Sermon: Nobody’s Perfect–not even God

PENTECOST 3 | MARK 4:35-41



Elie Weisel in his book THE TRIAL OF GOD, tells about an actual trial he witnessed as a young man in the Auschwitz death camp. The adults around him were frantic as they watched their fellow Jews being marched out to the gas chambers, and they wondered aloud how God could possibly have betrayed them so utterly. For the Jews, the terms of their covenant were very simple. We will worship only you as our God, and God, in turn promises to protect them. 



What happened? They wondered. Why had God forsaken their covenant? Why did he not protect them now? The prisoners decided to have a formal trial, to try God for his indifference–apparently in absentia. 



A judge was selected, as well as other roles, and the trial began. Numerous possible defenses for God’s abandonment were put forth–was it a punishment for straying from the Law? Was it a purification, as in the flood of Noah? Was it a sacrifice, as in the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham? Or, like the same story of Abraham, was it all just a test of their faith? Perhaps, they reasoned, it was simply a consequence of free will. 

The debate raged for hours–it may have gone on for days. Eventually, however, the arguments were exhausted, and the judge announced his verdict. Guilty. God was guilty of breaking the covenant. One rabbi complained that he was not surprised. God had never been GOOD. He had simply been on our side. And now he had, apparently, made a deal with another people, the Germans, whose banners proclaimed, “God is with us.”



The Trial finished, the prisoners. dissembled–and what do you think they did next? They went to pray.



Even in the midst of war, in the face of death, in the event of God’s apparent abandonment, these Jews did not abandon THEIR side of the covenant–they prayed. What they did, in fact, was take God AS HE WAS. A turncoat, maybe. Indifferent, apparently. A traitor, decidedly, but they still accepted him, AS HE WAS.



Lisa and I were discussing this story this week because I had been struck in our Gospel reading by a curious line I had never noticed before. It’s near the beginning of the passage, where the evangelist says, “They took him, just as he was, in the boat.”



What can this mean? In context, Jesus has been teaching people all day. He was exhausted, he was probably more than a little bit cranky. And yet, even though it was early in their association with him, they didn’t say, “Well, aren’t you full of yourself? Enough of this!” and walk away. Instead, they took him, AS HE WAS, in the boat with them. 



I find it fascinating that, as I go about my daily business, when people I meet discover I am a priest, they instantly start confessing. Not formally, of course, but ACTUALLY. Within moments of discovering my vocation, many people just launch into these baroque justifications that I didn’t ask for and the situation doesn’t require. It’s the oddest thing. 



But they do it nevertheless, and frequently the content is the same–either God has disappointed them somehow, or the church has–or they believe that they have somehow disappointed God, and turned away from him in shame. 



What is clear in these situations is that these people feel hurt–by God, by God’s people, by circumstances, by their own choices, and by the estrangement from God and from sacred community that results.



I always feel profoundly sad when this happens, because it is clear that someone has indeed failed–but I usually pin the blame on my fellow clergy for not adequately, clearly, and forcefully proclaiming the Good News that Jesus came to offer us in the first place.



I understand the ministry of Jesus as one of deep and profound reconciliation between people and God. And the way Jesus did that was usually by modeling that reconciliation in his own relationships. He took people AS THEY WERE. He loved them AS THEY WERE. And he assured them that God loved them the very same way.



When Jesus called his disciples, he called them as they were–smelly fishing clothes and all, with all of their personality quirks, all of their failings, all of their failures, all of their problems, even all of their sins. He loved them just as he found them.



Little wonder, then, that as Jesus stumbled aboard their boat, tired and grumpy, scripture says that they took him exactly the same way. 



Look, I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, if scripture and human experiences are any indicators, God’s not perfect, either, and neither is Jesus. 



Thank God. Nobody likes the perfect guy, and frankly, I have little use for a perfect deity, either. The Jews are certainly convinced that their God has his bad days, and yet they still cling to him. And the very mystery of the incarnation is that Christ left by his glory and joined our lot, wholly and completely uniting himself to our imperfect state. 



And if the Gospel required that we be perfect, that would be Bad News indeed, and not the Gospel at all. As I’ve said often before, perfection is a fiction that exists nowhere in the phenomenal universe, not even in God. The only place it exists is in the human imagination, where it proliferates like a raging virus, leaving nothing but emotional, spiritual and social wreckage in its wake. 



This is the wreckage I witness whenever I hear one of these impromptu confessions. People either run or are pushed away from God when they just don’t measure up to some arbitrary standard of alleged perfection. But just as often, people turn their backs on God when God does not measure up to their expectations. How many of us run away from God because God has let us down?



I guess what I’m saying here is that not only does the Good News insist that we give ourselves a break, but shouldn’t we give God one as well?



I mean, if the Jews can forgive Auschwitz, might not you or I be able to forgive God the hurts we have suffered? If the disciples could accept Jesus as he was, even when he was being Mr. Grumpy Pants, why can’t we? If we so desperately long to be forgiven by God, should we not perhaps try to do the same for him?



And remember, forgiveness and acceptance don’t preclude confrontation, exhortation, or correction. Jesus accepted his disciples, and loved them, even though he was probably a little miffed for their lack of faith in our reading. He probably didn’t appreciate being awakened and was without a doubt suffering from low blood sugar and resurgent grumpiness at that moment. That’s okay, and it was okay for him to scold them a little. Just so, it’s possible for us to love, forgive, and accept, and still speak up when we feel let down, or abandoned, or hurt. We can even call God out for such things. 



Because that’s what people who really love each other DO. That’s what REAL relationship is about. And that’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. It’s the kind of authentic relationship in community that we ought to have with one another. 



Because everything ISN’T rosy. People AREN’T perfect. God isn’t perfect and neither are you or I. A perfect person wouldn’t really need anyone else. The rest of us, though, need each other to correct us, to love us, to uphold us, and to forgive us. And we do the same for them. 



The disciples “took Jesus as he was.” Wouldn’t we be better off if we could do the same? If everyone could? The Good News is only good, after all, when it is put into action. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are being called to a great circle of Grace, where forgiveness and acceptance are offered to friend and foe, the living and the dead, to humans and the Divine. The question before us is–do we want IN? Let us pray…



God, in Jesus you reached out to us just as we are.
Help us to accept ourselves in the midst of our imperfections, and help us to extend that grace to others in return–to our friends, to strangers, to those that bless us and those that hurt us.
Help us to extent it even to you.
Help us to live into the Community of God you call us to be, in our families, here in our church community, and in the world,
as we seek to live out the Good News proclaimed to us by your son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON: Great Things for God…

PENTECOST 2, 2009 | MARK 4:26-34

I’ll tell you another parable: Once upon a time there was a young man, an Evangelical Christian, who was sitting in church one day, and suddenly felt convicted to surrender his life to the proclamation of the Gospel. So great was his conviction that he instantly rose, went to the altar, took the pastor by the hand, and confessed his call. He stood before his congregation that day, and told them he believed that he had been called to do great things for God. The people approved of his decision, and over coffee hour, made much of him.

 

And despite the fact that the young man was really sincere, real life seemed to get in the way. He went to college, he met a wonderful young woman that he wanted to marry. Soon there was a child on the way and rent to pay. Every now and then during the altar call in church, he would feel a little twinge of guilt, that he didn’t seem to be getting around to doing those great things for God, but he didn’t see any other way ahead given his commitments. But he was young, he told himself, he had time.

 

Until the time ran out. In late middle age, he had a heart attack. He didn’t die, but he realized he would have to take things a lot easier, now. He realized he would probably never do anything great for God. There was no one around, so he was able to let go, and he quietly sobbed.

 

This was how his pastor found him. He surprised the man when he came in and laid a hand on his shoulder. But by this time, the man’s grief was so great, and his sense of guilt so acute that he poured his heart out without reserve. He told his pastor about his call to do something great for God, and how he had just never gotten around to it; how he had wasted his life, how he had failed.

 

His pastor was overcome with compassion, and shushed him. “But look at what you’ve done,” his pastor said. “You’ve had a very happy marriage, you have raised two beautiful children, at the top of their class, you founded your own business and you employ many people. You teach Sunday school and support the ministry of our church with your time and your money. Everyone who knows you admires you. You’ve done everything God requires and then some. What makes you think what you’ve done isn’t great, or that it hasn’t been pleasing to God?”

