. Now leprosy was a catch all term for a lot of skin diseases and we really don’t know what Naaman had, but leprosy was feared and if you could find a cure, you’d definitely want to get it. Naaman’s wife has a Hebrew servant girl who tells her it’s too bad Naaman isn’t in Israel because there’s a prophet there who would cure him of his leprosy. Eventually, Naaman makes his way to Elisha’s house and gets pretty annoyed when the prophet merely sends word through his messenger to go wash seven times in the Jordan and he’d be clean. Elisha also knows that the healing of leprosy isn’t about him having special powers, but is about the power of God alone to heal. But Naaman doesn’t quite get it, so he blows up. “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” Whoa, wait a minute … hold the phone. His wife’s servant said there is a prophet who could cure him of his leprosy. She didn’t say anything about some elaborate ritual he would do to bring about this cure! But somewhere between hearing about this cure and his arrival at Elisha’s doorstep, Naaman has developed this elaborate liturgy about how Elisha would cure him. The prophet would come out? Stand and call on the name of the Lord his God? Wave his hand over the spot? Wow! That’s an elaborate liturgy worthy of an Episcopalian! Naaman is not only invested in a definite outcome of receiving a cure, but he has also concocted the exact process by which it would happen!

Now the leper in Mark’s story has a very different approach. This healing story begins a series of vignettes in Mark portraying Jesus as a crosser of social and legal boundaries. But we must recognize that the leper actually violates the boundary first. In the Levitical codes, a leper was not supposed to engage anyone. They were to walk with their hand over their upper lip and cry out “unclean, unclean” as they came near anyone so that people could avoid them. Instead, this leper approaches Jesus, not with a cry of “unclean, unclean,” but with a cry bidding Jesus to come to him. The verb parakaleo means to “come along side.” It’s the word from which we get the term Paraclete. This leper invites Jesus to come along side him … and Jesus does. He then says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Or, in the AAV (that’s “Anjel’s Authorized Version … not available in stores), “You can cleanse me, if you want to.”

The key to his statement is in the “if.” We only have one word for “if” in English, but the Greeks had two different ones: ei and ean. Ei was the “if of certainty” as in, “If I touch a hot stove, I will burn my hand.” We know the outcome, it’s a no brainer. Ean, on the other hand, is called the “if of uncertainty” as in “If I win the lottery, what would I do with the money?” That’s a very uncertain if! It is this latter type of “if” we find in the leper’s words and it is followed by a form of the verb to choose, wish, will or desire which also suggests an uncertain outcome. What we can make of this is that the leper is not invested in a specific outcome; he isn’t taking this healing for granted as a done deal at all. Unlike Naaman who is highly invested in how it should all turn out and exactly how it will go down, this leper is actually making a faith statement. He says he knows Jesus has the power to cleanse him regardless of whether Jesus chooses to exercise that power or not. If the AAV ever gets published, I’d probably render it as, “You have the power to make me clean. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you have the power to make me clean.” Jesus responds by being moved with compassion, accepting the boundary crossing first proposed by the leper, and heals him.

In the season of Epiphany, the focus is on the question, “Who is Jesus?” In the case of the leper in Mark, Jesus is the one with the power to cleanse, regardless of whether he desires to exercise his power or not. Unlike Naaman, this leper doesn’t get invested in the outcome or a specific process. This is the tension we live in: how do we have a vision of what or how things should be and yet holding it lightly enough to let God do what needs to be done even if it does not match how we think it should happen.

The Christian life is an adventure and there are no guaranteed outcomes short of the fullness of a resurrected life in God. What that will look like and how it will go down is mystery. Letting go of prescribed outcomes and preconceived ideas of how things should happen is what it means to grow in our faith.

Who is Jesus? He is the one with the power to cleanse, the power to make us whole and who promises and abundant life. Our faith challenge is to trust this power and let go of our assumptions of how it will all work out. Amen.

Funeral Sermon for The Hon. Herb Rollins - 1/23/09

I was honored to deliver the sermon at the funeral of the Honorable Herbert Rollins who died on January 20, 2008. He was a beloved member of our Frederick community and devoted member of Calvary United Methodist.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Poet and Anglican priest John Donne penned these famous words in his Meditation 17 almost 400 years ago while he battled a chronic illness which eventually claimed his life. He is right in saying “any man’s death” anyone’s death diminishes us. And how much more true it is when the man is Herb Rollins. When we consider the depth and breadth of his impact on us and our community, I think it’s fair to say his death diminishes all of us because he was involved with all of us. And yet, the converse of this is also true – we are all tremendously blessed to have known Herb as a friend and companion on our earthly journey.

