transgressive theology

One day not too long ago, a woman came to me for her monthly spiritual direction session—we’ll call her Eileen, shall we? As we sat together, she poured out her frustration at her seeming inability to maintain a spiritual practice.

“If I try to pray,” she said, “I just feel like a fake. And meditation? I’m terrible at it! I feel like a spiritual failure.”

What complicated her situation was that, like me, Eileen had been raised in a conservative Christian home, and was, in fact, a preacher’s kid. Because of this she had a pretty well-defined notion of just what constituted spiritual practice, devotion, and discipline. The tragedy was, none of it was working for her.

Part of the problem, of course, was that while her theology had evolved, her notion of how to deepen that understanding had not.

I certainly sympathized. As a good little southern Baptist boy, I knew that any successful Christian life required twenty minutes of quiet time with God, twenty minutes of Bible study, and twenty minutes of intercessory prayer, all before breakfast.

And does any of that stuff work for me now? It does not. Even if I had not struggled with it myself, I would know that Eileen’s struggle is not unique—it is one that I encounter frequently.

I asked Eileen if she had heard of the four Hindu yogas—she had, and we reviewed them together. First, there is Bakhti Yoga, the way to God through devotion. Then there is Karma yoga, the way to God through serving people. Third is Jnana Yoga, the way to God through intellectual study; and finally, Raja Yoga, the way to God through meditation.

The wisdom of the Hindu system is that there is not just one way to God, but many, and that different people have different talents and proclivities. What works for one person may not work for another, and this is okay. God is not picky.

The tradition I grew up in was, without a doubt, a Bakhti tradition. One came to God through love and prayer and devotion. The intellect was not highly valued, good works were almost bad words, and meditation would take you straight to hell.

But what I learned is that I am not a Bakhti person. I am a Jnana person. I am never so near to divinity as when I am reading theology, or engaged in a rollicking good philosophical conversation. That, for me, is communion as efficacious as any we receive at this altar.

And once I figured this out, I was able to embrace the way I’m wired, spiritually, and let go of all the unrealistic expectations of my childhood. Not only was I happier, but my spiritual life got better—because I stopped judging myself for not doing what I was never cut out to do, and was able to focus my energies on things that actually worked. What a concept!

It’s too bad that the intellect has gotten such a bad rap in the Christian tradition. It was not always so. And in our parent  tradition, Judaism, the intellect is so revered that it has been deified.

I’m not kidding about that, and it’s not hyerbole. In our reading from the book of Proverbs we see a poetic motif that appears again and again in the Hebrew scriptures—that of the Father imparting wisdom to his child.

For the Jews of the ancient world, Knowledge WAS salvation. In a world where illiteracy was the norm, and where ignorance ruled, knowledge was the one thing that stood between the Jewish people and oblivion.

Not only knowledge of how to read and write, but most especially, knowledge of the Law, of what God required of them, and promised them for their faithfulness.

This salvific principle was so important, that the Jews personified her as the Lady Wisdom—Sophia, in Greek—through whom the whole world came into being, and through whose mouth and ministry salvation was visited upon the Jews. Sophia was seen as the firstborn of God’s creation, a kind of deity herself, through whom God’s glory was made manifest.

In the early Christian tradition, Sophia was revered as well, and in fact, the most glorious basilica in all Christendom is Hagia Sophia in what is now Istanbul.

But the Lady Sophia evolved in the Christian imagination. She wasn’t just God’s right-hand gal, she became the second person of the trinity, who became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The man Jesus, in early Christian teaching, is the mouthpiece of the goddess, Sophia, bringing her saving knowledge to the world.

This is just the Orthodox version of events—the myth evolved even further in Gnostic thought, and in many other systems, but that is beside the point. What matters to us today is that reverence for Knowledge is an ancient and integral part of our tradition, one that has been neglected and deserves to be resurrected.