 

Which is just the sort of infuriating thing a pastor WOULD say. But consider for a moment the truth of it. It’s true, the man did nothing unusual. In fact, it’s so “normal” that it’s hard to care about. It was really, really tempting to end the story by adding,”And then zombies crashed into the hospital room, entangling themselves in the IV, and feasted on the pastor’s brains.”

But I restrained myself, and for a good reason. Just look at this man: He didn’t go to Africa to do AIDS relief, he didn’t spearhead a religious reformation, he didn’t found a homeless shelter. He wasn’t faithful in what we normally think of as a heroic, dramatic way. He DIDN’T do A GREAT THING. Instead, he was faithful in small, inconspicuous ways. He did many, many GOOD things, and that goodness added up to a life well-lived.

We live in an age where we project everything to comic book proportions. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love comic books and popular culture as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that it very often feeds us a pretty warped view of reality. So much so that even I, the guy who wrote this parable, had to fight pretty hard to keep the zombies out of it. Why is it that the quiet heroism of a life lived faithfully day after day is not enough for us?

In our Gospel reading today, we read the very first parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Mark. And since Mark is our earliest gospel, this is the very first, the earliest parable of Jesus’ in the canonical scriptures. And, for a first parable, it’s not bad. It’s really clear that Jesus has a long way to go, though. It doesn’t have the power or the punch or the clarity of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. Okay, it’s a little weak. But we know he gets a lot better, and it’s always interesting to trace an artist’s development.

One of the reasons it’s weak is that it’s so opaque. Who does the farmer represent? God? Us? Agribusiness? What is the crop? Who does the harvesting? None of this is clear. If he had continued in this vein, Jesus would have gained a reputation for being “Mr. Cryptic” rather than for being a great teacher. Fortunately for everyone he improved. But one thing about stories that are obscure is that they are also malleable.

What it said to me, as I meditated on it, was that even though it seems we are sleeping, growth is happening. Even though we are not doing much, great things are getting done, slowly, often imperceptibly from day to day. A mustard seed, invoked in the companion parable in our reading, grows into the largest of shrubs, but if you looked at it every day, you would hardly notice, because the change is taking place so slowly. Yet a great thing is emerging from this small beginning.

Saints and superheroes work miracles and wonders, they do impossible things that inspire us. We wish we could be them, we wish we could be even half as great as they are. But on this planet, there ARE no flying men in spandex, saints work more miracles in legends than they ever did in truth, and zombies rarely feast on the brains of the clergy–even though many of them deserve it, and I have met some that made me wonder….

Instead, it is as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “Do not underestimate good, thinking it will not affect you. Dripping water can fill a pitcher, drop by drop; one who is wise is filled with good, even if one accumulates it little by little.” THIS is how God actually works. Not dramatically, as in the comic books, but quietly, slowly, often imperceptibly, growing goodness like the unfolding of a plant.

We can see this in our own lives, right here in our own community. The word “Salvation” comes from the same root as “salve,” an ointment for healing. Salvation is the healing of souls, and there are few of us whose souls are NOT in need of healing. Salvation rarely happens quickly, despite the dramatic conversion or healing stories peddled by the televangelists. Instead, it happens slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly. It happens by being in community, where, free from our family of origin pressures, we can learn to love others in healthier ways than we were taught, and where we can allow ourselves to be loved. It happens through the sacraments, through which we admit our dependence on God through our participation in such signs and symbols, and through which we receive grace according to the measure of our faith. It happens through our experience of God’s faithfulness, day after day, in the smallest things, through events that inspire faithfulness in us, again, in the smallest of ways. Through these things we slowly transform from the hurting people we were into the kind of people God is calling us to be. Through the slow, quiet work of grace, we are healed, we are saved, and we, in turn, do the work of God.

But this work isn’t great by the estimation of the world. It IS great, however, by virtue of the cumulative effect of millions of seemingly insignificant acts of faithfulness. “Do not underestimate goodness,” don’t think “it will not affect you,” as the Buddha says.

I needed to be reminded of this, this week. I was feeling like a failure as a pastor because I have not been able to spark the dramatic growth in this parish that we have all hoped for. I feel responsible, I feel like I have let you, myself, and God down. I know I’m probably not alone. We have all been working very hard. We’ve put a lot of love, a lot of sweat, and even a few tears into this parish, and even though most of us are proud of the many things we’ve accomplished, it hasn’t been as dramatic as we hoped for. We aren’t flooded with new parishioners, people are not abuzz about our unique, interfaith approach to the Gospel.

Instead, God has been doing something else, something harder to see, something quiet, something true. He has been healing us. For most of us come to this parish with scars inflicted by other churches, with hurts from past relationships, some of them inflicted by our own families. We come to this table tentatively, afraid of being burned again, yet willing to trust just one more time.

Of course, we’re not a perfect community–what would be the point of a perfect community, after all? I certainly wouldn’t be welcome in such a place, with all of my flaws! We are, however, a GOOD community, healthier than most, and one in which the Spirit of God is active, if we only take the time to notice it. We are not doing GREAT things, as defined by the world, but many, many GOOD things are happening here, quietly, slowly, truly, the way God actually works.

As we plan for our future, let’s keep this in mind. God may not be calling us to be GREAT, in some cartoonish, dramatic way. It may be that God continues to call us as he has been doing, calling us to be faithful, calling us to love one another, calling us to the healing of our souls, calling us to reach out–not to thousands, but to one or two people at a time–to touch them with healing, to love them back to wholeness, to provide them safe space to reclaim their spirituality, their faith, their soul once again.

This is not an insignificant calling, and it’s something we do really well. And perhaps the vagueness of Jesus’ parable is helpful. We thought at first that we were the farmer, but perhaps we are the grain. God seems to be sleeping, but he is not. We are growing, not in numbers, perhaps, but in soul. Healing is happening. Community is happening. We are slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly, becoming the kind of people God is calling us to be. And that, my friends, is GREAT. Let us pray….

God, what are you doing, here? It’s hard for us to see it, even harder for us to understand it. Help us to continue our journey in faith that you are working in us, even when we cannot see it, even when it seems like the motion is so slow we seem to be going backwards. Inspire us, by thy Holy Spirit, to be faithful in every small matter that confronts us, even as you are faithful to us, so that, step by small step, we may be transformed into the people you intend us to be. For we ask this through Jesus, who told little stories that continue to yield great fruit. Amen.

SERMON: Frustrated Guy…

TRINITY SUNDAY 2009

I hate email. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are good things about it. I enjoy its speed and ease of use, BUT there is something about it that I really hate. It, like no other medium, brings out my bad side.

Just the other day I had received a book cover revision from a designer. Now, about a month ago I had received the first draft of the cover and had sent back my requests for fixes. So when I opened my email and saw the “revised” cover, I was…annoyed. Almost none of the changes I had requested had been made. It still looked amateurish. Without bothering to count to ten first, I hit “reply” and let loose.

Now, I do not consider myself to be a typically immoderate man in temper. No one could accuse me of being a rageaholic. And indeed, by the time I finished the email I had cooled off some, and combed back through the letter, removing every “hot spot” I could identify.

Was there, I asked myself when finished, just a hint of snarkiness left? There was. Just the smallest bit. But I WAS annoyed, yes? Is it such a bad thing to allow a whiff of that through, so long as I am not lashing out? I hate spending a half hour massaging two paragraphs–it eats up SO much time. I glanced at my TO DO list, said, “Enough!”, and sent that puppy off.

Almost instantly I panicked, rushed to my OUT box and reread the note. Yes, all of my frustration was clearly apparent, despite my editing efforts. And indeed, when the designer replied, his annoyance was on full display as well. (Sigh…)

I hate acknowledging that I have Frustrated Guy inside me, I hate it even more when he pops up, takes over, and embarrasses me. Some people simply should not be allowed to come out and play, especially if they don’t play well with others.

Fortunately, Frustrated Guy isn’t the only personality I have going for me, but I sure struggle with him. Perhaps you know what I mean. I always WANT to put my best foot forward, I always WANT to come across as patient and kind and helpful. It’s who I consider myself to really be, on the inside. And then boom! Frustrated Guy takes over and mucks everything up. Frustrated Guy…FRUSTRATES me. Now THERE’S a vicious circle for you.

