Sermon delivered at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Va on the eve of the 2013 government shutdown.
Readings for the day: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp21_RCL.html
May I speak to you in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
I will unabashedly admit that I appreciate musical theatre. I’m not a particular fanatic, but I do, on occasion, thoroughly enjoy a show where the acting and the story are supplemented by the type of emotional amplification that only music can provide. In fact, when Lara and I went on our first date, it was to see Beauty and the Beast when it was re-released in theaters. I played in the pit orchestra for four different shows when I was in school. When I was little, my sister and I would stage epic wars after going to see Les Miserables (it’s still one of my all time works of art).
Last year, on the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, The feast of His birth, on Christmas Day, perhaps the second holiest day of the year, I not only went to church, but went with my family to see the new cinematic version of Les Mis. (For the record, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and though there were a few bumps I would highly recommend the movie. If you haven’t seen it redbox it or rent it tonight. Sorry, ‘skins fans, but it doesn’t look like that game is gonna be worth watching anyway. Take it from a Panthers fan, I should know.)
Back to musicals though. The thing that always bothered me about them was this: if you are walking through the grocery store and someone breaks out into song rather randomly in your aisle, you’re probably going to think they are crazy. I mean, even if I heard a bunch of music coming from seemingly nowhere, I’m not nearly a good enough dancer to jump in and take part in a completely spontaneous flash-mob style dance.
But that kind of stuff is something you have to take for granted in a show, something you accept as natural in some parallel world that looks very much like ours apart from a few musical interludes. I mean, in our world, what could possibly cause us to break out into song at random intervals of the days. Even if we were “fools for Christ” as we are exhorted to be, that might be just a bit too foolish.
Now, I think you all know how I feel about Paul. As the second or third most important figure in Christianity, I think Paul gets a bit of a bad rap most of the time. We are tempted to hold him to standards of our time, or to find him a moralizing, strident, and obnoxious person. I’d like to posit that’s probably not the case. Paul was by far the most successful of the apostles at evangelization. He was an incredibly pastoral presence, to the point we are, to this day, still applying the advice and directions he offered to congregations in his time to our own congregation and faith community today. In order to be that good, to make that many people want to follow him, to have that many people stick with him, remain loyal to him and to Christ even after he makes some really, really strong rebukes, I mean, he must have had some charisma, he must have had some verve. He had to be the kind of guy people wanted to be around.
Now this letter to Timothy is contested. Some folks think it is a real letter from Paul, more think it probably isn’t a real letter from Paul. But it does bear a bit of a Pauline hallmark.
It turns out our friend Paul has a rather odd habit. Like Harold Hill or those spry teenagers on Glee, Paul occasionally will just break out into song.
At least he does in his letters, and I refuse to believe he didn’t also do that in real life, because it’s just too awesome, and it fits his character oh so well.
And when Paul does break out into song, it’s usually because it’s something pretty important. Paul does this because he is overcome by the spirit, because happiness is shining out of him. He does it because he can’t hold all of that amazement, and gratitude, and excitement, and joy, and love in his feeble little human heart. He just can’t do it, and so the spirit pours out of him, his writing changes, his syntax and his style changes, he sometimes takes off on a glorious tangent and occasionally when he finishes he’ll drop in an “Amen” to let you know that he’s collected himself again. Then he resumes his tight and precise writing style and picks right back up. So when you hear Paul doing this, pay attention, because it’s at these times most of all that the spirit is pouring through Paul and onto the page, telling us what we need to hear.
An excellent example, perhaps the prime example of this is in Philippians 2. where Paul says
5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
And we see him use what may be another fragment of a hymn in today’s reading from Timothy:
He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of Lord. It is He alone who has immortality and dwells in an unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. AMEN.
Now if Paul played for the Nationals, a: they’d still be playing next week because he can work miracles, but b: his walk-up music would be Amazing Grace. Paul was a man who seemed to spend every moment of his life utterly and thoroughly aware of the Grace that he lived under. And that’s a good message to hear when we get tough passages like today’s gospel, or today’s epistle, or for that matter many of the readings that we have heard over the last few weeks.
I’m not saying this in order to tell you that God doesn’t challenge us, that God doesn’t call us to an amendment of life. God absolutely drives us to new life the same way Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. God pushes us in uncomfortable ways if we open our ears and listen.
If we listen, if we open our ears and hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s Church, we will hear God telling us that the love of money is the root of much evil, and that the love of money has driven many away from the faith in their eagerness to be rich. We hear God tell us that the compulsive need to hoard cash the way some very sick people hoard empty soda cups and old newspapers, is disordered.
But we see many with the need to acquire more and more until life has been completely consumed not with doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God, but gathering more and more to the detriment of both oneself and others.
We hear God tell us to pray for our enemies, to beat our swords into plowshares, and we see a long history of Christian thought laying out a just war theory, a set of guidelines for those rare occasions when it might be acceptable to use force as a last result.
But we see over-reach, a lack of transparency, and an indiscriminate use of less discriminating weapons systems, such as unmanned arial vehicles.
If we look we see God point to those who are sick and suffering, those who are incapacitated, those who spend their lives begging to eat even the food that falls to the floor, the cast off scraps we toss out without thinking.
We see God pointing to someone laying at the gate of the rich man, trying to eek out three meals on $4 Dollars and .12 Cents worth of food stamps a day in the state of Virginia, less than the smoothie I had at Starbucks on Friday... we see God pointing to him or her and saying that person will rest in heaven with the pillars of the faith.
And we see the rich man, the man who couldn’t be bothered to throw Lazarus a scrap, the man who decided $4.12 a day to stop his impoverished neighbor and 3.8 million others from going completely hungry was simply too much to be bothered with, while he feasts nightly at fundraisers with other rich and powerful people. We see him told that there is an uncrossable chasm, and we hear a warning that if someone ignores God’s commandments that thoroughly, that even a messenger coming back from the dead, even God’s Son coming back from the dead will not convince them to change their ways.
God challenges us weekly. God challenges us daily, even hourly. And if we don’t hear God challenging us, if we stop feeling that push, that prod, that tug, that strong yank on our spirit saying, “No. Take another look at that.” then we should probably try and spend some more time listening and a lot more time praying, because listening for God WILL make you uncomfortable.
So... thoroughly convicted by God and the Spirit, it seems like we should be in trouble, right.
I mean, leaving the food stamp debate aside, worldwide we grow enough food to feed the whole world, but lose 50% in production between the farm and our plates, and we have people around the world starving. If that’s where it ends, we are all, pardon my language, screwed.
And that’s why Paul keeps breaking into song.
Because that’s not where it ends. Not even close.
God compels us, God pushes us, God sometimes pokes us really hard. But God also forgives us. And that’s why Paul sings. Because he knows that the Jesus who told these parables has taken a look at us, known just how wrong we were, and decided to love us anyway. He knows that God, immortal and dwelling in unapproachable light, Sovereign, King of kings, and Lord of Lords has sat in judgement, has found us wanting, and has decided to love us anyway. He knows that God has chosen in his Son to pour out grace on us in spite of the fact that we so clearly don’t deserve it.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, indeed.
And so, as we go through these trials, we must know that the grace Paul saw even as he was warning and admonishing us, the grace Christ spoke of time and time again is there. And these times are particularly trying.