Herb was a child of God; loving husband, father and grandfather; active church member; veteran; lawyer; judge; hunting buddy; chorale member; mentor; friend … I could go on, but Herb would have been uncomfortable with that. He wasn’t one to “toot” his own horn or over polish the apple. Even in his obituary (which he wrote) he didn’t want it all to be about himself, so he took the time to praise his colleagues and say how proud he was of your accomplishments. Over the past several days, his family, friends and colleagues have shared so many wonderful remembrances that I frankly wondered how a preacher like me could provide an appropriate summation to a life so richly lived. Fortunately I didn’t have to because Judge Theresa Adams provided one to me on Tuesday during my visit with the family. When she came to express her condolences on hearing the news about Herb, Judge Adams said, “What a lovely, lovely man.” That said it all – he was a lovely, lovely man.

While I had heard much about Herb (who around here hadn’t?), I only had the privilege of meeting him a month ago. When I visited him at the hospital, he was already hosting a guest! I told him I didn’t want to intrude, but he reached out to shake my hand and welcomed me with a warm smile and bright eyes. Even on the day when he received the hard news that his cancer was back, he was still able to welcome me. The same was true last Friday when I visited him at home and brought him Holy Communion. He welcomed me with grace and hospitality. He was so quick to express his gratitude for all the visitors he had and how much everyone was doing for him that I was reminded of the 14th century German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart who said, “If the only prayer you ever uttered was ‘thank you,’ it would be enough.” Herb prayed that prayer often. He was truly thankful for all of you and for everything God had given him.

This lovely life of grace, hospitality and thanksgiving was a testimony to the fact that Herb knew both who he was and, more importantly, whose he was. His public vocation to serve as an attorney and judge as well as his more private vocations as husband, father and friend were all built on the foundation of his faith in the God who created him and his Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed him. That faith infused him with the Holy Spirit and gave him a sense of purpose, guided his ethics, and gave him that innate sense of fairness he tried to apply in his life and his courtroom. As Scott Rolle said in the newspaper interview this week, you may not have always agreed with Herb but, “You knew if you went before him, you were going to get a fair shake.”

In the words of Psalm 84 which Judge Adams just read, “No good thing will the LORD withhold from those who walk with integrity.” By God’s grace and his faith, Herb walked with integrity and there is no doubt that he heard the words of his Lord and Savior saying, “Well done good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Master.”

In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “For we know that if our earthly house, the tent we live in, is dismantled, we have a building from God, a house not built by human hands that is eternal in the heavens.” Paul compares our earthly bodies to tents – temporary and fragile dwellings which are easily destroyed. But he also speaks the promise of Christ, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” God has prepared for each of us that permanent dwelling, not built by human hands, eternal in the heavens which will never die. This is the resurrected life Herb now enjoys in full communion with the Lord.

We too are entering a resurrected life with Herb because our relationship with him is not over. It is forever changed, but it is not ended. In the days and weeks to come, each of us will enter into a new relationship with Herb. Whether it’s being outside in the garden and seeing a beautiful flower that reminds you of him, or watching a sunset in Florida where he loved to visit, or seeing something absurdly funny and laughing to yourself about what Herb would have said about the situation, or struggling over a difficult case and without warning coming to an insight that would have made Herb proud – all of these will happen as you come to know him in a new way in his resurrected life.

In the same Meditation 17, John Donne describes resurrection in a way that I think a judge or attorney would understand and appreciate. He uses the metaphor of books and if there’s one thing that pastors and lawyers have in common, it’s a passion for books. Donne wrote:

“… all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.”

Amen.

Epiphany 2 - January 18, 2009

“I know how God talks to you Mommy.” Erin was all of 4 years old when she decided to explain this to me. “Really? Tell me about how God talks to you.” “Well, God talks to your heart. It’s like when you are talking to your friend on the phone and your friend says something in your ear, and then your ear takes that to your brain and your brain takes it to your heart and your heart takes it to God.” So far, so good. “And then, God talks to your heart and your heart takes that to your brain and then your brain takes it to your mouth so you can say something to your friend.” At that point, I was wondering why I was in seminary and not her!