The Poet Rilke once said, “We contain multitudes,” and that certainly seems to be accurate in my experience. I have certainly observed it in my friends as well. We’ll be sitting there, having a lovely conversation, and then all of the sudden, Angry Girl shows up out of the blue. Was it something I said? And that, of course, is when Victim Guy makes and appearance. It’s enough to make you schizophrenic, except that it’s happening to all of us, all of the time. Sometimes when I think about how hard it is to surf my own emotions and those of the people around me, it makes me appreciate the relative stability of animals, and it is tempting to run off and live in a cave.  A cave with cable…

This multiple personality phenomenon even seems to show up when we encounter God. Christian tradition has even named these personalities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I say, why stop at three? But there’s no quibbling with the Nicene Council, and I’m getting too old for the banishment thing, anyway. The early church fathers even divided history into dispensations during which one of God’s multiple personalities held sway. The long stretch before the coming of Christ was the Age of the Father, the relatively brief Age of the Son lasted only thirty years while Jesus was kicking up trouble, but the Age of the Spirit has had a good long run, starting at Pentecost and continuing on to the present day.

Sounds like the Son got the short end of the stick, there, but I’ll let Jesus fight his own battles. My point is that, if scripture is any witness, we might rename these three periods the Age of Angry Guy, the Age of Wise Guy, and the Age of Mostly Absent Girl. The point is that even God “contains multitudes,” and indeed, these three simply do not exhaust our experience of God. There’s also Hero Guy, Mr. Faithful, and Comfort Lady in there, among many others. I think the Hindus have it right. For them, God has a million faces, each of them a valid personality, an expression of the divine that is somehow both unique and true.

A transpersonal psychologist by the name of Roberto Assagioli made the identification, awareness of, and integration of subpersonalities an important part of his therapeutic method. So long as we are unaware of our subpersonalities, they can “take over” and control us. But once we become aware of them, name them, recognize them when they surface, then we can give them permission, or not, to come to the fore and direct us. All of us have them, these subpersonalities–apparently even God. The question is, do they have US? Do they control us, or do we control them?

We aren’t born with all of them in place, either. They develop–some of them as a result of healthy and nurturing relationships, some emerge as coping mechanisims. Too many emerge as the result of trauma. Others can emerge as a result of epiphanies, experiences of wonder, or spiritual awakenings.

In both our readings from the Sutra and from the Gospel of John this morning, we are told something very similar. That as a result of religious instruction, a person can be “born again.” As Jesus tells Nicodemus, this is not a physical rebirth, but a spiritual, metaphorical rebirth. A new personality is engendered as a result of a spiritual awakening. The question is, will this new personality flourish, or will it be stillborn? St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, speaks about the Old Man–the personality of the person we used to be before we had our spiritual awakening–and the New Man–the new spiritual personality. Paul talks in a very similar way that Assagioli does about controlling these competing personalities, and he exhorts his readers to be aware of the struggle that is happening within them, to reject the impulses of the Old Man and to encourage the growth and strength of the New Man.

This is a lot of work, though, as most worthwhile things are. It requires diligence. It’s tedious to always be aware of what personality is driving you at any given moment, and exhausting to always be questioning and editing them. But unless we want to let Nasty Guy rule the world, that’s what we’ve got to do.

We’re heading into a very difficult time as a parish. We have some hard decisions to make, and it might mean we will, at times, feel scared, or insecure, or angry. It will be tempting to leap to conclusions about what so-and-so said, or what they meant, or what their “real” motivations are. It will test our ability to be a loving community, but it’s precisely when times get tough that we discover whether we are a REAL community or not. If we are going to navigate these waters safely, we’ve got to be aware of when Fearful Girl and Angry Guy are taking over. We can listen to what they have to say, of course, but then we should discern carefully whether they are the best representatives to communicate our thoughts. It might be that Compassionate Guy and Patient Chick may present your case with much more diplomacy and efficacy. It’s not going to be easy, but it will go much more smoothly if we can all discern and monitor the multitudes that are swarming inside us all.

There is an old Indian story that says that there are two wolves inside each of us–one wolf is a lone predator, prowling about thirsting for blood, and the other wolf is noble, nurturing to those in its pack and extremely loyal. The two wolves are constantly contesting with one another. It’s hard to tell which one will win. On the other hand, it’s not hard to predict at all. The one that will win is the one that gets fed.

Let us, in the months to come, carefully discern the personalities within us. Let us not reject those personalities that we dislike, the ones that embarrass us or make trouble for us. Let us make a place for them at our inner council table, and let us listen carefully to their wisdom. But let us also be careful about who we allow to speak for us, who we allow to take over. Let us be conscious of who is being fed, and how much. For we all contain multitudes. But we DON’T have to be controlled by them. Let us pray…

God, you know us inside and out. You know all the personalities we harbor within us, and you love every part of us. Help us to likewise love ourselves, but to cultivate within ourselves the kind of discernment, awareness, and self-control that will enable us to be the kind of people we want to be, the kind of people you call us to be. Help us to love one another, even when it gets hard, even when we are angry or frightened. Help us to recognize when Angry Guy is taking over, and to hand things over to Compassionate Girl when it is appropriate to do so. And we WILL need your help in this. Empower us with your Holy Spirit to be your loving presence, both to the world, and to one another, and perhaps especially, to ourselves as well. For we ask this in the name of Wise Guy, your Son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON: Divine Union/Marriage

EASTER 3–UNION/MARRIAGE

 

Last weekend,  I was privileged to perform a wedding at the historic Morris chapel at the University of the Pacific in beautiful downtown Stockton. The bride and groom were a friendly, lovely young couple, and it was entertaining watching the testy familial relations between his Chinese relatives and her Phillipino clan.

 

The rehearsal was more fun than they usually are. I asked them to practice their vows, and coached them on speaking louder so that those in the back row could hear them. “C’mon, Jeremy,” I coaxed, “These folks have come a long way to hear these words.” He tried again, and burst out laughing. Finally, he got the right volume, but I had to instruct him further. “Jeremy, look at HER when you’re saying this. If you’re not careful you’ll end up married to the flower display.”

 

The next time he tried it they both burst out laughing. We got through it. But then the day of the wedding arrived. The bride walked down the aisle, as radiant as any I have ever seen. He met her at the stairs and led her to her place. We stood during the readings. Thankfully, no one fainted in the heat. And when we came to the vows, I turned to Jeremy and said, “Repeat after me.”

 

He nodded, dutifully looked at his bride and in a loud even voice, began to repeat my words:

“I, Jeremy, take you, Kristine, to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer….”

 

He was doing fine. Except that he wasn’t. Watching his eyes, I saw that what was just a form to be practiced yesterday, he was saying for real, now. The words were registering. Too late, perhaps, he was actually conscious of what he was saying, and I could read the panic and the promise as it played out upon his face.

 

“…in sickness and health, until death do us part. This is my solemn vow.”

 

I watched him warily as he teetered back and forth for a moment, as the finality of what he had just done washed over him. He had MARRIED himself to this woman, and she to him. They had made a sacred vow to one another in the presence of everyone they held dear, and if he didn’t get that before, it was evident he was getting it then, in the moment he was doing it.

 

His moment of realization brought home to me just what an awesome promise a marriage vow is. In taking his vows, Jeremy was saying “yes” to this person, not in every decision, certainly, but in every day of his life. He was saying yes to waking up with her, to sharing his material wealth with her, to sharing his inner life with her, to sharing his body with her, to sharing his future with her–to sharing all that he has, and all that he is. That is a profound and awesome promise.

 

It takes a lot of preparation to get to that stage, if it is to be real. It takes a lot of maturity, a lot of compromise to do it well, a willingness to know and be known that doesn’t come easy for many people. It requires both strength and vulnerability in equal measure, and a great willingness to make one life out of two.

 

To be successful, of course, the effort must be made by both parties. Both bride and groom must want this kind of joining, this kind of intimacy, this kind of permanence. But when all these things are present, it is a wondrous thing. A true marriage is always a mystical act. Because in this process–which begins months or years before the marriage, but is sealed and signified in the ceremony itself–two lives combine to create a third. Even if there is no physical offspring, there is always a mystical offspring, for the lives of two people come together and a new life begins–the life of the relationship itself.

 

For the rest of their marriage, the health of either one of them as individuals will be weighed against the health of this mystical third entity. The needs of either of them will be evaluated, and often sacrificed, in order to make sure this mystical third is fed, loved, cared for, and happy. When couples fight, when relationships end, it is usually because this mystical third person, the relationship itself, has not been nurtured, has not been ministered to, has not been adequately loved.