Data may point to a recovery, and the market may be back up, but we have more people living in poverty than ever before, and that chasm of wealth continues to grow. We have violence ripping apart our society, hitting particularly close to home less than two weeks ago in a rather non-descript office building full of civil servants, people not thanked nearly enough for the work they do to keep our country running, when a person with serious illness slaughtered people he had never even met. We have the uncertainty, or at this point, the grim near-certainty of a government shutdown, a political football for some, but an event that will seriously hurt many people sitting right here today. We have a lot going on. And in the midst of it all, we still have to think of others. God isn’t going to let us off the hook on that one. We HAVE to try, and we can always do better than we are currently doing.
But even so, even more importantly, we have the grace and love that have been given to us by God, dwelling beyond our clouded sight. We have that welcome, that warmth, and that hope. We know that we are loved in this world, and welcomed home in the next. We know that in spite of our shortcomings, our failings, our inadequacies... despite our loss, our despair, our worry, our fear, our brokenheartedness... despite all of that
We
Are
Loved.
We are loved, and we are redeemed.
It kinda makes me want to break out into song.
And I hope that at some point during this coming week, no matter what happens, good or bad, at work or shut down and labeled with that totally unfair term "non-essential," come what may.... I hope that love, that grace makes you want to break into song, too.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Sermon from June 9, 2013
Sermon for Proper 5
June 9, 2013
Church of the Resurrection, Omaha, NE.
1 Kings 17:17-24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17
Readings for the Day
May I speak to you in the name of one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
My mother grew up in a funeral home in Sampson County, NC, a fairly rural place in southeastern part of the state, in the county that produces more hogs than any other county in the United States. So for those of you that enjoy bacon, you’re welcome. Growing up I heard all kinds of stories about that funeral home that my Grandfather owned, as well as some stories picked up along the way. I heard about people who were overcome and overwhelmed and those who faced the death of their loved ones with a quiet and impassive stoicism. I heard about a priest, a man who turned out to be the first priest I ever told I thought I had a vocation in ordained ministry, who while doing a funeral, fully vested, fell right down into the open grave. Whoops. I heard about flower arrangements shaped like an old rotary telephone (for those of you who are old enough to remember those), made of daisies, spray painted black and it had a ribbon pulled across it that said “Jesus Called.”
One thing I never heard about was the cold, dead, corpse sitting up, talking an getting up and walking off.
Things like that just don’t happen. At least not with me. If it’s happened to you I’d like you to grab me after the service in the back, because we need to go on a trip together to check it out.
This guy coming back from the dead is a pretty big deal, but it’s probably not for the reasons you would think.
One thing I found immediately interesting about this reading is that it tells us that the man sat up and began to speak, but it doesn’t tell us what he said. When I think about how difficult it is to wake up, and how unpleasant I am when I’ve been woken from a nap or by an early alarm clock... Let’s just allow that it might say “He sat up and began to speak” because what he actually had to say was not suited for polite company.
But while I doubt this guy was to thrilled to be brought back into this brutal and broken world, a world that killed him too young, I’d point out, there was someone for whom his resuscitation was incredible news.
This man’s mother was a widow. Not only a widow but a widow who had just lost her only son, her only means of support in society at that time. Then, not unlike our uncomfortably recent past right here in the United States, a woman wasn’t able to own any property. If her husband died, she had to rely on her husband’s brother, or her son to care for her.
With her husband dead, and her son on the way to the grave, she would have lost her home, her means of support, her food, everything but the clothes on her back. She would have likely been left with no options but to resort to backbreaking labor, or worse, prostitution. She was staring not only into her son’s grave, but into an abyss devoid of hope.
Beaten down by the societal norms of her time, she was utterly defeated. Her son may have been the one who stopped breathing, but she was the one who lost her life.
And that kind of needless suffering at the hands of society was not something with which Jesus would abide. That marginalization was not something Jesus thought was OK.
Meanwhile, in our New Testament reading, Paul is ticked. You heard Fr. Jason last week talk about how this is the only letter in which Paul doesn’t offering his thanksgiving wish. In fact, Paul doesn’t offer any of the flowery language with which he normally opens. This entire letter is Paul at his most righteously indignant. Now, many biblical scholars will take the opportunity here to talk about Paul’s dark side, about how self-important Paul was, about how dismissive Paul was towards the disciples, how crazy Paul was, and that his ministry was based only on his own personal (potentially) psychotic visions, or any number of complaints frequently and unfairly leveled at Paul. (As a brief aside, y’all will probably figure out this summer that I’m a staunch defender of Paul as a feminist, a radical inclusivist, and one of the most important figures in helping bringing the world to Christ; and I’m more than happy to discuss him, warts and all. Just catch me at lunch or whenever!)
So it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that Paul was not too pleased with the Galatians when he wrote that letter.
But why was he upset with the Galatians?
He was upset because he they had turned from the Gospel he had preached to them.
He was upset not because he demanded their obedience to him, but because they were setting up barriers to following Christ. He was upset because through their wishy-washy wavering in their commitment to the Gospel he’d taught, they were leading folks astray, putting societal barriers between those whom they would evangelize and the fullness of life in Christ.
Paul was concerned because others were coming in and trying to convince them that you couldn’t be Christian unless you were circumcised. You couldn’t be Christian unless you met this purity guideline, or that dietary law. Because getting circumcised didn't just mean getting circumcised, it meant taking on all 613 commandments in the TOrah. And these interlopers were winning. The Galatians were attempting to set up something on their own that others would have to struggle against, requiring a law that others could not achieve in order for them to find the love of Christ.
Just like the woman who would have been cast out of society through no fault of her own with no chance for re-entry, the Galatians are setting an unreachable bar for entry into the community that gives life.
What we see here are two instances of groups asking the impossible, two groups that are unfairly discriminating, two groups that would deny, in the widow’s case a life with some human dignity, and in the Galatians’ case eternal life in God through the Gospel of Christ.
What we see is the Gospel coming up against two stumbling blocks.
And what we see in our readings today is that God does all God can to overcome those human stumbling blocks.
We see that Paul going into prophetic and apoplectic rage because people are shutting others out of the love of God, and not only from the love of God, but from the salvation offered by God in Christ.
We see Jesus, God incarnate, making himself unclean by touching the dead or the bier that carried the dead, which itself is a very big deal. God and unclean are words that would never go together for the Hebrew people. And not only does God in Christ make himself unclean, he brings a man back from the dead. God brings a man back across that deepest of chasms, back through those gates which offer no exit, to ensure that a widow will be afforded some basic human dignity.
And this is not the last time we will see something like this happen.
This message of radical inclusivity is important, because what we find is that we are the Galatians. We are the people who would deny that woman’s place in society. We are the ones setting up barriers. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, in things we do or in things we leave undone, we set up hurdles for people who are searching for human dignity in a brutal world and an often cold society. We are the ones preventing people from coming to God through our demands or our actions.
We are the ones who set ourselves as gatekeepers.
But we can’t help it. It’s beyond our control; it’s just what we do. We’re human. We’re fallen and broken. And we need the touch of Christ to help restore us to that new life.
See, in this story, Jesus doesn’t just love the man on the stretcher and his mother. Jesus loves all the people around there. He not only helps the woman, he shows the crowd what the redemptive and restorative love of God can do. He shows that in him comes life, even out of death.