As I was working on this sermon, it struck me that it isn’t just people that fall into different categories in their approach to God, but that churches do, too. When I think about our parish, it seems pretty obvious that we are not, as a whole, a Bakhti group. We don’t get our spiritual jollies by singing “Oh, How I Love Jesus” around here. And though many of us have a private meditation practice, it is not something we normally do together. And as for serving God by serving others—you know as well as I do that we need to work on that one some more.

No, my friends, it’s time to face the music. We are a Jnana parish. Probably this is one of the reasons that I have always felt so much at home here—and maybe you have to, for this very same reason. We approach God largely through reason, through questioning, through intellectual exploration and learning. It is not for nothing that the little group that came forth from St. Clement’s named itself “The Grace Institute for Religious Learning.” Learning, Knowledge, Wisdom has always been at the center of our spiritual life together. And I am heartened to see that it was a virtue and a path to God that was revered by the framers of our Congregational parish, too—so much so that they enshrined it in our parish covenant. As we “labor for the progress of knowledge” we grow in the Spirit, we are faithful to our call, and we liberate others to thinking deeply and critically about their own faith.

On this father’s day, I think it appropriate to honor the wisdom of our spiritual fathers—those Jewish sages who taught the love of Wisdom to their children at their feet, the church fathers who saw Jesus as the incarnation of Wisdom herself, the scholars and doctors of the church throughout the ages that have challenged our assumptions and kept theology evolving alongside their cultures, and the fathers (and mothers, of course, but they have their own day) of our own parish, those Congregationalists that met on this spot in 1892 and covenanted together using the same words we do this morning, and those who followed another revered Father—Richard—from St. Clement’s to a new destiny together.

Finally, I remember one of the fathers of this congregation, Robert DeVelbiss, a very learned man indeed, who owned more books than his little house could comfortably hold.

More than anyone else, Robert challenged me as a preacher, because he knew more than any person I had ever encountered. There quickly developed between us a very friendly competition. Because I wanted to delight and surprise Robert, I worked really hard to discover esoteric little nuggets of Christian history to insert into my sermons. Sometimes he knew about them, but just as often, he didn’t.

I remember waiting excitedly to talk to him at coffee hour. He would shuffle up to me and wag his soaked cookie in my face and pronounce his judgment. If he said, “Good sermon today, John,” I knew he had won the game that day. If he said, “I didn’t know about so and so!” Then I held my head a little higher, because I had won the game that day.

I still delight in coming up with surprising little nuggets from our weird and wonderful tradition, as well as from other tradition. And it does my heart good that you enjoy them, because, you know, this stuff wouldn’t fly in just any parish. Thank God we’re not just any parish. We have something really unique, here, folks. I can say things from this pulpit that would get me strung up in another church. Stuff that you will never hear in any other church. That makes us special. It means we have something really valuable to offer the world, among many other good things we have to offer.

So don’t feel bad if we don’t pray as earnestly as other people, or don’t have a soup kitchen. That’s all good and important stuff, and we can work on that in the future, but let’s also acknowledge the things we’re good at in the here and now, and that stayng faithful to that is one way that we stay faithful to God, and faithful to our call.

And I gotta tell you, when I told Eileen that stuff about Jnana, you could just see her whole body relax. She began nodding, recognizing her own path with that relief that you feel when someone finally articulates something you have felt was true for a very long time, but could never put it into words. She reads theology and the mystics voraciously. The pursuit of knowledge is for her a variety of salvation, a path to God, a way of being faithful. And realizing that opened a way before her that bore much fruit in her spiritual life. I think that’s true for a lot of us. So instead of apologizing for what we’re not, why don’t we proclaim the salvation that God has given to us in abundance. Let us pray…

God of love and power,

In your infinite wisdom

You sent Jesus Christ to proclaim

Your saving knowledge.

Help us to be true to the yoga,

To the path, that you have set us upon,

To fearlessly purse the progress of knowledge,

in ourelves, in our community, and in the world.