 

That marriage is an intrinsically mystical act should be no surprise to us, however. This intuition is so strong that scripture often uses it as a metaphor for Israel and the Church’s relationship to God, and to Jesus, respectively, and the mystics of many traditions likewise employ the symbolism of marriage to describe the intimacy between divinity and the human soul.

 

Last week we discussed the apophatic mystics–those for whom the experience of God is void of all images–and the metaphor that they most often employ to describe their union with him: Deification. But what about the kataphatic mystics, those for whom God appears employing symbols and images? Overwhelmingly, these mystics speak about their union with God in terms of marriage.

 

And unlike the apophatic msytics, whose writings are terse and tentative, the kataphatic mystics let it all hang out. They are romantic fools. For them, even though the experience of union is impossible to describe, when they do write about it, it is in the most flowery, romantic, sickningly sweet terms imaginable. No less a heavyweight than Augustine even waxed treacly when he wrote:

 

“O Lord, do I love Thee. Thou didst strike on my heart with Thy word and I loved Thee…. But what do I love when I love Thee? Not the beauty of bodies nor the loveliness of seasons, nor the radiance of the light around us, so gladsome to our eyes, nor the sweet melodies of songs of every kind, nor the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices, nor manna and honey, nor limbs delectable for fleshly embraces. I do not love these things when I love my God. And yet I love a light and a voice and a fragrance and a food and an embrace when I love my God, who is a light, a voice, a fragrance, a food, and an embrace to my inner man…. This it is that I love when I love my God…”

 

This kind of description is common not only in Christian mysticism, but in Hindu mystics, sufi mystics, and Jewish mystical writings as well, among others. Rabia is no less eloquent in describing her love for Krishna, when she writes, “My joy –My Hunger –My Shelter –My Friend –My Food for the journey –My journey’s End –You are my breath, My hope, My companion, My craving, My abundant wealth. Without You — my Life, my Love –I would never have wandered across these endless countries. You have poured out so much grace for me, Done me so many favors, given me so many gifts –I look everywhere for Your love –Then suddenly I am filled with it. O Captain of my Heart, Radiant Eye of Yearning in my breast, I will never be free from You, As long as I live. Be satisfied with me, Love, And I am satisfied.”

 

Gorgeous stuff, but it is not just beautiful poetry, it is a sincere attempt to communicate something that is essentially ineffable–the union between a soul and her God. Just as a bride and groom surrender themselves to the unknowable in their vows, so too does the mystic surrender him- or herself to mystery in the act of divine union. They leave behind forever their former, separate life, and they, together with God, their beloved, they create a new life–one that they could not even imagine on their own. A new life that is not the product of either spouse alone, but of the joining of these two lives, one that must be nurtured and loved if it is to thrive.

 

But just as in a human marriage, if it is to work, if it is to thrive, if it is to be permanent, both parties must want it. The testimonies of the mystics and of Jewish and Christian scripture is clear. God desperately desires this kind of relationship with us. God loves us and wants our love in return. God wants to surrender himself to us, and wants us to surrender ourselves to him so that a new, more vibrant, more abundant life can be born.

 

In training spiritual directors, I hammer home again and again that we are here for one thing and one thing only: to foster intimacy between the client and the divine. It is our job to be matchmakers–bring the client again and again to the dance, to identify what resistance they might have to this marriage, to assist them in wooing the divine. Spiritual directors, and ministers in general, are professional busybodies, always trying to match you up. It’s annoying, I know, but we mean well.

 

Because, really, all the resistance is in us. Scripture and the mystics clearly tell us that God already has on his tuxedo and his bootineer. We might be having cold feet, but God is ready for the wedding. As an officiant, I usually have the best man and maid of honor sign the wedding certificates BEFORE the ceremony, rather than after, because, you know, things are crazy after a wedding and people want to drink, not do paperwork. So once I have their signatures, I usually nudge the groom conspiratorially, saying, “Dude, the paperwork is all done. You’re legally married. You don’t actually HAVE to go through with the ceremony.” Because typically, you know, men, being men, can take or leave the ritual stuff. But God isn’t your ordinary guy. He WANTS to get married. And, annoyingly, he is popping the question ALL THE TIME. We’re just too busy with our nails and our shopping to notice.

 

I’m being silly of course. Even the mystics will admit that these are metaphors. But this metaphor–marriage–is the closest we humans ever get to what God wants with us. He wants to promise himself to us forever. He wants to say yes to us forever. He wants to merge his life with ours, to create a new life that simply wasn’t possible before. THAT’S what God wants.

 

It’s a big commitment, it means your whole life has to change. But I’ll tell you, when you read the mystics, there’s no question–they feel loved. And isn’t that what we want more than anything? It’s what God wants more than anything, too. Let us pray…

 

God, the kind of relationship you want scares us.

It’s such a big commitment–I’m just not sure we’re ready.

Now, don’t be that way, it’s us, it’s not you.

But keep at us, okay.

Keep wooing us, keeping telling us you love us,

keep proving that you will be there,

from this day forward, for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and health,

until–and beyond–death.

Keep at us until we, too, are willing to say, “I do.”Amen.

SERMON: Grumpy Jesus and the Pager in the Baptismal Water

I remember another baptism several years ago. I had married Sheila and Dan a little over a year ago at the Interfaith Chapel in the Presidio there in San Francisco, and there we were again at that same chapel, with a little baby girl cradled in their arms.

I love baptisms—they have all of the joy and very little of the stress of weddings. And they are completely unpredictable, because you never know what the children will do.

 

But this particular baptism wasn’t unpredictable because of the baby, but because of the godfather. There he was, holding that sweet little girl, bending down towards the baptismal font so I could do my water-pouring thing, when we all heard a loud and unexpected splash. And there, floating to the bottom of the font, was one very damp pager, which had, apparently, fallen out of the godfather’s shirt pocket.

 

Before I could censor myself, I laughed out loud. It was obviously NOT funny to the godfather who seemed poised to ditch the baby and go fishing for his precious pager, but the symbolism struck my funny bone hard, and it was all I could do to maintain my serious and pious liturgical composure. God seemed to be speaking in that unexpected moment, a moment that could have been a turning point if the godfather had been open to it.

 

Our Gospel reading today reveals another turning point, one that is not unrelated to the pager story. In this scene we see Jesus at his grumpiest—in all of his “don’t bother me I haven’t had my morning coffee yet” glory.

 

This is kind of a disturbing story because Jesus really comes off as a bit of a jerk, here. He is intolerant, rude, and outright insulting. This is not the “tender and mild” savior we love to adore, this is the “what side of bed did you get up on, and why don’t you go back to bed and try it again” savior that never really caught on in popular piety. Statues of Jesus flipping worshippers the bird were briefly produced in Florence in the 14^th century, but quickly fell out of favor after the encyclical entitled “Jesu nicitas.” I am, of course, making this up.

 

But you can’t make up the stuff in this gospel reading. Jesus is crass, crude, and NOT out to make friends and influence Canaanites.

 

But it shows us something really important about Jesus’ own understanding of his ministry. He is not interested in helping this woman because he is not here for her. His understanding is very tribal—he’s here to minister to Jews and only Jews. A Canaanite? Why should he bother?

 

Look at what he says to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” I’ve often thought out parish motto should be “we give what is holy to dogs,” but while I mean that ironically and playfully and with no disparagement to canines, Jesus is not being so generous, here. He MEANS to be insulting.

 

But look at what this brave and tenacious woman does. She doesn’t slink away with her figurative tail between her legs. She’s a mother. She’s got a child at stake. She’s FIERCE. And she does not back down. She stands her ground and answers him, and you can almost here her voice dripping with hurt poison: “True,” she says, “But even dogs eat the scraps from the master’s table.”

 

And in this moment, something shifts inside Jesus. It’s not a little thing, it’s a big thing. This moment is the tipping point in the entire Gospel story, where even Jesus realizes that he’s NOT just here for the Jews, but for EVERYBODY.

 

Culturally, we are in the midst of a similar tipping point. We’ve been through quite a few of them in the past couple of centuries. We have moved from the position that “only our tribe matters” to the idea that “only our nation matters,” which is, arguably, an improvement. And we have moved from there to the idea that all white people matter. Within our own lifetimes we have seen the shift to the position that people of all races matter, and even more recently, that people of all sexual orientations matter.

 

But we’re being called beyond that as well. We’re being called beyond the arrogant assumption of human superiority to the great truth that all living creatures matter, and that the earth herself is a living body that must be respected and protected and revered.