Jesus loves the Galatians, too. And Paul knows that, and that’s why he is so passionate about correcting them. Because he knows that the Gospel of Christ, the Good News of Christ, is so important that they need to try and get it right, even though they will undoubtedly stumble and fall along the way. And Paul knows that it’s so important that any stumbling block, any barrier that keeps “the wrong kind” out simply will not do.
Today we hear in stereo that Jesus wants to draw all of us into his love. Jesus wants to draw all of us into a life-giving, restorative, and redemptive relationship with him.
And we hear that all it takes for that to happen is for us to hear and receive the Gospel of Christ.
And we know the essence of that gospel: “This is the first a greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) and additionally “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.”
All else is folly.
Paul concludes his letter to the Galatians with “...God forbid that I should boast about anything except for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through him, and I have been crucified to the world. Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn’t mean anything. What matters is a new creation. May peace and mercy be on whoever follows this rule and on God’s Israel.” (Gal 6:14-16)
We are people. We’re human, and imperfect, and fallen, and we, as humans, are broken. We do bad things to each other from time to time. Jesus knows that, and if we repent, and aim higher, we try again, Jesus forgives us and welcomes us back with open arms, ready to restore us to new life. When bad things happen to us, when we are tempted, scorned, rejected Christ is there to restore us to wholeness.
We all, and I most of all, should examine ourselves to see what barriers we are setting up to God’s love, to see in what ways we view other people as objects or as means to an end. And then we should think about the love of Christ, the love offered to us in spite of our sins and failings, the love offered unconditionally to us even in our brokenness, even in our repeated rejections of God, and how we can best convey that unconditional love to others.
Because the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of radical inclusion. It’s one of welcome. It’s one of love. And all it asks of us is to share that love with the whole whole world.
“Brothers and sisters, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Amen.” (Gal 6:18)
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| Source |
Church of the Resurrection, Omaha, NE.
1 Kings 17:17-24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17
Readings for the Day
May I speak to you in the name of one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
My mother grew up in a funeral home in Sampson County, NC, a fairly rural place in southeastern part of the state, in the county that produces more hogs than any other county in the United States. So for those of you that enjoy bacon, you’re welcome. Growing up I heard all kinds of stories about that funeral home that my Grandfather owned, as well as some stories picked up along the way. I heard about people who were overcome and overwhelmed and those who faced the death of their loved ones with a quiet and impassive stoicism. I heard about a priest, a man who turned out to be the first priest I ever told I thought I had a vocation in ordained ministry, who while doing a funeral, fully vested, fell right down into the open grave. Whoops. I heard about flower arrangements shaped like an old rotary telephone (for those of you who are old enough to remember those), made of daisies, spray painted black and it had a ribbon pulled across it that said “Jesus Called.”
One thing I never heard about was the cold, dead, corpse sitting up, talking an getting up and walking off.
Things like that just don’t happen. At least not with me. If it’s happened to you I’d like you to grab me after the service in the back, because we need to go on a trip together to check it out.
This guy coming back from the dead is a pretty big deal, but it’s probably not for the reasons you would think.
One thing I found immediately interesting about this reading is that it tells us that the man sat up and began to speak, but it doesn’t tell us what he said. When I think about how difficult it is to wake up, and how unpleasant I am when I’ve been woken from a nap or by an early alarm clock... Let’s just allow that it might say “He sat up and began to speak” because what he actually had to say was not suited for polite company.
But while I doubt this guy was to thrilled to be brought back into this brutal and broken world, a world that killed him too young, I’d point out, there was someone for whom his resuscitation was incredible news.
This man’s mother was a widow. Not only a widow but a widow who had just lost her only son, her only means of support in society at that time. Then, not unlike our uncomfortably recent past right here in the United States, a woman wasn’t able to own any property. If her husband died, she had to rely on her husband’s brother, or her son to care for her.
With her husband dead, and her son on the way to the grave, she would have lost her home, her means of support, her food, everything but the clothes on her back. She would have likely been left with no options but to resort to backbreaking labor, or worse, prostitution. She was staring not only into her son’s grave, but into an abyss devoid of hope.
Beaten down by the societal norms of her time, she was utterly defeated. Her son may have been the one who stopped breathing, but she was the one who lost her life.
And that kind of needless suffering at the hands of society was not something with which Jesus would abide. That marginalization was not something Jesus thought was OK.
Meanwhile, in our New Testament reading, Paul is ticked. You heard Fr. Jason last week talk about how this is the only letter in which Paul doesn’t offering his thanksgiving wish. In fact, Paul doesn’t offer any of the flowery language with which he normally opens. This entire letter is Paul at his most righteously indignant. Now, many biblical scholars will take the opportunity here to talk about Paul’s dark side, about how self-important Paul was, about how dismissive Paul was towards the disciples, how crazy Paul was, and that his ministry was based only on his own personal (potentially) psychotic visions, or any number of complaints frequently and unfairly leveled at Paul. (As a brief aside, y’all will probably figure out this summer that I’m a staunch defender of Paul as a feminist, a radical inclusivist, and one of the most important figures in helping bringing the world to Christ; and I’m more than happy to discuss him, warts and all. Just catch me at lunch or whenever!)
So it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that Paul was not too pleased with the Galatians when he wrote that letter.
But why was he upset with the Galatians?
He was upset because he they had turned from the Gospel he had preached to them.
He was upset not because he demanded their obedience to him, but because they were setting up barriers to following Christ. He was upset because through their wishy-washy wavering in their commitment to the Gospel he’d taught, they were leading folks astray, putting societal barriers between those whom they would evangelize and the fullness of life in Christ.
Paul was concerned because others were coming in and trying to convince them that you couldn’t be Christian unless you were circumcised. You couldn’t be Christian unless you met this purity guideline, or that dietary law. Because getting circumcised didn't just mean getting circumcised, it meant taking on all 613 commandments in the TOrah. And these interlopers were winning. The Galatians were attempting to set up something on their own that others would have to struggle against, requiring a law that others could not achieve in order for them to find the love of Christ.
Just like the woman who would have been cast out of society through no fault of her own with no chance for re-entry, the Galatians are setting an unreachable bar for entry into the community that gives life.
What we see here are two instances of groups asking the impossible, two groups that are unfairly discriminating, two groups that would deny, in the widow’s case a life with some human dignity, and in the Galatians’ case eternal life in God through the Gospel of Christ.
What we see is the Gospel coming up against two stumbling blocks.
And what we see in our readings today is that God does all God can to overcome those human stumbling blocks.
We see that Paul going into prophetic and apoplectic rage because people are shutting others out of the love of God, and not only from the love of God, but from the salvation offered by God in Christ.
We see Jesus, God incarnate, making himself unclean by touching the dead or the bier that carried the dead, which itself is a very big deal. God and unclean are words that would never go together for the Hebrew people. And not only does God in Christ make himself unclean, he brings a man back from the dead. God brings a man back across that deepest of chasms, back through those gates which offer no exit, to ensure that a widow will be afforded some basic human dignity.
And this is not the last time we will see something like this happen.
This message of radical inclusivity is important, because what we find is that we are the Galatians. We are the people who would deny that woman’s place in society. We are the ones setting up barriers. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, in things we do or in things we leave undone, we set up hurdles for people who are searching for human dignity in a brutal world and an often cold society. We are the ones preventing people from coming to God through our demands or our actions.