For we ask this in the name of Wisdom made flesh, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

This week I finished reading that contemporary classic of chick travel memoir, EAT, PRAY, LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Call me a hopeless romantic, call me flaming, call me Zha Zha if you must, but I loved it. I totally captivated me. I bought into every step of her journey, and I now count myself as an official convert to armchair tourism.

Only one thing bothered me, and that was the fact that she seemed to think that Christianity had nothing to offer her, and so instead she embraced Hinduism. Now, I LOVE Hinduism, it was my concentration at grad school, and truly one of my favorite subjects. But here’s what bugs me—Hinduism is no less patriarchal or unjust or filled with charlatans or fundamentalists as Christianity is. When something is at a distance, you don’t see all the defects. But since in our culture, Christianity is up close, too often people see nothing BUT the defects and reject the whole thing out of hand.

It isn’t until people go and immerse themselves in another religion for a few years that they finally realize “Huh, this religion is just as screwed up as the one I left behind.” And of course it is. Religions are HUMAN inventions.

But one line from Gilbert’s book really jumped out at me. She said, “Since I don’t believe the Christian dogma, I can’t call myself a Christian.”

I know a lot of people who have excluded themselves from spiritual community for this very reason. “Because I can’t swallow this whole messy ball of belief whole, I have to leave the whole thing behind,” As if it WERE one thing, as if it were one monolithic structure that was fleshed out from the very beginning and endured unchanged for millennia.

But it’s not. People who have called themselves “Christians” throughout the ages have believed a wide variety of things, and worshipped in wildly disparate ways.

I have no problem whatsoever calling myself a Christian—I proclaim in proudly, in fact—in spite of the fact that I do not believe many of the things that the churches throughout the ages have enshrined as dogma.

And, in fact, if believing the dogma were a criteria, we wouldn’t be debating whether or not we are a Christian church, the answer would be no!

So if it isn’t tied to dogma, what does it mean to be a Christian? I believe it means one thing and one thing only: A person is a Christian if he or she reads the stories of Jesus, and finds there guidance for his or her spiritual life. That’s it. No matter what you think about God, about Jesus, about heaven, hell, or reincarnation, if you find meaning for your journey in the Gospels and you want to call yourself a Christian, you have my blessing. Spiritual orientation, like sexual orientation, is a personal and self-selecting thing, and no one gets to say what you are but you.

Our parish covenant, in fact, provides for us a marvelous metaphor for just this sort of identity: “Our purpose is to walk in the way of Christ.” Note it didn’t say, “Our purpose is to accept the Nicene Creed” or “Our purpose is to buy into the Roman Catholic Catechism.” “Our purpose is to walk in the way of Christ.”

That is a liberating image. It is also open to many delightful interpretations. It can mean walking the road that Jesus walked first, or points out to us, or it can mean to walk our own road in the same fashion that Jesus did his—with integrity, sincerity, and courage.

In fact, in the oldest gospels that we possess, the gospels of Mark and Thomas, Jesus doesn’t ask anyone to believe in him, or god forbid, to worship him. He asks them to follow him, to walk the path that he himself is walking. As a community of faith, this is what we are endeavoring to do as well.

What is very interesting is that “The Way” was the name that very early followers of Jesus picked for themselves, long before they were called—or called themselves—Christians. They were simply those who walk the Way. “The Way” is also one way to translate the Chinese word, “Tao,” also known as “the Way of Heaven.”

In his short ministry on this earth, Jesus showed us the Way of Heaven, and we who follow him are those who have been inspired to walk that same road, with whatever insights and hardships that journey entails.

Last week, Ric preached about God’s will, and he got me thinking. A lot of people talk about figuring out God’s will for their lives, as if there is some master plan, and if I don’t figure out what it is, I’ll miss the boat. But I don’t believe that God cares nearly as much about our DESTINATION, as God does about our CONDUCT on this road. God’s will isn’t that we go to this place or that place, but with how we treat each other along the way.

Are we kind? Do we love our enemies? Are we good to those who hate us? Do we bless those who curse us? Do we feed the hungry? Befriend the lonely? Return kind words for angry ones? Do we visit the sick or those in prison?