 

In this reading we see Jesus coming to the massive realization that his ministry was not about what he thought it was about—it was about much, much more. And thankfully, he was reflective and sensitive enough to see it—that’s why we love him, even when he has an off day.

 

The jury is still out on whether we can learn the same lesson, however. And here is where Kaelin can be our teacher. In this act of baptism we are doing something very counter-cultural and prophetic. In this act we proclaim that it is not just adults that matter, that even this baby—who has earned no praise for his stunning wit or meritorious accomplishments yet—is as important to us as any one of us here.

 

In this act we do not make this child holy, but we symbolically proclaim what is already true, that he is holy by virtue of his birth, his being, and that he ministers that holiness to everyone with the eyes to see it. In other words, he makes US holy, and in this baptism we gratefully receive him and his gift to us.

 

But we also, in this rite, proclaim our responsibility: for Kaelin, for all creatures, for the world, to make it a safe place for Kaelin’s children to be born, free of poverty, hunger, disease, and environmental impoverishment.

 

Kahlil Gibran wrote in the reading we just heard that our children do not belong to us, and that is wisdom. What he did not say was that we DO belong to THEM, wholly and completely, and we have a responsibility to pass on to them this world in better shape than we found it.

 

Therefore, in this rite we proclaim that there is no separation between the church and the street, the secular and the sacred. The pager MUST fall into the baptismal font, for there is no part of our life that is not sacred, there is no part of our lives that do not impact the sacred lives of others. We are responsible for EVERY part of our lives, and we are responsible to him (Kaelin).

 

THAT is a tall order. But here we are, like Jesus, staring at the Canaanite woman, the prophetic word has been spoken, and what are we going to do? What way will we tip? Are we going to spit on her and tell her to go away, or are we going to let our hearts melt within us, dissolving millennia of prejudice and anthropomorphic arrogance and recognize all of being as worthy of our love and care and respect and reverence and ministry?

 

God loves to shock us out of our complacency, out of our ideological ruts. And he’ll use anything at hand: a plucky foreign lady, animals, children, even a pager dropped in a bowl of blessed water. What do we need to open our eyes to the blessedness of all things? This morning, we will use water and oil to recognize the blessedness of Kaelin. Let us learn from him, and carry this awareness to all the world. Let us pray…

 

You almost blew it, Jesus.

But at the last moment,

you met the Canaanite woman with that love you’re famous for.

Help us to have a similar change of heart,

as a race of creatures, as a culture, and as individuals,

To behold the blessedness of all beings,

And to act as if that sacredness mattered,

Not just in church, but in all our affairs.

For in doing so we will proclaim your good news to all creatures,

And baptize the whole of life, in holiness and wholeness.

For we ask this in the name of Mr. Grumpy-pants, our Lord. Amen.

SERMON: Get Out of the Boat

As many of you know, I preached my first sermon when I was fifteen years old, and was licensed as a minister in the Baptist church at sixteen. My vocation floundered after we left that church, but many years later, while I was doing my Master’s degree at Holy Names College, it reemerged in a kind of surprising way. I had been studying with the world-famous neo-pagan theologian Starhawk, and had learned much about that tradition. I enjoyed it, and when several friends who resonated with that path asked me to perform life-cycle rituals for them, well, how could I refuse.

 

But it felt odd, because, well, as much as I enjoyed doing the rituals, it was not my path. I was an Episcopalian, and quite an ardent one at the time, I must say. The requests to officiate for people however just kept coming, and it precipitated a minor crisis of identity. What emerged from that crisis was a renewal of my vocation as a Christian minister. I discerned that God was calling me to be a priest, nudged along by my neo-pagan-leaning friends, which is kind of weird in the way that God often is.

 

So I stepped out on faith, and paid a visit to the Episcopal Seminary just a few blocks from here. And I was told, rather coldly, too, that if I didn’t have $35,000 I could pretty much forget it.

 

I was stunned. Floored, really. I sat before God and prayed, “Okay, Lord, I believe you are calling me to be a priest, but here’s this brick wall. What do you want me to do?”

 

That very day I saw an ad in the back of Gnosis magazine, advertising vocations in the Church of Antioch, one of the largest churches in the Old Catholic Succession in the US. Thinking “what the heck?” I answered the ad, and within a week, I was speaking on the telephone with Bishop Tim Barker. He asked me for a transcript of my Master’s degree in Spirituality, and assigned some reading for me. And then he asked me how soon I could drive up to Seattle to be ordained a deacon.

 

Well, I was stunned. Should I do this? I asked myself. I started reading the material on Old Catholicism, and quite frankly, some of it scared the willies out of me, because every tale of an earnest and hard-working minister of the Gospel was followed by another depicting a minister who was a slimy crackpot selling self-generated indulgences door-to-door, or baptizing kittens.

 

Now, I’m more amenable to the baptism of felines these days than I was then, which I hope doesn’t put me in the crackpot camp, but still at the time I was deeply concerned. I pleaded with God about whether or not I should go, and I agonized about it as I have about few things since.

 

But what came to me was that what I was afraid of was mostly the unknown. I believed—as I still believe—that the call was real. All that was needed was the courage to face the mystery, to walk out into the unknown, trusting that all would be well in the end.

 

I remembered this crossroads in my own life when I was pondering the Gospel reading for today. The passage actually paints a pretty frightening scene. Here are the disciples, being blown about in a storm in this tiny little boat, and they look out and see this figure walking towards them on the water. Suddenly, they are not just frightened for their lives, they’re frightened for their souls—who knows what kind of supernatural beastie it was coming towards them! But then Jesus calls out saying, “Don’t be afraid, it’s me!”

 

Everyone is relieved of course, but then look what Peter does. He says this really crazy thing: “Hey, why don’t I climb out of the boat and walk on the waves WITH you”—in the middle of this choppy lake in a storm.

 

Right, he’s nuts. But you have to admire that magnitude of nuttiness. I mean, it’s not baptizing kittens, nuts, but it’s pretty nutty. And this is what makes Peter stand out from the crowd, too. HE GETS OUT OF THE BOAT.

 

It took a lot of courage to do that. And, of course, he didn’t do it perfectly. He did it irratically, he did it with help, he fell and got back up again. But HE DID IT.

 

It’s hard to have that kind of courage. It takes work to have that kind of trust—that God is going to catch us, that everything will be okay. Because really following Jesus, really doing what we were put here to do, really living up to the full potential of what we were made to be—that takes guts, maybe even madness.

 

And in some ways it’s even more scary for us today than it was for Peter. Because back then, Peter could see Jesus with his own eyes. We can’t do that today. We have to take it on faith that he is there. On the other hand, we aren’t bucking about in a rowboat in the middle of a storm. I’ll see your choppy waves, and raise you one unseen deity, Peter, because it’s still hard.

 

I haven’t always had that kind of guts. There are plenty of times when, presented with a major crossroads of faith, I turned around. But I’m grateful that when it really mattered, like my call to the Old Catholic priesthood, I was able to get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus, scary as it was.

 

And I know I’m not the only person in this congregation who has had that kind of courage. One of the most courageous people I know, in fact, is Clare Hedin. I remember when she first showed up here at Grace North Church, the first time I heard her sing. I said to myself, “This woman is the real deal,” because she quite literally knocked my socks off. And she has rendered me equally sockless many times since.

 

I especially admire her faith in her own gifts, her courage in offering those to others in a variety of contexts, and her desire to use everything she has been given for the healing and reconciliation of the world. That takes faith. That takes guts.

 

I feel grateful to have been one of the people in this life to have heard her, and to be ministered to by her. I am honored to play on her team, because she inspires me to present my own gifts with courage, and indeed, sometimes shames me that I have not been a better steward of my gifts.

 

And that’s why I admire Clare—she’s one of the craziest people I know. Because regardless of the odds against her, regardless of the magnitude of pain in the world or in her own life, regardless of the people who wish she would just shut up and be a good sheep, she has the guts to GET OUT OF THE BOAT.

 

I don’t suffer under the illusion that she walks on water, of course. She slips around as much as anyone. But she’s OUT OF THE BOAT, following to the best of her ability, the call of the divine to use her gifts to make this world a better place.

 

I love you, Clare—your surfing ministers to me, and when at times I’m feeling shy and insecure—and I do have my moments—I think of you, and it helps me to leap over the rail onto the waves.