We are the ones who set ourselves as gatekeepers.
But we can’t help it. It’s beyond our control; it’s just what we do. We’re human. We’re fallen and broken. And we need the touch of Christ to help restore us to that new life.
See, in this story, Jesus doesn’t just love the man on the stretcher and his mother. Jesus loves all the people around there. He not only helps the woman, he shows the crowd what the redemptive and restorative love of God can do. He shows that in him comes life, even out of death.
Jesus loves the Galatians, too. And Paul knows that, and that’s why he is so passionate about correcting them. Because he knows that the Gospel of Christ, the Good News of Christ, is so important that they need to try and get it right, even though they will undoubtedly stumble and fall along the way. And Paul knows that it’s so important that any stumbling block, any barrier that keeps “the wrong kind” out simply will not do.
Today we hear in stereo that Jesus wants to draw all of us into his love. Jesus wants to draw all of us into a life-giving, restorative, and redemptive relationship with him.
And we hear that all it takes for that to happen is for us to hear and receive the Gospel of Christ.
And we know the essence of that gospel: “This is the first a greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) and additionally “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.”
All else is folly.
Paul concludes his letter to the Galatians with “...God forbid that I should boast about anything except for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through him, and I have been crucified to the world. Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn’t mean anything. What matters is a new creation. May peace and mercy be on whoever follows this rule and on God’s Israel.” (Gal 6:14-16)
We are people. We’re human, and imperfect, and fallen, and we, as humans, are broken. We do bad things to each other from time to time. Jesus knows that, and if we repent, and aim higher, we try again, Jesus forgives us and welcomes us back with open arms, ready to restore us to new life. When bad things happen to us, when we are tempted, scorned, rejected Christ is there to restore us to wholeness.
We all, and I most of all, should examine ourselves to see what barriers we are setting up to God’s love, to see in what ways we view other people as objects or as means to an end. And then we should think about the love of Christ, the love offered to us in spite of our sins and failings, the love offered unconditionally to us even in our brokenness, even in our repeated rejections of God, and how we can best convey that unconditional love to others.
Because the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of radical inclusion. It’s one of welcome. It’s one of love. And all it asks of us is to share that love with the whole whole world.
“Brothers and sisters, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Amen.” (Gal 6:18)
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Then Were We Like Those Who Dream
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| An Eagle from the Book of Kells for the Feast of St. Patrick http://www.mnartists.org/uploads/users/user_4671/ 3584ca143d87db3de9a688b6e3864f9c/ 3584ca143d87db3de9a688b6e3864f9c.jpg |
Psalm 126
John 12:1-8
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent5_RCL.html
May I speak to you in the name of one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
This reading from John has always made me a little uncomfortable. That’s fine, if the Bible doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re not reading it correctly, but this reading troubles me a bit more more than most. John is my favorite Gospel, and one of the other books John wrote, “The Revelation of St. John the Divine” is my favorite book of the Bible. But this particular reading is troubling for a number of reasons, both practical and spiritual. Why does she use her hair? Why do I find myself wanting to side with Judas? Poor Lazarus, he’s died once already and now they want to kill him again. How had the disciples not figured this whole thing out by now? Seriously? A whole pound of ointment? Do you have any idea how much ointment that is?
The hair part is uncomfortable, but mostly, the thing that really chaffs me about this is how quickly I want to agree with Judas before St. John reminds me that he’s a thief and a backstabbing turncoat.
If there’s a fault with John's Gospel, it lies in the same place as it’s beauty: in it’s duality. Judas can’t be right, because he’s a thief. Jesus stands in opposition to the Jews, even though he was one. The light shines out in the darkness. It goes on and on. But things in the real world are often a little more complex than that.
Hamlet, in my mind one of the greatest works of literature ever produced, prompts a similar question. The ghost of Hamlet's father, the dead king, appears to him and tells him he's been murdered by Hamlet's uncle, who has taken the throne. After seeing the ghost of his father, maybe faking madness, and attempting to kill his uncle with no evidence other than a talking specter... Is Hamlet crazy, or is he right? If he’s right, is it out of dumb luck, or was he the sane one all along? People have been debating it for roughly 410 years, and will in all likelihood be debating it another 410. And they’ve never been able to come to a universal conclusion. He dwells in this gray area we will never be able to fully understand or figure out.
And Judas here has a point. He’s making it for the wrong reasons, but he does have a point. That nard could have been sold for money to feed the poor (or line his pockets), and it would have gone a long way. But for Jesus, a man who had devoted nearly all of his ministry to helping the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the sick, and the outsiders, this was not the time. There is a time, there is a season for everything, including extravagance.
Here, about to die, Jesus looks ahead to the mission of the church, knowing it would have it’s work cut out for it, but also knowing that it would need to recognize, honor, and uphold the holy. He knew that the church would go on into the future, and would continue to serve the poor, but in order for it to do that, he would have to take that short trip from Bethany to Jerusalem. And take that incredibly long trip from Jerusalem to n. Golgotha.
Judas didn’t yet know what was coming, or what he would do, but he knew that he could place his own desires ahead of the mission of God. He knew in his mind that what he wanted, his desire, was more important than God’s plan for redemption in Christ. And perhaps that is why we read this passage during lent. Because many of us want to agree with Judas here, so many of us want to identify with his words. But all of us, like him, supplant our own desires over God’s, and in doing that show exactly why it is that the poor will be always with us.
But Judas isn’t the only player in this scene. He is only the supporting actor to what is happening between Jesus and Mary.
Unlike Judas, Mary knew what was coming. She knew that it was all coming to a head, and that they would kill Jesus, and they would also bring death again to Lazarus. She knew that she and the other disciples were also at risk, being known companions of the one who had caused this trouble. She knew their good run was coming to an end, that this man, the one she believed was the messiah they had been waiting for, the messiah foretold by the prophets, the messiah who would save Israel, this man was going to die, and that would be it; their noble adventure would be over.
She knew he was to die and she gave generously, even extravagantly. But when she gave, aware of his impending death, even believing he was the Christ, she could never have imagined what it was she would find on Sunday morning, just a few days after she anointed him for death and burial.
But “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.”
We see in the Psalm the hope that seemed so absent in that room, amidst the bickering and mourning. Against the certain knowledge of the brutality coming.
We see hope in that sweet smell of ointment flooding the room, contrasting the stench of Lazarus in the tomb that had slapped them all in the face as the stone was rolled away only days before. And the Lord who wept at the death of his friend prepared for his own death. But those in his midst could not imagine, could barely dream what was to happen.
In our imagination, we can be rich or successful; we can be a hailed as heroes and lionized as laudable; in our imaginations we can be our best selves.
But in our dreams we can do the impossible and we can work magic; we can travel through time and we can visit lost loved ones.
In our dreams we can fly; we are completely and ultimately freed from the restraints of our broken creation.
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.”
Mary’s anointing of Christ showed an appropriate gratitude for the work of the Lord, even if she didn’t understand the full implication of what was being done ** just yet. She gave exorbitantly, giving a pound, a full pound of ointment in gratitude, and she didn’t even know, she couldn’t even imagine that the best was yet to come.