In truth, I think she had it right, but I’ve found as I get older, things get more complicated. Hearing God’s voice can be hard in the midst of competing and conflicting messages. As I’ve aged, I’ve found that God also talks to us through other people – especially through our faith community.

Two of our readings, the Hebrew text and the New Testament, are about ways God calls us. In the first reading, the boy Samuel gets a direct call from God – God is speaking to his heart and his heart took it to his brain and his brain thought that the voice came from Eli the Temple priest. Samuel didn’t know God’s voice and didn’t realize God would call him directly. Samuel needed the assistance of the older priest to help him understand what was happening. This is true for us too – it takes the input of others to help you make sense out of God’s call.
In the reading from John, Jesus calls Philip directly; however, it is Philip who calls Nathaniel. Philip tells him we’ve found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Nathaniel’s response was less than enthusiastic in fact it was downright snarky: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But Philip doesn’t try to argue or get snarky in return … he merely says, “Come and see.” Jesus greets Nathaniel as “the Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” What he means is, Nathaniel is honest and transparent. He may be wrong, but he’s going to call it like it is. Once Nathaniel hears this from Jesus, he realizes he is fully known by the Lord and this leads to his proclamation that Jesus is the “Son of God, the King of Israel.”

We all have a call from God to a particular vocation. Theologian Frederich Buechner calls vocation that place where your deepest desire meets the world’s greatest needs. But our calls come both from God directly and through the voices of the community and our friends. When we are living fully into our calls - our vocations - we are more fully the people God created us to be. We become more real. And as we become more real, we are more able to reach out to others who do not know God.

This weekend we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was a powerful pastor, teacher and preacher. He was a scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the works of theologian Paul Tillich. Dr. King could have stayed at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and had a successful career. He could have taught theology as a professor with his doctorate. But we all know that his deepest desire was to work for social justice. His work for social justice began with fighting segregation and working for civil rights. But many forget that he also was a peace activist who vociferously protested the Vietnam War and fought the issue of poverty. The former action put him at odds with the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who felt he was taking his eyes off the prize. But Dr. King saw the issues of poverty, war, violence and segregation as all interrelated social evils which could not be fought piecemeal. He heard God’s call, not just from God through the Scriptures, but also through his friends like Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson.

On Tuesday, we will witness an historic event when Barack Obama is inaugurated as president. Barack went to Harvard law school. He was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He could have taken his degree and credentials and gone to work for a prestigious law firm or corporation. But his call – his vocation – was to return to Chicago and fight for the rights of those who had been oppressed through community organizing. He listened to God’s call which came both directly through his faith community and through the voices of those who needed the help he could give them.

God’s call comes through our faith, our community and our friends. That call can come at any time – as Samuel showed us, God’s call isn’t just for grown ups! Where is God calling you? Where does your greatest desire connect with the world’s deepest needs?

Christmas Eve 2007

Christmas Eve 2007
Gathered by Christ Episcopal Mission
Buckeystown, MD

I’ve been listening to some tracks from a band called Over the Rhine. I’d never heard of this band until I read about them on the blogger site RevGalBlogPals. Evidently, this duet has quite a local following in their native town of Cincinnati, Ohio (“Over the Rhine” is a reference to a downtown neighborhood in Cincinnati founded by German immigrants). OTR, as the band is known by their fans, has a new Christmas CD out called Snow Angels, which you can hear through their web site. In it, they reinterpret the classic carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. Their version opens with the familiar first verse of the carol, but continues on in a very different tone:

The lamp lit streets of Bethlehem,
we walk now through the night.
There is no peace in Bethlehem,
there is no peace in sight.
The wounds of generations
are most too deep to heal
a scarlet timeworn miracle
and make it seem surreal.

This is the stark reality of Bethlehem, isn’t it? “How still we see thee lie” seems to be more of a wish for this town than the reality it ever has known. Bethlehem, and Palestine for that matter, has always been caught at a cross road. In the ancient world, it was bound on the north by the great empires of Greece and Rome, to the south by Egypt, and to the east by the empires of Assyria, Babylon and Persia. At one time or another, Palestine and Bethlehem were overrun by the occupying forces of these major world powers. Bethlehem has always known conflict.