 

Clare is not the only person in this community with that kind of courage, of course. We have no shortage of surfers, here. Diane inspires me, too, with her willingness to throw caution to the wind and enter seminary in her fifties. Ric inspires me to live my faith out loud, despite the ignorance and prejudice in the world, and regardless of how people might misunderstand me. Anne and Elvira inspire me with the innovative business that they’ve started. Phyllis and Lola, in both their faithful service, and their equally faithful setting of boundaries to preserve themselves.

 

Each in your own ways, you have displayed the courage to leave the safety of the boat, and chance the mystery of the waves, walking towards that voice that calls you to be who you are, and to do what you are here to do.

 

I have often said, it is not the job of the priest to serve the world, it is the job of the priest to encourage the people in the pews in their ministries, because it is each of YOU who serve the world. We meet here to encourage and inspire and support one another, so that each of us can bring forth our gifts and share them, no matter how scary the storm, how uncertain our footing, or how distant God might seem to us at any given moment.

 

It takes a lot of chutzpah to jump that rail and get out of the boat. Conventional wisdom, of course says “stay put where it’s safe,” but Jesus says, “Come.” Bring forth that beautiful voice that is yours alone, like Clare. Jesus says, “Come.” Bring the gifts of service that give you life, like Phyllis. Jesus says, “Come.” Be willing to take a chance at the very age that others are becoming set in their ways, like Diane. Jesus says, “Come.” Come be part of a crazy church that will affirm you in your ministry, just as it did me.

 

Only you can say what you are here to do, and only you can do it. And only you can choose to walk on the waves, crazy as that might sound to anyone else. But if God is calling, even if you can’t see him, I encourage you to hear that voice saying, “It’s me. Don’t be afraid. Come.”

 

Let us pray…

 

Jesus, in the midst of a storm,

You met those who loved you,

You comforted them, you saved them,

And you bid them come to you,

Even when it seemed like madness.

Give us the courage for such madness today,

Meet us in the storm, catch us when we fall, so that we might follow you into impossible places, and further confound the world, and through us heal it, renew it, and show it thy love. Amen.

SERMON: Loaves and Fishes

This week I passed a significant milestone in my life. I completed the first draft of my novel. My first novel. It’s 520 pages long, and I actually got to write the words THE END at the end of it. I’ll probably erase those, but man! It felt good to write them.

 

And it was hard, too. I mean, I’ve written books before, but they were always non-fiction, theology. You do an outline, you sit down, you pound it out. Boom! You’re done. But fiction, that’s HARD. I’ve been on the steepest learning curve I’ve ever encountered writing this book, and I have learned so much about plotting, pacing, characterization, and something that surprised me, point of view was a toughie.

 

But as challenging as it has been, it has also been exhilarating. I usually write for an hour a day, and unlike many other projects I’ve worked on, writing this book I have almost always felt like I had more energy, more life, more zip than I did when I sat down to write.

 

Now, I don’t know if it’s any good, of course. It could be that this book is complete crap. But I do know that what it has done in me to write it is nothing short of miraculous. I’ve put in a little bit of effort, and yet I feel like what I’ve gotten back from it is exponentially larger. It defies logic, yet if our Gospel story is any indication, it might be some kind of cosmic law, as well.

 

In this reading, Jesus is doing what he is here to do. He’s ministering to people, he’s teaching them. He is in the center of his integrity, and even though he gets tired, there seems to be no bottom to the well he’s drawing from. He’s handing out the small amount of bread he’s got, but for some reason, it doesn’t seem to give out, there’s enough for everybody, in fact, there’s more than enough.

 

The world’s economies work on what is called a scarcity model—there’s only so much stuff in the world, so we have to hoard it and make sure only the right people get what little there is. Even the church has operated on this model. In the Anselmian model of the atonement—the model still proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church—there is only so much grace in the world, and it must be doled out a little at a time, through the sacraments, and only to those people who deserve it.

 

But the Gospel turns this upside down. The Gospel preaches an abundance model. The Gospel proclaims that there is enough for everybody, that we should be wasteful, even wonton with our valuables—with our food, with food and shelter, with affection, with our creativity, with laughter and tears and especially with love.

 

Lao Tzu says the Tao is a well that is continually drawn from, but which never dries up. Now, it’s true that there may only be so much oil buried under the sands, but we got along fine without it for millions of years, and we’ll find a way to go on without it again. But of the things that REALLY matter—compassion, forgiveness, love, creativity—there is no shortage on these things. These are things people really need. And if we made a little effort and stopped this hoarding nonsense, little things like food and shelter would be no problem, either. There is enough in the world for everyon, everyone, everyone to live a full and happy life.

 

In our own parish, we’ve been struggling with this balance of scarcity and abundance. I don’t think this is because we have bought into the scarcity model, but because we have not been operating out of our own integrity. We are a spiritual community. It is not our calling to run a business, to manage property and tenants, or to maintain buildings. It is not what we are here to do, it is not something we are necessarily very good at. No wonder it sapped all of our strength and almost forced us to collapse.

 

We went through a very difficult time, there, where there was no energy or new life, or creativity, or vitality. And we’ve all been very tired.

 

But Jesus doesn’t call us to that kind of life. Jesus says that he came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. I don’t know about you, but I am so ready for some of that abundant life in our community. I am ready for some fun, I’m ready to get together with my friends and do something OTHER than pour over by-laws. I’m ready to brainstorm, to vision, to dream, to get creative with ritual, music, liturgy, and art. I’m so done being a businessman—I’m ready to be a human being again. How about you?

 

I thank God that Mary Sue showed up on our doorstep—that we can hand over to her the things that excite her and give her life—those very same things that sapped life from you and me.

 

As our readings a few weeks ago from St. Paul attest, the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” because we all have gifts and talents that contribute to the whole. And when each and every one of us is operating from the center of our integrity, which we are all doing those things that excite us, that spark our creativity, that give us life, then the story of the loaves and fishes is not just a quaint myth but a living reality in our midst. When we are each doing the things we are on this earth to do, none of us will feel put upon, or burned out, or abused—just the opposite. We will have energy and creativity and drive to burn.

 

So whatever your gift is—whether it’s writing novels, or sermons, or songs, whether it’s making furniture, or painting paintings, or healing or cooking or massage, whether it’s done in community or alone—I encourage you to DO THAT. And there’s a word for what you’re doing: MINISTRY. For when you are in the center of your integrity, when you are doing the very thing you are here on this earth to do, you edify not only yourself, not only the people around you, not only your community, but the world.

 

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that when you are doing the thing that you do best, you are ministering to God. Because when you are doing that thing you do, you unleash a torrent of abundance that heals and nurtures and inspires everyone. And THAT is the abundant life that Jesus calls us to, both as individuals and as a community.

 

The Buddha said that he distrusts miracles, and if by miracles you mean something that a rare few people can do, something extraordinary and supernatural, then I have to agree with him, because it distracts us from what we are here to do. But what Jesus did with those loaves and fishes, that wasn’t a miracle. That was something that each and every one of us is called to do, every day of our lives: What we are here to do. Because when we can do that, everyone benefits, and there’s always enough to go around, and more to spare.

 

So if you’re tired, worn out, or discouraged, I invite you to ask yourself, “Is this what I’m here to do?” Because I suspect if it is, you wouldn’t be tired, and if it isn’t, why are you knocking yourself out? And what are you waiting for? Let us pray…

 

Holy and inspiring God,

Thank you for helping us hold things together over the past several months.

But now, it seems we have turned a corner,

Help us to take a step back and reassess where we are putting our energy.

Help us to identify those things that you are truly calling us to do

And give us the courage and the willingness to do those things,

Not only for our own salvation,

But for the salvation of the world,

For we ask this in the name of the one who taught us

from the center of his integrity, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON: The Rectification of Names

When I was about twelve, I had a very humiliating experience. Actually, twelve was a particularly humiliating year, but one experience stands out as being especially humbling. My family was entertaining one weekend, and one of my father’s colleagues, an FBI agent, was standing with my father and I around the barbeque grill. Now, my father spent his entire careers as a federal agent, so our house was a veritable parade of FBI, Customs agents, and Postal Inspectors. My father enjoyed entertaining his colleagues, and I always got a thrill being around non-church people. They always seemed so…dangerous. Forget the fact that they were FBI agents, it was the fact that they didn’t go to our church that made them suspect and exiting. 

 

So on this particular day, my dad’s FBI friend asked me about school. And, grateful to be included in the conversation, and eager to make a good impression, I answered him. 