In this penitential season, in this time of introspection and self-examination, we might take a look at Judas, with whom we so would like to side this week, and then we might look at ourselves and see how, like Judas, our own desire, how our own selfishness has gotten between us and God. We might look at how we avoid the claim Christ has made on us in order that we may achieve what *we* want. We might look at how our mouths are filled with bitterness at what we do not have or what we want, rather than being filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of Joy.
But when we have examined and recognized those human shortcomings, we should remember that while we have sowed with tears, we will reap with songs of joy. At our baptism we are grafted into the body of Christ, and we are joined into the death and resurrection of our Lord, and so with him our sins are washed away, are anointed for burial, and then, on the cross, are destroyed.
And there is our hope.
Our world is broken. Our world is broken. Our world is so, so, very broken. We see it every day, and our own selfishness, our own human nature, like that of Judas who skims from the top as he steals from the poor, our nature ensures that the poor will always be with us. Not only will the poor be with us, but the sick, the infirm, the persecuted, and the broken, those who cheat, and those who scheme. *WE* will always be with us.
But our failings... our failings and our iniquity, our injustice, our selfishness, our shortcoming... all were washed away, destroyed by Christ as he willingly took on that anointing and was broken and pierced on that cross. When he was made to be sin and died, our sin died with him, destroyed once and for all through the love of Christ and the radical grace and forgiveness of God.
And that Christ who was crucified, that messiah who was nailed to the tree and suffered death, that man who was anointed for death by his beloved disciple Mary... that man did the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the unimaginable. He did something out of a dream. He came back, alive and pouring out a living fountain that flows in the wilderness, a river in the desert, and every living thing honors him.
So let us, even while in the midst of our self-examination, let us be filled with laughter and shout for joy as we emerge with Christ from the shattered and broken wreckage, the crushed rubble of our defeated sin, of our conquered shame, of those gates of hell that could not stand and crumbled before the Son of God. For our Lord, our Messiah, our Christ who was anointed for death *is not dead* and he will be with us today and tomorrow and the day after that... Even to the ending of the age.
Amen
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Vile Bodies: Sermon for Lent II, 2013
May I speak to you in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
Greek is a very tricky language to translate. I should know. I’m really, really terrible at it. It’s complicated for a number of reasons. First off, it doesn’t have a well defined syntax. For example a sentence we would translate as “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” when translated word for word comes out “Firstly I thank the God of me through Jesus Christ concerning all you, because the faith of you is being announced in all the world.”
The second reason it’s tough is because there are about a million different ways to conjugate and decline everything. I know that seems a bit absurd to complain about that when speaking a language as complex as English, but still. It’s not easy to figure it out. It’s not exactly made any easier by the fact that all of the letters look funny.
The toughest part however, is that Greek has a fairly limited vocabulary. One word can have several different meanings, and can be translated various ways. When that is combined with the sometimes ambiguous syntax, it can be translated any number of ways, many of them unhelpful, unproductive and inaccurate.
One of the more grievous offenders is the King James Bible. I’m going to confess that I’m a little relieved I didn’t just catch a lightning bolt to the face for saying that. I love the King James Bible. Its language is beautiful and moving. The cadences and rhythms have been woven thoroughly into the essence of who we are as people, and have shaped the course of the English language. But it’s translations are occasionally pretty inaccurate.
One of the examples of the King James Version not translating so well is in today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. In verse 21, The King James Bible says “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”
The part I take issue with here is the first bit: “Who shall change our Vile Body.” The reason I quibble with it is that apart from it’s mistranslation of the word ταπεινώσεως, which should be translated as “humiliation,” it seems to miss the point, and in that it joins a long and distinguished line of people, many of them heretics, who also seemed to miss the point. More on that in a minute.
When I was little I played many sports, and while I was not really a superstar bound for professional glory in any of them, I was a fairly respectable journeyman athlete. I could hold my own with most folks, and while I wasn’t the most athletic, I played smart enough to make up for it.
As I’ve gotten older, I can usually keep up with my peers, but I’ve also noticed that occasionally (and it happens more and more frequently) my body lets me down.
At the Seminary, we’re an overly athletic bunch, I think mostly because living in dorms has caused us to forget that we are mostly in our late twenties to thirties, but occasionally our forties, fifties, or sixties, for that matter. We sometimes don't realize that we’re not 19 years old and back in college. As a result, I find myself playing a fair amount of soccer, basketball, softball, frisbee, and this terrifying Irish sport called hurling where we all swing around these big wooden axes at a little tiny ball.
Funnily enough, this story about my body failing isn’t about hurling.
I play on our seminary softball team and we’re pretty awful, playing mostly against a bunch of people who take softball more seriously than we do. It’s pretty forgivable for us to make a bad throw to second, or to miss a grounder because we don’t want to dive on the rough and rocky clay. But even as bad as we are, we are generally pretty reliable with easy pop flies.
I said “we” there, but what I meant to say was “they.” Standing at third base, tracking an easy pop fly into my glove, keeping my eyes locked onto the ball the way I was taught when I was 7 or 8, I missed. My body let me down. The ball glanced off of my glove and within a split second had broken my face. It took me a week or two to figure it out since it hadn’t broken my nose, but after the gigantic gash started to heal and the black eyes began to fade away, I figured out that this bone right near my eye had been broken clean through. On an easy, little league pop fly.
Bodies of our humiliation indeed.
But this kind of thing is exactly what St. Paul is talking about.
People for millennia have misunderstood his phrase, and have taken it to extremes. On one side of that spectrum were the ascetics, who thought the bodies to be evil, and the spirit to be primary. They denied themselves in the extreme, trying to rid themselves of the evil in the bodies, of the sin our bodies cause, and of the way they ties us to this physical and broken world in which we live.
On the other end, there were the libertines, those who thought that the spiritual was all that mattered. They worried nothing about what they ate, how they treated their bodies, or for that matter, how they treated the bodies of others. They took on airs of spiritual superiority because the spiritual was all that was important, and what they did with their bodies meant nothing at all.
But what St. Paul is talking about here is centered on nothing less than the majesty and the power of the incarnation of God into the physical body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was through the death and resurrection of a physical body that God chose to redeem the world. It was through the ministry of healing other physical bodies that Christ demonstrated his power and gave his signs. It was the wounds on Christ’s physical body in which Thomas placed his hand. Jesus did not come down and stoop to dwell with us in this mean and lowly creation, in this broken and brutal world so that he might save only our souls. Christ came to redeem us... every bit of us... and to justify our relationship with God.
At nearly every service we say either the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed. The last line of each of them is something like “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
Where the King James Version gets it wrong, the Council of Nicaea gets it right.
What we have are not just bodies of humiliation made to be either used and enjoyed or ignored and then discarded. What we have are bodies that are gifts from God, even in their brokenness, because even in their brokenness, they have goodness and life within them. Just as our souls and our world have goodness and life amidst the brokenness.
While we are traveling through this season of Lent it is tempting to scourge ourselves and lament all we have done wrong, all that has failed in our spirit, and all that is wrong here on Earth. We recognize the need for redemption and restoration of both our spirits and the world, and we pray for that final day when Christ will come back and make whole not only our souls, but the whole cosmos.
In the chaos that we think of when we ponder what the end of all things will look like, we frequently ignore the part of us that exists physically. It’s easy to forget it, when we’re caught up in the midst of thinking about God making a new heaven and a new earth.