THIS is the Way of Jesus, and no other.

The way of Jesus isn’t about what we BELIEVE, but about what we DO. You can believe that Jesus was no more than a fair-to-middlin’ philosopher, but if you strive with everything that is in you to love your neighbor as yourself, then you’re a Christian in my book, if you want to call yourself one.

In our church, according to the covenant we profess together, conformity of belief is not a virtue that we pursue—and probably most of us would not consider that a virtue at all.

What we do pursue is unity in purpose, in action. We are committed to walking in the Way of Christ, which is not a Way of Dogma, but instead is a Way of Love. It is, in fact, the Way of Heaven. Let us pray…

Holy, holy, holy

God of power and might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Help us, as we walk our winding ways,

To glorify you with our lives,

Not by what we profess to believe,

Nor by our words, nor even by our identities,

But by the concrete testimony’s of our actions,

Help us to love those we encounter every day,

Especially those who are hardest to love.

And let us not weary on this path,

But follow it to its end,

An eternity of communion and intimacy with Thee,

For we ask this in the Spirit of him

Who blazed this trail, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

My grandmother is a sweet, cantankerous, opinionated and devout Southern Baptist woman, who has, for the whole of my life, graciously given me the “benefit” of her advice and impressions on the world. Which I have always appreciated and cherished, not so much because her perceptions were meritorious in their objectivity and detachment, but because they told me a lot more about her than they did the world.

One of her favorite subjects has always been the state of her local church, which, according to her,s has usually been a sad one. She is forever lambasting the preacher, or the lay leadership, or other people I have never met. One of her favorite screes is, “Satan is out to get our church, John! Whenever we take one step forward, Satan takes us two steps back!”

Now, those of you who know me know I’m not big on the concept of a “personal devil.” I don’t think there’s a being with an independent existence and will who is out to thwart God’s plans, and who takes personal interest in subverting the little things I myself am involved in.

I am, instead, much more inclined to favor the notion of Satan as the personification of our collective shadows, those parts of ourselves that we cannot accept, and so in order to see them at all, we must see them in others, even, in  the case of Satan, a fictional other. 

Now, to some degree all others are fictional–I do not really see you, any more than you really see me. What I see is my projection of who you are. I see the outline of your form, but I interpret the essence of who you are based on my own experiences and opinions of you, which may or may not be in any way accurate. 

And when it is not accurate, especially when I ascribe all kinds of negative things to you, well, only trouble can result. It can indeed seem like Satan is out to get you.

This is exactly the sort of situation Paul was facing when he wrote his letter to the Corinthians. The fledgling church at Corinth was an active, vibrant, exciting place to be. But it was also a community wracked by divisions. It had rich people who flaunted their wealth in the faces of the poor, and refused to assist those less well off then they. It had people who were envious of others in positions of responsibility, and tons and tons of squabbling. There were no fewer than four warring factions within the church, and every faction was  writing  to Paul, begging him to take their side of things and chastise the others. 

Paul, of course, let them all have it. In our reading today he reminded everyone in the church how much they need each other. He tells them how silly it is to try to drive away people just because they disagree with you. It’s like the eye saying to the hand, “I don’t need you!” When, of course, it does.

Meditating on this reading has been particularly poignant for me this week, as I am ruminating on our life together as a parish now that Richard has withdrawn to the Abbey, and we are, for the first time, “on our own” so to speak, without his leadership and guidance. 

I feel that we are all more than adequate to the task, but I also feel like this, like all times of transition, is a vulnerable time for us. If ever Satan were going to come in and upset things, this would be a good time. But instead of projecting the responsibility onto some fictional bogeyman, I’d like to ask us to be careful and take responsibility for our own projections. 

This is the first week that we will be talking about our parish covenant. The first line, which is the subject of this sermon, is “We are united.” 

Now that’s a bold statement. “We are united.” And this, of course, begs the question, are we? Nothing can kill a church faster than division, and unity is an ideal that is worth striving for. 