 

I don’t remember what I said. It wasn’t anything special that I recall. But what I do remember is this: my father stiffened, his jaw tightened, and he turned red as a beet. When I was finished speaking, he turned to his friend, and apologized for me. “Don’t mind him,” he said, “he’s just showing off. His vocabulary is a bit too big for his britches.”

 

I was horrified. I felt ashamed. I was just being myself, and my Dad was ashamed of me. I don’t remember what I did after that, but I remember wanting to run up to my room, or maybe crawl under a rock.

 

I should have known something like that would happen. My parents were very big on the cliché, “Act your age.” Although usually they used it to mean I wasn’t acting as mature as I should be, perhaps I should have been prepared to be reprimanded for acting too old for my age. 

 

Acting in a way that is appropriate to one’s station is very important in traditional societies, and even though my mother loved Elvis Presley, my childhood was very Traditional in many respects. Other cultures, of course, are much more strict. Many of them have very clearly defined roles that are sanctioned by the religious establishment, and stepping outside of those roles can have dire consequences. 

 

One great proponent of strictly defined roles was the ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius. He saw the chaos in his society, and attributed it to the fact that people were not properly respecting their roles. Fathers were not acting like fathers, mothers were not acting like mothers, sons were not acting like sons, rulers were not acting like rulers, slaves were not acting like slaves, and therefore, society was in grave peril. His answer was something called the Rectification of Names, which sounds very fancy, but actually just means, “act your age,” or, in a more extended way, “act according to your role and station.”

 

If you’re a father, act like a father, take command, demand obedience and respect. If you are a daughter, act like a daughter, do whatever your parents say without question and marry to person they pick out for you and don’t say boo about it. Because the salvation of society depends upon it, this Rectification of Names must be enforced, which would have been a lot easier if Confucius had ever gotten a ruler who decided to put his philosophy into practice. Fortunately for obstinate daughters throughout China, that didn’t happen. 

 

Not that it’s my intention to bag on Confucius, although if the Taoists are to be believed, he really had it coming. But I’m suspicious of anyone who comes along and says, “this is how certain people ought to behave, OR ELSE.”

 

What would have happened if everyone had simply kept in their “proper” place? Almost nothing important in history. What if the Continental Congress had stayed in line and never had a revolution? What if Gandhi had stayed in his place? What if Martin Luther had never questioned the wisdom of Rome? What if Jesus had acted like a normal, acceptable prophet? 

 

Well, he probably wouldn’t have been killed. Nor would Martin Luther King, Jr., had he stayed in his “proper” place. There is a bumper sticker I love that says, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” And that’s true of men, too. 

 

Jesus’ wisdom in our Gospel reading today runs directly counter to the Traditional wisdom that Confucius and almost every other society espouses. It is almost impossible for us to decide, when we are in the thick of things, what is good and what is evil. 

 

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t practice discernment, or that we shouldn’t punish violent offenders, but it does mean that we should avoid condemning people in the name of God just because they color outside of the lines. If we did, we would eliminate every artist, every poet, every sage, every prophet, every inventor, every person that propels society forward scientifically, artistically, socially, and morally. 

 

It’s simply not our call. Only God gets to judge someone’s worth on this earth, and as long as you’re not actively hurting another person, I say, let your freak flag fly. God knows there are people who would like to see the doors of this church close, because there’s hardly a line in Christianity that we haven’t completely ignored with our crayons.

 

But I thank God that we are a Congregational church, and that no bishop, no synod has the power to close our doors because we refuse to follow the rules. 

 

And the same goes for you. I’ve heard lots of people say, “I’m not a Christian because I don’t believe what the church teaches.” But I say to you, if you want to call yourself a Christian, do it! If you want to call yourself a Hindu or a Zoroastrian, knock yourself out–you’ll still be welcome to dine at this table. 

 

Let the darnel grow up with the wheat, because as Lissa has informed us, not all wheat is good, and, quite frankly, some of my favorite people are darnel. Let’s let people be who they are, and let God decide the value of a person’s life. More than that, I hope you will be who YOU are, and trust God that where you have been led is a valuable place. 

 

Because, in truth, no one is completely wheat, or completely darnel. We are all of us fields sown with mixed seed. And at the end of time when the darnel is gathered up and burned, when all that is unreal is revealed to be the illusion that it is, the good crop that God has sown in us will come to fruition. The question isn’t what kind of grain are we, but how much goodness can we yield? And the truth is, we don’t always yield the best crop by following the rules, staying in our place, or coloring inside the lines. Let us pray…

 

Jesus, you are the coyote

that tricked the world.

You flattened mountains,

and raised up the valleys,

humbled the proud, 

and the ennobled the humble. 

Work your counter-cultural grace in us,

that we may value the unique people you have made us to be,

no matter who it ticks off. 

Help us to reserve judgment,

of others, and of ourselves,

that we may, with Mechtild of Magdeburg,

live welcoming to all. Amen.

SERMON: “…depending as our ancestors did upon the Holy Spirit…”

It was one of those nightmare spiritual direction sessions. Mary was a regular client, and had been wrestling hard with God. As is often the case, the God she had been given as a child in a very conservative Catholic home was rearing his ugly head, and she felt angry, hurt, and abused.

 

Now, normally, I do a lot more listening than I do talking, in spiritual direction. Mostly I just nod, say an encouraging “uh-huh,” and trust that the client and God are going to do most of the work. I just rent the space, watch the clock, and referee, when either God or the client get out of hand.

 

But sometimes, just sometimes, I feel compelled to say something. I usually resist this impulse, because, well, what do I know?

 

On this particular occasion, as Mary was tearfully agonizing over a God that didn’t deserve her, I felt this insistent nudge, and a complete sentence leaped into my head. Inwardly I recoiled at that thought. “I can’t say that,” I thought, “that’s malpractice!” And I ignored it, and just stayed present with my client.

 

But a few minutes later, there was that nudge again, and once again, that dangerous thought, fully formed in my mind.

 

In my mind’s eye I turned to God, who, inexplicably appeared to me as an insistant basset hound. “No,” I said firmly, “Bad god. Go away.” And I turned my attention once again to Mary.

 

But the dog god was not to be so easily rebuffed. A few minutes later, it felt like someone was poking me in the kidneys with an arrow. And again, this irresponsible sentence presented itself.

 

I didn’t know what to do. Or rather, I did know what to do, but I didn’t want to do it. Finally, I realized that God wasn’t going to shut up until he got what he wanted out of me, and if I wasn’t going to listen to him, I might as well go into some other business. So I screwed up my courage, opened my mouth, and let that horrible sentence fly.

 

“You know, your god sounds like a real jerk. Why don’t you fire his sorry butt and hire someone else?”

 

She looked at me as if I had just slapped her. “Can I do that?” she asked.

 

“Heck, I even have some pink paper, here,” I told her. “I’ll help you write out his pink slip.”

 

She looked transfigured, as if this thought had never occurred to her. She looked scared, but hopeful, too. I breathed a great sigh of relief when I realized that I was not in danger of a malpractice suit, and inwardly begging God to behave himself. 

 

God is not going to behave, however. It is not in God’s nature to behave according to culturally accepted norms and standards of behavior. As Lucy Pevensie says in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “He’s not a tame lion, but he’s good.”

 

You can’t trust him to behave, but you CAN trust him to do the right thing in the long run. This is especially true when we are discussing the Holy Spirit, which, as the Gospel of John tells us, “lists where it will.”

 

Now the Holy Spirit gets kind of short shrift in Christianity these days. It’s kind of the afterthought in church teaching—and practice, for that matter.

 

But really, the Holy Spirit is that part of God with which we are most intimately concerned. Whilst God the Father is usually pictured as a remote, aloof, absentee landlord, and everyone loves Jesus, because he’s a nice guy and, arguably, has the Greatest Story Ever Told, it is the Holy Spirit that is that part of God that is actually here, rolling up her sleeves, and doing the hard work.

 

According to Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is that part of God that is also part of us, filling us, mystically uniting us to the Body of Christ, and therefore, to God. Because the Holy Spirit is in us, we are united to God, and have the wisdom of God at our disposal at all times. The Holy Spirit is that part of God that whispers to us, when we cooperate and get quiet enough to hear her, that is.

 

In the Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate that time when our reading from the prophet Joel came to pass, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon all the earth, and the power and wisdom of God became available to all peoples, including you and me.

