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

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! 

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.

 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."

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:

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.

Child and his grandmother  in a camp for
Internally Displaced People (IDP) forced from their
homes by theviolence outside the city.

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.”

Sunrise in Hpa-An

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.

Mother and Child

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.

Children in an IDP camp, after greeting Virginia Seminarians