What causes division? In my experience, division starts when we don’t give each other the benefit of a doubt. Look, we are all a collection of complicated, and often wounded people–I know I am. But I also firmly belive that nobody comes here because they are evil. On the contrary, I firmly believe everyone who is here comes here because they are, at their very core, good people who are trying, with everything that is in them, to be better people. That is my starting point when I consider each and every one of you. I know, and I trust, that every one of us is here because they want to do good in the world, and we have discovered that we can do MORE good in the world together than we can separately. 

Division in the church happens when we lose sight of this very basic assumption. As soon as we decide that someone is intent upon doing evil, whether large or small, the cracks start appearing in our unity. And the moment we start to share those opinions with others, those ideas spread, and the dam breaks, and then it’s all over except for the cleanup crew. 

Now, I’m not saying that any of us is perfect. What I AM  saying is that none of us are evil. We live out our unity in a most imperfect way. We all make mistakes, we all see things through the distortion of our own lenses, we all feel wounded and act out of our woundedness. And it’s when we feel wounded that we hurt each other–not because we want to but because sometimes we just can’t help it. 

And that is precisely why we covenant together. A covenant is not a contract. A contract is a legal agreement, and if one party breaks the agreement, then the contract is null and void. But a covenant is a very different animal indeed. If I make a covenant with you, I am committing to uphold my end of the agreement, even when you don’t, or can’t, until such time as you can do your part again.

A marriage is a covenant. A marriage isn’t over until both parties say it’s over. If one party is unfaithful, the other party holds it together until the first one wises up. 

All of us are unfaithful to our covenants in one way or another. As I said, we live out our commitments imperfectly, because we are human. But part of my covenant with you is that when it seems to be that you are being a complete nincompoop, I am going to keep loving you and supporting you until you wise up and come around so that you can do the same for me. THIS is unity. THIS is the ideal that we aspire to. THIS is the unity that Paul and the Gospel calls us to. This is the unity we profess together when we recite our covenant. 

I need you. And I trust that you need me as well. There is not one expendable person within these walls. We are strong because of our differences, our diversity, in our culture, our affections, and our opinions. 

We have some rocky waters ahead of us, my friends. And we are going to weather this journey much better if we can support and love each other through it. We will do a much better job of that if we can own our own projections, keep the gossip to a minimum, and most of all, give each other the benefit of a doubt. Holding each other in love means assuming that we are each intending to do good, and are pursuing that to the very best of our ability. If you fall short of that, I promise you, I will carry you until you can do better. And I trust that you will do the same for me. Let us pray…

Holy an loving God,

You call us to be a holy people,

and you bid us be one, 

even as you and Jesus are one.

Protect us from division,

help us to see the best in one another,

and help us to hold and help each other when we fail.

Send your Holy Spirit upon us in this season of Pentecost,

to make us one, 

and to witness to your power 

in our midst and in the world.

For we ask this in the Spirit of the Living Christ, Amen.              

My sister has always been difficult. While we were growing up, my parents had a number of nicknames for her that are testament to the force of Tiffany’s will: “the Brat” and “the Terror” among them. But my favorite was, “Monster” and as far as I was concerned, that was pretty accurate. I lived in perpetual fear of the times my parents would go out and leave Tiffany in my care. I can recall days when I ran through my entire savings in bribes just to get her to behave. They say that poverty and peace often go together, and if my early babysitting experiences are any indication, there is truth to this. 

Consequently, I did not grow up with a great deal of fondness for my sister. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have always loved her, but I have not always LIKED her. In fact, she frequently made me so mad I would plead for God’s intervention. Specifically, I would ask God to take revenge upon her, mostly because I was too much of a coward to do it myself. So when I earnestly prayed that God would cause her mouth to stretch until the front of her face fell off, I couldn’t understand why God did not grant my humble and most sincere request. Especially since I ended my prayer with the magic formula that made every prayer a sure-fire winner. I prayed, “In Jesus’ name.” 