That was certainly the case 2,000 years ago when a dirt poor, unwed teenage mother and her fiancé entered the town on the order of an occupying force’s unfunded government mandate to be counted in a census … no doubt so the government could raise their taxes. They arrive in Bethlehem only to find they can’t get a decent room. Obviously they didn’t have the shekels to grease the palm of the local innkeeper for better digs, so they end up in the barn loft with the animals and the other poor people who couldn’t get into the inn either. Oh sure, they might have been able to stay with relatives, but the shame of sticking by his pregnant girlfriend likely put some stress between Joseph and his extended family – would you want to have to explain the situation to your relatives?

Yet, as the prophet Isaiah had predicted, God was going to do a new thing. Oh sure, God was … well … God. This God who formed the foundations of the world could have come in great glory and light and power and special effects which would make Hollywood seem pale in comparison. But instead of doing the predictable thing, God came in a new way – as a helpless, powerless, poor, marginalized baby. And over 2,000 years later, we are still trying to understand what this means.

What does it mean that Christ was born 2,000 years ago? What relevance does this have for us, right here, in Adamstown, Buckeystown, Urbana, and all the other little towns where we live? If we freeze this story in time, we can be tempted to turn it into something that seems surreal and disconnected from us. So what does it mean for us?

Ironically, one of the best responses to this question comes to us from our past too. From the 13th century to be exact, in the words of a German Christian mystic named Johannes Eckhart – Meister Eckhart. I was introduced to Meister Eckhart by the priest at the church I attended in college. Eckhart was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Boneventure. But Eckhart was not exactly a “party line” kind of guy. He dared to speak of God in terms which rocked the establishment and even caused him to be tried by the Inquisition as a heretic (he died before receiving the results of the judgment which acquitted him of the charges). He dared to image God as a woman, a fertile woman – a woman giving birth to all creation! Those terms might even shock some people in our own day who cling to a uniquely masculine image of God.

Meister Eckhart addressed the relevance of Jesus’ birth in his own day. He said to the congregation in Erfurt, Germany one Christmas:

“We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity.... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

And to paraphrase another quote:

“What does it matter that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago if I do not give birth to Christ in my own day?”

This is the essence of Christmas. It was not just the birth of one child 2,000 years ago far away and removed from us. It is the ongoing birth of Jesus in each and every one of us which is the continuation of the Christmas story here and now. Giving birth to Christ in our own time, in our own hearts, in our own lives, is the essence of why Christmas is still relevant today. Giving birth to Jesus in our hearts means living lives grounded in Christ’s teachings, giving to others, reaching out to the last, lost, little, least and lifeless among us, and being the people of God even as we live in an imperfect and wounded world.

The baby in the manger
grew to a man one day,
and still we try to listen now
to what he had to say:
“Put up your swords forever,”
“Forgive your enemies,”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,”
“Let your little children come to me.”

This is our call at Christmas: to make Christ born anew in our lives and in our world through our faith and deeds.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in
be born in us today.

Amen.

Good Friday

Good Friday 2006
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Hanock Maryland

Attachment. A word to ponder on the day our Lord was nailed to the cross. Attachment. It comes from the French attache which means, “to be nailed to.” Jesus was attached, nailed to, the cross. We know attachment. It is a part of the human condition.

I’m revisiting a book my spiritual director gave me last year. It’s called Addiction and Grace by Dr. Gerald May, the late spiritual director and physician. Dr. May spent his career working to treat addicted people. Through this work, he concludes that addiction stems from our human nature of attachment. He says there are two forces which enslave our wills: repression, which stifles our desires, and addiction which attaches, bonds and enslaves our desires to certain specific behaviors, things, or people. Attachment nails our desire for God to these other specific objects and creates addictions. Now he’s not being flippant when he says we all suffer from addiction. His point is that the same biological, psychological and spiritual processes which are responsible for additions to drugs and alcohol are also responsible for addictions to work, ideas, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, success, achievement, money, power, intimacy, the approval of others, even our own self-image. Addictions are part of what it means to be human. When we nail our desires to objects instead of God’s love, we have misplaced our trust. Misplacing our trust is a classic definition of Sin. Martin Luther says we are in bondage to Sin and cannot free ourselves. Yet, I find it easier to understand the bondage to addiction better than the abstraction of the “bondage to Sin.”

Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I am the mother of two daughters. I love my daughters dearly and they are gifts from God, but as a parent, I constantly struggle with the process of letting go. I want to do the right things to protect them from harm without being so overprotective that I stifle their development. There was a time I obsessed with making sure everything was safe and I worried about them constantly. When my concern became an obsession which caused anxiety in me, that’s the point where I had attached myself to cross of sorts – the cross of being the “perfect mother” who could always protect her children from all danger and harm. This distorted image was an addiction which gripped me and I could not free myself from its grasp. This is but one of many psychological / spiritual addictions I have battled in my lifetime.

Addictions, like the cross, are paradoxical. Addictions make us willingly nail ourselves to the objects of our desires – they become crosses on which we crucify ourselves and we have no power within ourselves to come down from them. Addictions make us idolaters because they force us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly and freely loving God and one another. Addictions breed willfulness in us yet paradoxically they also erode our will and rob us of our dignity. Addiction is both an inherent part of our nature and the antagonist of it as well. It is the absolute enemy of love yet, in another paradox, it is addiction which can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. It is our addictions which can bring us to our knees. Dr. May describes the point he faced his own addictions head on:

“It occurred to me that my original ‘professional depression’ had happened because I had been addicted to success and control. It was, in fact, a withdrawal; it happened when I couldn’t get my fix of professional success. I can honestly say, then, that it was my work with addicted people, and the consequent realization of my own addictive behavior, that brought me to my knees. I am glad. Grace was there. To state it quite simply, I had tried to run my life on the basis of my own willpower alone. When my supply of success at this egotistic autonomy ran out, I became depressed. And with the depression, by means of grace, came a chance for spiritual openness. To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.”

Cappadocian father Gregory Nazianzus said, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed” which means Christ assumed the totality of our human nature. Did Christ assume our addicted nature to redeem it? From what Scripture tells us, the object of Christ’s attachment was God’s will and that he was human in every way yet did not sin. Ideally, we would all attach ourselves to God’s will and this is not addiction because it is a properly placed trust. But I do think that Jesus did experience something of our addicted selves on the cross on Good Friday. On that day, his friends were not there – they had abandoned him to his fate. Addictions isolate us from friends and loved ones. Our loved ones and friends feel powerless to do anything to help our addictions just as the disciples felt powerless to do anything for Jesus in the face of the cross. Jesus felt the separation and isolation we experience with our addictions. And on that day, God was silent. Jesus heard no words of affirmation from God about being beloved – instead, he heard nothing. Jesus experienced what seemed like complete abandonment by God in that moment he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” It is the same cry from our souls when the despair of addiction drives us to our knees. Through the cross, Jesus was detached from his very physical life and taken to the Throne of Grace. In the despair of our addictions, we fall to our knees at the foot of the cross where we too find grace. Through grace, God removes the nails which hold us to the crosses of our addictions. We cannot save ourselves, but the grace outside ourselves is the means by which God saves us and redeems us. Today we look to the crucified Christ and see through the cross … and we find the grace which will heal us.

Amen.

All Saints Day 2008

I gave this sermon on All Saint's Day 2008 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hagerstown where I was invited to preach and preside at the renewal of my parent's wedding vows on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. I sang the stanzas of the hymn I Sing a Song of the Saints of God as a part of the sermon. You'll have to imagine the singing bit, but I do have a pretty decent singing voice.


I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

I love this hymn! It’s not just because it is so quintessentially British and not because it is a flashback from my teen years (I first learned it when we joined the Episcopal Church in 1975). The reason I love it is because it captures what the Communion of Saints is all about.

I’ve just spent my first month as the quarter-time interim rector at St. Luke’s Carey Street in southwest Baltimore. As I worked with our organist and senior warden to plan out the music and worship for All Saints Sunday, we chose this hymn and had quite a discussion about how it typifies the Anglican view of the saints. Our Senior Warden, Andre, shared the story about how St. Luke’s and the local Roman Catholic Church once did a “Stations of the Saints” for All Saints Day. He went on to say that the Roman Catholics were ok with him including Martin Luther King, Jr., but … well … they drew the line at John Coltrane! I said, “Geez … what do they have against Coltrane?”