 

But it’s one thing to have power, to have wisdom, but it’s another thing to trust it. The problem is that in trusting God we put ourselves in a very vulnerable position, because often what the Holy Spirit counsels us to do just seems crazy, or irresponsible, or embarrassingly bad form. But as scripture reminds us, “God’s ways are not our ways,” and as I experienced with Mary, sometimes we have to take that leap of faith, and trust that what the Holy Spirit is poking at us about is really the right thing to do, scary as that might be.

 

But this is precisely what our covenant calls us to do, to depend upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit, just as our ancestors did.

 

It seemed easier somehow, when our ancestors did it. After all, it was THEM taking the risk, not us. But in truth, it was just as scary for them—and often even scarier, because there was often a lot more at risk for them than there is for us today.

 

Honestly, sometimes I just feel like a spiritual whiner. I can just hear God mocking me, “What? You don’t want to look like an idiot? You don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable? That’s nothing! Why not try contemplating burning at the stake sometime?” I realize this is a curmudgeonly game of “you think you’ve got it bad,” but when you play with saints, they can almost always trump you.

 

Which is humbling, and inspiring, because our tradition bears testimony to God’s faithfulness throughout the ages, in far more dire circumstances than you or I will ever face. Trusting God seems easy when there is little at stake, but when it’s your life or your family’s life, that’s hard.

 

Fortunately, there’s a learning curve, here. God isn’t asking us, here and now, to gamble everything. God is asking us to trust in small ways. Once we have learned that God is faithful in small things, we feel better about trusting him with the big things as well. Sure, it’s not terribly heroic, but it’s human, and God’s pretty good at working with humans. Didn’t used to be, but hey, even God has a learning curve, and is much better at it than he used to be.

 

And the Holy Spirit is always with us. Directing our dreams, pricking our conscience, making maddening suggestions to us when we’re trying to work responsibly. And here’s what we can trust—that God is not going to go away, that the Holy Spirit is always available to us, comforting us and whispering to us. She is, if nothing else, dependable. Relentless? Sure. Infuriating? Often. But dependable? Oh, yes. If only we will be quiet enough to hear her, and trusting enough to heed her. Let us pray…

 

Come, Holy Spirit,

Fill us with your wisdom, love, and power,

Help us to trust thy still small voice within us, to lead us into all truth,

And make of us a blessed community,

bearing witness to the world of they faithfulness.

For we ask this in the name of Jesus,

who had to go away so that you could come and minister to us. Amen.

SERMON: …the reign of peace and universal friendship…

When I was a student at California Baptist College, I hung with a pretty cool bunch of people. Sure, most of us had a reputation for being heretical or rebellious or even outright subversives, but we relished in this association. At a conservative Baptist college, being known as the “bad boys and girls” was a pretty good thing, and the worst of us weren’t actually that bad at all by the standards of the “real” world.

 

But we also attracted those who were outcast for other reasons, such as the morbidly annoying. I am thinking of one young woman, I will call her Cheri. Cheri had an uncanny ability to stop any conversation cold by the long and careful articulation of completely arcane arguments having only the slimmest relevance to the conversation at hand, if any. These would often be interrupted by a description of a recent dream, which were always fanciful in the extreme, and, at least to my ears, smacked of contrivance.

 

The point is that whenever Cheri wandered into a conversation, it was as much as over, because it would be a good five or ten minutes before anyone else would be able to contribute again, and we all knew that by that time, Cheri would be halfway around the world from where we began.

 

She started hanging out in the coffee shop that I and many of the other of the suspect element on campus spent our time, and very quickly people began to avoid her.

 

As much as anyone I had felt annoyed at her complete absence of social skills, but I also felt really, really sorry for her. She looked like the person I felt like in High School. In college I became quite big man on campus in my own small, intellectual way, but I had certainly not forgotten what it had felt like to be the unpopular outcast.

 

As I saw Cheri sitting on the couch alone, with a face drooping like a bassett hound, I made a commitment to God that I would be her friend.

 

Now, I don’t tell many stories in which I pat myself on the back, and this isn’t really one of those, either, because the story doesn’t really have much of a happy ending. Many times over the next several years did I curse myself for that decision. And yet I knew at the time—and still believe it to be now—the right decision to have made.

 

As hard as it was to hang in there and be Cheri’s friend, not just sometimes, but most of the time, I learned a valuable lesson about spiritual community from her.

 

For some people, friendship is easy. For others, it’s quite the opposite. And some people are easy to be friends with—others, like Cheri, are a challenge.

 

As anyone who has been married for any length of time can attest, love is a choice, a commitment. It is not something  that just happens to you, or that necessarily comes easily. Even in the best of relationships, it is sometimes very hard work. And in those relationships that are not the best, it is even harder.

 

And, unfortunately, it isn’t really the easy stuff that God calls us too, either as individuals, or as a community, or as a culture.

 

The vision that is given to us in our readings today is of a world that is devoid of hatred, warfare, despair, and death—and, my guess is, pretty light on adolescent ostracisation as well. It’s a grand vision and the central image that guides the eschatology of liberal Christianity and Judaism. While the Evangelicals are talking about the Rapture it is this image of the great feast at the world’s end, where none shall be hungry, where no violence mars the mood, where the veil of shame will be swept away, and death is swallowed up forever that forms our theology, our mission, and our commitment to social justice.

 

It’s a wonderful vision, except for one thing—it’s too global. It’s so global, that I have a hard time imagining what that’s like on the small scale of my daily human interactions. You tell me a thousand dollars, that that’s a lot of money, but I can get my head around it. You say a hundred billion dollars and that’s just an abstract idea—I have no idea what that kind of money is actually like.

 

I think it’s the same with what our covenant calls “the reign of peace and universal friendship.” The notion of world peace and the eradication of all suffering is too big to really grasp, but peace in the small world in which I actually live is a very desirable and inviting thing.

 

And I really do believe that this is the purpose of the local church. This community is the world in miniature. We have all kinds of people here, and we don’t always agree with each other, and sometimes we fight, and often we hurt each other. This is just normal, typical human stuff. But our faith—and our covenant—calls us to be more, to go further, to work harder towards a more sublime goal: that of real friendship.

 

Friendship, like marriage, is hard work. It requires patience, effort, and forgiveness. It requires real listening even when we feel like we have it all figured out, and self-forgiveness when it finally dawns on us that we don’t.

 

The local church is a laboratory where the experiment of world peace is practiced and perfected. Because, really, my friends, if we can’t do it here, what hope do we have of making it happen OUT THERE.

 

And the truth is, we can’t do it, not now, not yet. We have a lot of growing to do before we can perfect this practice. And that’s okay. Because it is the very effort that is going to grow our souls, that will create in us the capacity for lovingkindness and forbearance that world peace requires. Living in community gives us the tools we need up close, so that we can turn and use those tools for the healing of the world.

 

The old cliché is “charity begins at home,” and there is a lot of truth in that. The reign of peace and universal friendship begins right here, within these walls, in how we treat one another, and whether or not we make the commitment and the effort to love one another.

 

It isn’t easy, far from it, but more than any other goal articulated by any prophet or theologian or preacher, it is what we are here to do.

 

And it WILL grow us. It WILL transform us. It WILL make us better people. It WILL make of us a healing community. Not instantly, not easily, not without great aggrevation, but without DOUBT, it will.

 

This is what Jesus means when he says the Kingdom of God is in our midst. It isn’t coming in some far off time. It isn’t something that will be imposed on us from without. It isn’t something that we will awaken into after this life. The Kingdom of God is here, the moment we decide to act as if it WERE here, the moment we make a commitment to live in it, the moment we sieze the responsibility for our own spirituality, and our own community.

 

And believe me, we won’t be doing it alone. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to love one another, even when we are hard to love. With the help of the sacraments we can keep our nose on course towards the true and prophetic meaning of this common table. With the help of one another, we can make this community a place where even Cheri would feel welcomed and loved.

 

I invite you, as we recite our parish covenant today, to make that commitment with me. Because if we can’t do it here, what hope can we have for the world? Let us pray…

 

Holy One, you call us to an awesome destiny,

and lay upon us a profound responsibility,

to take responsibility for peace in the small arena of our own lives.

Let it begin in us, let it grow in us, let it radiate from us,

and from the millions of other communities

that profess your vision of a transformed humanity,

that we may create peace in all the world.

For we ask this in the name of the prince of peace, even Jesus Christ. Amen.