I’m only half joking when I call this a “magic formula,” because in the Evangelical church in which I was raised, this phrase is taken very seriously indeed. For many Christians, a prayer that does not end with this phrase just doesn’t get past the ceiling. God is leaning precariously off of his cloud clutching his ear horn until that magical clause is added that suddenly makes all prayer audible to the Almighty. 

Not only does adding this clause make the prayer audible to God, but it makes the prayer efficacious as well. Jesus, at the end of today’s reading, says, “Whatever you ask in my name I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me ANYTHING in my name, I will do it.” 

Now, obviously, I was abusing this verse when I asked God, in Jesus’ name, to de-face my sister, but I was certainly not alone. Christians have been abusing the privilege of their prayers for centuries based on this verse. By the power of this verse, God’s wrath has been called down upon the Jews, the Muslims, the homosexuals, the witches, the Catholics, the Commies, the hippies, and difficult siblings everywhere. It has been used for everything from invoking genocide to starting stalled cars. It is, in fact, one of the most abused verses in the Bible. 

Coming as it does from the Gospel of John, we have to remember that this verse was written when the fledging Christian church was undergoing extreme persecution. The Gospel’s author wanted to comfort his readers, to give them a sense of Jesus’ presence and power in their midst. He wanted them to feel empowered, that God was on their side, and would not abandon them. That is what this verse is about, and I am quite sure that it offered a great deal of comfort to its first readers.

But we, nearly 2,000 years later, are not hiding for fear of our lives. How can we reframe this ancient promise in a way that gives us hope and instruction for our lives, without relegating this verse to the status of a magical formula by which we can lead God around by the ear and make him do our bidding, as so many others seem to want to do?

About ten years ago, when Lawson and I were part of the Festival of the Holy Names ritual community, we were engaged in a long process of completely revisioning the liturgy, many pieces of which have found a home in our current liturgy. My wife at the time, Kate, was having a terrible time with the traditional ending of our prayers. “I just can’t pray ‘in Jesus’ name’,” she complained, “I don’t even know what that MEANS.”

None of the rest of us had that much of a problem with it—it held the place of more or less meaningless tradition for most of us, and since it didn’t really wrankle us, why bother with it? But it wrankled Kate, a lot, and so we wrestled with it together. Eventually she came to a place where she could affirm praying “in the Spirit of Jesus,” since that did not conjure up any more magical consequences than praying “in the Spirit of Gandhi.” In fact, Kate would have had no problems praying “in the Spirit of Gandhi,” and so she suggested that language to us. 

I don’t remember what happened to that conversation, because praying “in the Spirit of Jesus” never made it into our liturgy. In fact, I think we decided that since God did not need a magical clause as a hearing aid, we could just drop it altogether, and thereby make our prayers more interfaith in the process. 

But Kate’s solution has stuck with me. I remember her using it in her personal prayers, and I have even used it a time or two myself. It’s one thing to pray “in Jesus’ name,” but what does it mean to pray, “in the Spirit of Jesus”?

For one thing, praying in this way encourages us to discern whether what we are praying for is, in fact, in the Spirit of Jesus. Is what we are praying for worthy of who Jesus was and is? Is it worthy of us as his hands and feet on earth? Is it for our own selfish interests, or does it display evidence of the fruits of the Spirit: kindness, gentleness, forbearance, longsuffering, and love? 

In other words, before I pray “in the Spirit of Jesus” I have to stop and ask myself if my prayer actually IS in the Spirit of Jesus. And if I am honest, and if my prayer is not worthy to be prayed in the Spirit of the Living Christ, then there is an invitation for me to adjust my prayer, my desires, and, certainly, my attitude, until my prayer conforms to that Spirit of Jesus that I profess to live my life by. 