But Andre’s experience was running into the Roman Catholic tradition regarding how one officially becomes a “saint.” It’s an arduous process. Once a person professing the Roman Catholic faith and who lived a saintly life has died, the cause of making this person a saint is taken up and their life is examined for evidence of general holiness by no less than three different groups of Roman Catholic theologians. If there is agreement at that point, they are deemed “venerable” by the pope. The second stage of becoming a saint differs based on whether or not the person was a martyr. If they were not martyred, then two miracles must be directly attributed to this saint’s intercessions on behalf of the living (if you are a martyr, you get to “pass go” on this step). After this stage, the person is considered “beatified.” Finally, a third miracle (or first if you’re a martyr) must be documented and then the person is canonized as a saint by the pope. Saying the process is involved is an understatement.

The tradition of the saints in Catholicism had some unintended consequences. The emphasis on only recognizing dead people disconnected the saints in heaven from the saints here on earth who continue to do God’s work. The idea that saints are dead people is a persistent notion. I recall a seminary intern we had at St. Michael and All Angels church running into this issue as he tutored my younger sister to prepare her for confirmation. He gave her an essay question on this subject: “Could you be a saint? Why or why not?” I’m sure he thought it an age appropriate and yet profound question; however, seminary profundity is often dashed on the rocks of 13 year old coolness. My sister’s responded in one sentence: “No, because you have to be dead to be a saint and I am not ready to die yet.” … full stop.

The other major unintended consequence to this process was the practice of saintly adoration which reached its peak in the medieval Church. The medieval Church downright deified the saints. Relics of saints (usually bones or petrified body parts) were enshrined in churches all over Europe and the Near East and collected by royalty. Local legends grew up around the saints’ abilities to affect miraculous healings, raise people from the dead, apparitions, and other supernatural events. Pilgrimages to saints’ shrines were enormously important to the local economy. Adoration of the saints was elevated to the point of being as important as worshiping God and this was the practice against which the leaders of the Reformation rebelled.

Martin Luther wrote stinging condemnations of the “cult of saints” in his collected works. Luther felt the “cult of saints” had taken the focus off of the saving work of Christ on the cross and therefore it had no place in the church. Having attended a Lutheran seminary, I witnessed the effects of Luther’s desire to purge the church of the cult of saints. It’s best enshrined in the continental protestant tradition of celebrating Reformation Day … which is the day before All Saints Day (Coincidence? I think not!). Our Lutheran brothers and sisters have conflicting feelings about the whole issue of All Saints Day. If we say we believe in the “communion of saints” in the Nicene Creed, then shouldn’t we celebrate All Saints Day? How do we define saints? Are they only the living saints, or can we include the dead ones? If we recognize the dead ones, are we betraying the premises of Luther’s Reformation?

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there’s not any reason no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

The Anglican tradition steps into the divide between the rigid rules regarding sainthood in the Roman tradition and the desire to scrap the whole thing from Protestantism. We believe the Church does have a vested interest in recognizing and raising up those people who have embodied the Gospel in their life and work. We do have a process. Every three years, our General Convention adds new names to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts of those saints who have gone before us (and we don’t require supernatural phenomenon or miracles).

In addition to the official recognition of our saints who have gone before us, we also believe in the saints on earth. The essence of being a saint is living a life of devotion to God. In that broad definition, we are all saints. Being a saint does not mean you are perfect, even the saints in heaven were not perfect. Do any of you know why Saint Augustine, the patron of the Anglican Church, ended up in Canterbury? It’s because he was such a cantankerous pill that they threw him out of London and told him to go away and not come back! He wasn’t perfect, but he lived a life devoted to God.

Today we come together as the saints on earth to remember the saints in heaven who have preceded us. We come together each week to hear the Word and receive the Sacrament to be strengthened to live our lives for God … so we might be the saints on earth and continue the reconciling work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In a few moments, we saints on earth will renew our baptismal vows and recommit our lives to God. We will also witness another renewal of vows, that of my parents, Bob and Earlene Ayrer, who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary just a few weeks ago. Without them I wouldn’t be here today … and I don’t mean just as your guest preacher. It is fitting to do this on All Saints Sunday surrounded by all of you here at St. John’s. Mom and Dad are saints in our family … remember, that doesn’t mean perfect … but it does mean they live lives dedicated to God and, for 50 years, each other. My sister and I have witnessed them integrate their faith and life seamlessly. Their devotion to Christ is just who they are and it permeates their daily life and work. This is the essence of what it means to be a saint.

They lived not only in ages past,
there are hundreds of thousands still,
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

Amen.