But what we shouldn't do is forget that the proclamation is not just that we have vile bodies, not just that we have bodies of humiliation. That Good Friday note is not where it ends. Rather, as we take our time this Lent to recognize our sins, shortcomings, and spiritual brokenness, let’s also take some time to recognize our own physical failings large and small. And like our moral stumbles that have already passed, and have already been forgiven and redeemed, let us remember that our physical humiliations, our embarrassments, our failures, our falls, and our weakness.... like all that is broken in this world, they will be conformed to the body of Christ’s Glory. And during Lent, during our time to recognize just how abundant God’s grace is in the face of our similarly abundant failings, may we take solace, may we take comfort, may we take joy, in the absurd abundance of grace bestowed upon not only our world, and not only upon our souls, but also upon our bodies, that will, at that last day, be made new in Christ.
Amen
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Some photos from Myanmar.
While I am in the process of editing and collecting my photos digitally, (there are a little more than 4,000 to go through!) I wanted to start to share some of my favorites. I'm going to start posting some of the photo here. I'll post the photo and share a bit of story about each of them! Keep checking here to see some of the photographs and hear some of the story!
On Sunday morning, we drove out into the countryside to Mawbi, a small village that has an Anglican church where we worshiped. After the service we went out to villagers homes for thanksgiving services, something nearly everyone does every Sunday. Our hosts were incredibly generous and friendly, and it was wonderful meeting them. It was so humbling to see how honored they were to welcome us as guests. This was the first time we were really floored by the overwhelming, stunning hospitality of the people in Myanmar.
And the last photo was taken at the British Cemetery where those who died in WWII in Burma were buried. Myanmar was the bloodiest venue of the Asian theatre, and there were heavy casualties, both British and native. I thought the statement written on the arch was particularly moving. There was a gigantic memorial set in the middle of a large graveyard. Seeing this made it easy to understand why Myanmar withdrew from the international arena in the post-war period. It's incredible to see the impact that the Second World War had on the planet, and how wide-ranging it's impact was. May we learn from that mistake and avoid further similar conflict, and may we pray for the day when we no longer need to erect memorials such as this amongst graves marked with names and birthdays, as well as those marked "known but to God."
The Schwedagon Pagoda is the holiest Buddhist site in Myanmar. It is said to contain eight hairs of Siddartha Guatama, the Buddha. It's massive and covered in tons of gold leaf. Literally tons. This was the first place we went on our first day after waking up and eating breakfast. It is a beautiful and vibrant center of faith for the people of Myanmar, and it's packed with worshippers, tourists, and souvenir vendors. The main pagoda is surrounded by hundreds of smaller pagodas and shrines, as well as statues of the Buddha, bells, statues for water offerings. Near to the base of the main pagoda there are many small shrines and rail for offering incense or candles. After our day wandering around, we went back at night in order to see it all lit up. It was beautiful.
While we were walking around during the day we learned that it was Myanmar Independence Day! They were celebrating it publicly for the first time, since in all previous years, gatherings of more than 5 people were illegal without a permit. With the day off, people were out in the streets celebrating together in various and sundry ways. One way they were celebrating was by having a contest to climb a shaved, greased, inverted banana stalk. It's harder than you'd imagine, by the looks of it. After watching many people try, a set of three young boys managed to reach the top and grab the flags. That alone would have been cool, but we found out the flags alone were worth 100,000 Kyats! Kyat is pronounced Chats, and 100K is worth about $120, a very large sum over there. We continued to walk down past the Sule Pagoda towards the Irawaddy River. Once there we walked along a dock where there were boats docked, and at the end of the dock, there were the vibrantly colored water taxis to ferry people back and forth across the river.
On Sunday morning, we drove out into the countryside to Mawbi, a small village that has an Anglican church where we worshiped. After the service we went out to villagers homes for thanksgiving services, something nearly everyone does every Sunday. Our hosts were incredibly generous and friendly, and it was wonderful meeting them. It was so humbling to see how honored they were to welcome us as guests. This was the first time we were really floored by the overwhelming, stunning hospitality of the people in Myanmar.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Mission and Myanmar Sermon, Feb 9th, 2012
So I've preached a few times since I posted this last sermon on here. Perhaps I will try and post the few I've skipped, since they aren't too bad (I don't think!) but I really liked this one, and I know many are interested for a taste of what my trip to Myanmar was like, so until I'm able to get the presentation done. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this sermon, and then share it with your friends, or share it elsewhere.
With no further ado, here is my Mission Sunday sermon as written, though not quite as delieverd:
In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning! I’m so happy to be back in Eastern North Carolina and back home in Wilmington after yet another semester away and after another wonderful convention. It has been a little bittersweet, saying goodbye to the Bishop who confirmed me, who first raised me up to leadership positions in the diocese, and for that matter, my first leadership roles ever, and who has encouraged me on my path from the time I was about 13. But I am grateful for his many years of dedicated service to our diocese, and I’m sure his new call will be a wonderful time for him. I have several classmates from the Diocese of Pennsylvania, and they are extremely excited to welcome Bishop Daniel to Philadelphia.
This homecoming is made especially nice because of the distance I have travelled to be here. Less than two weeks ago I was still 9,000 miles away, in Myanmar, where I spent the whole month of January on a missional cultural immersion with 7 other students from Virginia Theological Seminary. It was the trip of a lifetime, and we got to see and do things I’d never have expected to see or do. I helped lead a bible study for clergy and staff in the Diocese of Myitkyina, where I taught about the book of Revelation. I helped coordinate one day of a three day inter-seminary retreat, where we shared, food, fellowship, and song with students from Peku Divinity School, St. Peter’s Bible College, (both in Toungoo), and St. John’s Bible College in Sittwe.
I got to watch sunsets from the tops of temples on the plains of Bagan, I visited the Schwedagon Pagoda, said to contain eight hairs from Siddartha Guatama the Buddah. I visited camps full of internally displaced people, forced from their homes and villages by the civil war raging in the north of the country. I was overwhelmed with hospitality. Perhaps coolest of all, I got to ride an elephant! Needless to say it was an incredibly rewarding, but also an incredibly exhausting month.
Knowing I would be preaching almost as soon as I got back, I was a little worried about what I would preach on, what the text would be, how I would prepare. But as it did throughout Myanmar, God’s grace abounds, and I discovered that today is Mission Sunday. Today churches all around the Episcopal Church, across the United States, Haiti, Europe, and everywhere Episcopalians are found will be talking about mission.
While I had never been on a mission trip before this, mission is something that should run in my blood. My great-aunt served as a missionary in China for nearly 30 years. Many of those she was an “english teacher” who was taking a great risk by helping the church in China. I know my father and stepmother frequently go on mission trips around the United States. Many of my other family members have undertaken this form of service to God as well. But previous to this, I had not, and I had no idea what to expect.
I’d always previously thought of mission work as going and helping. You go to build a house, or to staff a clinic. You help fill a library, or you do work with the mothers union. Maybe you teach children. Whatever your goal was, there was a goal. While planning for this trip, however, it became very apparent, that was not what we were doing.
I didn’t know what to expect when I went, knowing how much of our scheduled time was going to be spent “just meeting people.” But after a few days in, after some serious challenges, my classmates and I were talking and having a discussion. “What is mission?” We asked. “How do we do mission?”
Jonathan Chesney, a fellow student in my year from the Diocese of Alabama, and one of my best friends at the seminary told a story a friend had told him. His friend had left the country to serve in Africa for two years as a missionary. He struggled with these same questions during his time in Africa. He’d planned on going and helping orphans, helping a village, and saving lives. He’d planned on working to help develop a village to improve the quality of life. What he ended up doing was working some in the fields, teaching a little bit, helping here and there where he could, and playing a lot of soccer with the village children.
This friend told him that his image, his metaphor for mission was turning swords into plowshares. It seems to be a very odd image for someone who is coming in peace in Christ to think of beating swords into plowshares. But he described it like this: When he went, he had the idea that he was going to swing in and save people in the wild lands of Africa. It was very heroic, swashbuckling even. Like the good guy in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie swinging from one ship to the other and saving his comrades as they are being overtaken. He’d swing into Africa on his airplane, sword and tricorn hat on, ready to go.
What he found when he got there was that it didn’t work. What the people needed was not a savior. They already had that. They needed someone to come and walk with them through the mundane, helping them out as possible, just as they would help him out as they could.
What they all needed was the relationship, the christian love forged between them as they walked together through life, whether for a week, for a few months, or for years. What they needed was for him to beat his swashbuckling sword into a plowshare, and walk alongside them as they plowed their fields, or washed their clothes, or raised their children. They wanted him to walk alongside as they celebrated and mourned. They wanted him to join their community, because Christ didn’t command us to be superheroes. He prayed that we all may be one.
After two particularly arduous days of traveling, and on the heels of a physically and emotionally draining week in Myitkyina, the occupied capital of Kachin state, where we were 15 miles from the front lines of the violent civil conflict that is raging... After all that, we found ourselves arriving in Hpa-an. After we arrived and dropped our things off at the hotel, we were taken to the Bishop’s home at the diocesan compound for dinner. After dinner, while we were having our tea and chatting with Bishop Stylo, our leader mentioned that we should be getting back to the hotel so we could get some sleep as we were all rather tired. The Bishop jokingly asked then how frequently we preached. After someone offered a probably too literal answer, he changed his question. “Do you preach more than you sleep? How do you spend your time?” It was then that I noticed what was printed in clear letters over his door.
“Life Is Mission.” “Life Is Mission.”
While it got a little lost in translation at first (Bp. Stylo being the only Bishop not confident enough of his English to speak without a translator) the Bishop was trying to ask us, in a way both lighthearted and serious, “How are you living your life?” For Bishop Stylo, he finds himself on the mission field every time he steps outside his door. Sure, he’s in a country where only about 6% of the population is Christian. But every time he walks out that door, he knows that his call is to be with those he encounters, to show the love of God to them, and to let them know that they are valued and loved. He knows that there are mouths to be fed, refugees to be relocated, children to be educated, and sick to be cared for. He knows that they need food, and housing, and school, and medicine.
But he also knows that they need the spiritual care that comes from living in a society where poverty is rampant, where the powerful control too much, and where that power is abused to the detriment of the powerless. I think his philosophy may be of some great use outside of Myanmar as well.
After leaving Bishop Stylo’s we spent a week in Toungoo where we shared responsibility for coordinating a three day inter-seminary conference. One of the things we did over the course of the conference was a caneball and volleyball tournament, Caneball for the men, Volleyball for the women. Caneball is a sport that’s wildly popular over there, played by people, especially male, of all ages. It’s like volleyball but with a little ball of woven cane that you can’t hit with your hands. We were all divided up into teams of three, with no team having two players from the same seminary. Caneball is played barefoot. It was some of the most fun I had over there, and, clearly due solely to my superhuman efforts, our team won the tournament!
A little later someone on our trip asked about something we had been doing the whole time we were over there. Shoes are not worn inside most buildings, and they are definitely not worn in church. My colleague and fellow missioner asked “Why don’t they wear shoes in church?” I answered because you take off your shoes when you are standing on holy ground, like Moses at the burning bush.
It was right then that it hit me, like that rickety, poorly maintained, 1940’s train we had taken to Toungoo. We take off our shoes when we are standing on holy ground. We take off our shoes when we encounter God.
We take them off when we enter the house of a parishoner in a remote village who has invited us to lunch, someone so incredibly honored that we would be willing to come into their humble home when we’ve come so far. We take off our shoes when we walk into a church to celebrate the eucharist among people with whom we share no common language apart from our common prayer, our voices rising together toward God, cacophonously beautiful. We take off our shoes when we walk into a library with maybe two thousand books that is the pride and joy of the strongest divinity school in the region, a school that turns out promising and talented students willing to give up their chance to be civic or commercial leaders in a country with a desperate need for them... They give it up so that they can follow Christ, and make $30 a month. We take off our shoes when we step onto a rocky caneball court with fellow students or with our hotel’s staff, where even if we don’t share any language apart from laughter, we can enjoy each other’s company and walk beside one another for a brief time. We take off our shoes when we are standing on holy ground.
Life is mission, Bishop Stylo says. And when we walk out of that door, even if we can’t always go barefoot at work, or on the tennis court, or in the street, it’s important to know that no matter where you are, you are in the mission field; you are on holy ground. Beat your sword into your plowshare and walk beside the people you meet. Show them and tell them about the love of Christ. Show them that when even two or three are together, that you recognize God is in your midst.
As I come down off of my mountain, I think the jet lag from the 12 and a half hour time difference may have taken most of Moses’ shine off of my face, but I can assure you, that in this, my first mission experience, I encountered God. I can assure you just as well, that after the transfiguration I experienced in Myanmar, I had to come back down off of that mountain. But unlike Peter, John, and James, I am not keeping silent. Rather I’m taking this time given to me today, I’m taking this mission Sunday to encourage you to go out on mission yourself. I know many from St. Andrew’s have travelled together on mission, especially to the Dominican Republic but all around our area, our nation and our world, and I’ll bet every one of them came back changed in some way or another as well.
So my charge to you this Mission Sunday, my commission to you and to me, is that we beat our swords, whatever they may be, into plowshares, and that we walk alongside those who need someone to walk with them, and that we, through that, show the love, the redemption, and the life changing power of Christ. And that you remember, once you walk out of these doors you are on the mission field, whether you are in Myanmar or Monkey Junction, in Downtown or the Dominican Republic. And I pray that each and every one of us finds our holy ground, and that we all find ourselves shining with the glory of God.
So “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.”
Amen.
With no further ado, here is my Mission Sunday sermon as written, though not quite as delieverd:
 |
| Young Buddhist Monk and his friend |
In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning! I’m so happy to be back in Eastern North Carolina and back home in Wilmington after yet another semester away and after another wonderful convention. It has been a little bittersweet, saying goodbye to the Bishop who confirmed me, who first raised me up to leadership positions in the diocese, and for that matter, my first leadership roles ever, and who has encouraged me on my path from the time I was about 13. But I am grateful for his many years of dedicated service to our diocese, and I’m sure his new call will be a wonderful time for him. I have several classmates from the Diocese of Pennsylvania, and they are extremely excited to welcome Bishop Daniel to Philadelphia.
This homecoming is made especially nice because of the distance I have travelled to be here. Less than two weeks ago I was still 9,000 miles away, in Myanmar, where I spent the whole month of January on a missional cultural immersion with 7 other students from Virginia Theological Seminary. It was the trip of a lifetime, and we got to see and do things I’d never have expected to see or do. I helped lead a bible study for clergy and staff in the Diocese of Myitkyina, where I taught about the book of Revelation. I helped coordinate one day of a three day inter-seminary retreat, where we shared, food, fellowship, and song with students from Peku Divinity School, St. Peter’s Bible College, (both in Toungoo), and St. John’s Bible College in Sittwe.
I got to watch sunsets from the tops of temples on the plains of Bagan, I visited the Schwedagon Pagoda, said to contain eight hairs from Siddartha Guatama the Buddah. I visited camps full of internally displaced people, forced from their homes and villages by the civil war raging in the north of the country. I was overwhelmed with hospitality. Perhaps coolest of all, I got to ride an elephant! Needless to say it was an incredibly rewarding, but also an incredibly exhausting month.
Knowing I would be preaching almost as soon as I got back, I was a little worried about what I would preach on, what the text would be, how I would prepare. But as it did throughout Myanmar, God’s grace abounds, and I discovered that today is Mission Sunday. Today churches all around the Episcopal Church, across the United States, Haiti, Europe, and everywhere Episcopalians are found will be talking about mission.
While I had never been on a mission trip before this, mission is something that should run in my blood. My great-aunt served as a missionary in China for nearly 30 years. Many of those she was an “english teacher” who was taking a great risk by helping the church in China. I know my father and stepmother frequently go on mission trips around the United States. Many of my other family members have undertaken this form of service to God as well. But previous to this, I had not, and I had no idea what to expect.
I’d always previously thought of mission work as going and helping. You go to build a house, or to staff a clinic. You help fill a library, or you do work with the mothers union. Maybe you teach children. Whatever your goal was, there was a goal. While planning for this trip, however, it became very apparent, that was not what we were doing.
I didn’t know what to expect when I went, knowing how much of our scheduled time was going to be spent “just meeting people.” But after a few days in, after some serious challenges, my classmates and I were talking and having a discussion. “What is mission?” We asked. “How do we do mission?”
Jonathan Chesney, a fellow student in my year from the Diocese of Alabama, and one of my best friends at the seminary told a story a friend had told him. His friend had left the country to serve in Africa for two years as a missionary. He struggled with these same questions during his time in Africa. He’d planned on going and helping orphans, helping a village, and saving lives. He’d planned on working to help develop a village to improve the quality of life. What he ended up doing was working some in the fields, teaching a little bit, helping here and there where he could, and playing a lot of soccer with the village children.
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| Child and his grandmother in a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP) forced from their homes by theviolence outside the city. |
What he found when he got there was that it didn’t work. What the people needed was not a savior. They already had that. They needed someone to come and walk with them through the mundane, helping them out as possible, just as they would help him out as they could.
What they all needed was the relationship, the christian love forged between them as they walked together through life, whether for a week, for a few months, or for years. What they needed was for him to beat his swashbuckling sword into a plowshare, and walk alongside them as they plowed their fields, or washed their clothes, or raised their children. They wanted him to walk alongside as they celebrated and mourned. They wanted him to join their community, because Christ didn’t command us to be superheroes. He prayed that we all may be one.
After two particularly arduous days of traveling, and on the heels of a physically and emotionally draining week in Myitkyina, the occupied capital of Kachin state, where we were 15 miles from the front lines of the violent civil conflict that is raging... After all that, we found ourselves arriving in Hpa-an. After we arrived and dropped our things off at the hotel, we were taken to the Bishop’s home at the diocesan compound for dinner. After dinner, while we were having our tea and chatting with Bishop Stylo, our leader mentioned that we should be getting back to the hotel so we could get some sleep as we were all rather tired. The Bishop jokingly asked then how frequently we preached. After someone offered a probably too literal answer, he changed his question. “Do you preach more than you sleep? How do you spend your time?” It was then that I noticed what was printed in clear letters over his door.
“Life Is Mission.” “Life Is Mission.”
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| Sunrise in Hpa-An |
But he also knows that they need the spiritual care that comes from living in a society where poverty is rampant, where the powerful control too much, and where that power is abused to the detriment of the powerless. I think his philosophy may be of some great use outside of Myanmar as well.
After leaving Bishop Stylo’s we spent a week in Toungoo where we shared responsibility for coordinating a three day inter-seminary conference. One of the things we did over the course of the conference was a caneball and volleyball tournament, Caneball for the men, Volleyball for the women. Caneball is a sport that’s wildly popular over there, played by people, especially male, of all ages. It’s like volleyball but with a little ball of woven cane that you can’t hit with your hands. We were all divided up into teams of three, with no team having two players from the same seminary. Caneball is played barefoot. It was some of the most fun I had over there, and, clearly due solely to my superhuman efforts, our team won the tournament!
A little later someone on our trip asked about something we had been doing the whole time we were over there. Shoes are not worn inside most buildings, and they are definitely not worn in church. My colleague and fellow missioner asked “Why don’t they wear shoes in church?” I answered because you take off your shoes when you are standing on holy ground, like Moses at the burning bush.
It was right then that it hit me, like that rickety, poorly maintained, 1940’s train we had taken to Toungoo. We take off our shoes when we are standing on holy ground. We take off our shoes when we encounter God.
We take them off when we enter the house of a parishoner in a remote village who has invited us to lunch, someone so incredibly honored that we would be willing to come into their humble home when we’ve come so far. We take off our shoes when we walk into a church to celebrate the eucharist among people with whom we share no common language apart from our common prayer, our voices rising together toward God, cacophonously beautiful. We take off our shoes when we walk into a library with maybe two thousand books that is the pride and joy of the strongest divinity school in the region, a school that turns out promising and talented students willing to give up their chance to be civic or commercial leaders in a country with a desperate need for them... They give it up so that they can follow Christ, and make $30 a month. We take off our shoes when we step onto a rocky caneball court with fellow students or with our hotel’s staff, where even if we don’t share any language apart from laughter, we can enjoy each other’s company and walk beside one another for a brief time. We take off our shoes when we are standing on holy ground.
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| Mother and Child |
As I come down off of my mountain, I think the jet lag from the 12 and a half hour time difference may have taken most of Moses’ shine off of my face, but I can assure you, that in this, my first mission experience, I encountered God. I can assure you just as well, that after the transfiguration I experienced in Myanmar, I had to come back down off of that mountain. But unlike Peter, John, and James, I am not keeping silent. Rather I’m taking this time given to me today, I’m taking this mission Sunday to encourage you to go out on mission yourself. I know many from St. Andrew’s have travelled together on mission, especially to the Dominican Republic but all around our area, our nation and our world, and I’ll bet every one of them came back changed in some way or another as well.
So my charge to you this Mission Sunday, my commission to you and to me, is that we beat our swords, whatever they may be, into plowshares, and that we walk alongside those who need someone to walk with them, and that we, through that, show the love, the redemption, and the life changing power of Christ. And that you remember, once you walk out of these doors you are on the mission field, whether you are in Myanmar or Monkey Junction, in Downtown or the Dominican Republic. And I pray that each and every one of us finds our holy ground, and that we all find ourselves shining with the glory of God.
So “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.”
Amen.
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| Children in an IDP camp, after greeting Virginia Seminarians |
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