That’s a challenging thing to do, but I think it’s valuable. The air is filled with too much cheap prayer. I can just see God on his throne, eyes glazed over with boredom, with a sock puppet over one hand, going “blah blah blah blah….” I have often said that the purpose of prayer is not to change God’s mind, but to change human hearts. Our hearts. And questioning our motives, our intent, and indeed, the very spirit of our prayers seems like a fine place to start. 

So how about it? Are the prayers that you offer “in the Spirit of Jesus”? I invite you to use this clause for a while in place of “in Jesus’ name” and see how it changes things for you. And if you don’t use a clause at all, I invite you to try it out. It can’t hurt, and anything that helps us to reflect, to become more mindful and compassionate, can only make us more successful ministers of the Good News, and better people over all. 

And, of course, this strategy isn’t limited to Christians. As Krishna says in our interfaith reading, “in any way that people love me in that same way they find my love; for many are people’s paths, but they all in the end come to me.” So if praying in the Spirit of Jesus isn’t your thing, try praying in the Spirit of Krishna, or Durga, or Buddha, or Mohammad, or for heaven’s sake, in the Spirit of Gandhi. Whichever luminary you choose to light your path, we are all ascending the same mountain, and anything which reminds us to be kind, compassionate, and mindful is a good thing, no matter what name you call it by. 

Now, having said all of that, I am reminded of that story in the New Testament Apocrypha where Jesus, as a boy, is being taunted by the village bully. The bully teases and humiliates Jesus in front of his friends, and then runs away, laughing. But the bully doesn’t get far, because Jesus points a finger at him and the bully falls over dead. So who says praying for the front of my sister’s face to fall of was not in the Spirit of Jesus? It just depends upon which gospel you’re reading. Let us pray…

God, we are often so blinded by our own petty concerns,
By the troubles that buffet us from day to day, 
That we do not see the larger picture.
We do not see that others are suffering so much more than we,
Or that what we want is not always the best thing for us.
Help us, when we come before thee,
To be mindful of what we ask.
Help us to be grateful and thankful for the many gifts we have,
And help us to pray for those things that truly make the world at large
–and not just OUR tiny corner of it—a better place for all. 
For we ask this in the Spirit of Jesus,
Who calls us all to courage, kindness, and compassion. Amen. 

The Hindu epic, The Mahabharata, is the story of the rivalry between two sets of royal brothers, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, who are, in fact, cousins. In one scene, the Kauravas’ challenge the Pandava’s to a game of dice. The leader of the Pandava’s, Yudishtera, feels it is dishonorable to decline, and he agrees. Both sets of brothers huddle around the dice board, and Yudishtera first puts up a great deal of money. In one throw, it was all lost. He then put up all of his and his brothers’ slaves. A throw later, they, too, were lost. Yudishtera was sure the Kauravas were cheating, but to stop would be to rob the cheaters of an opportunity for repentance, so he played on. 

Next he played his thousands of chariots. Lost. Then he bet all his forests. Lost. Then he bet his kingdom. Lost. It seemed Yudishtera had nothing left to bet. Then an insane light came into his eyes. “I still have my brothers,” he said, and one at a time, he bet them. And throw after throw, he lost them. Finally, he said, “I have only myself left. I play myself,” and threw the dice. And he lost. 

The Kauravas were about to lead the Pandavas away, when Yudishtera said, “Wait, I have one more thing!” And he bet his wife. Well, she wasn’t just his wife. She was the one wife of all of the Pandava brothers. The Pandavas were horrified, but they held their tongues. Yudishtera threw the dice, and Draupadi, their wife, too, was lost. 

Roughly, one of the Kauravas dragged Draupadi before her husbands and revealed to her her fate. She spit at Yudishtera, and raged at him, “How can you play me when you have already lost yourself!” But to no avail. They were all slaves, now, and the Kauravas ordered them stripped of their finery. The brothers complied, but Draupadi refused, not wanting to expose herself to the beasts that had swindled her into slavery. Instead of obeying, she sank to her knees and began to sing the name of Krishna. 

The leader of the Kauravas had no patience for such desperate piety and ordered his younger brother to rip Draupadi’s sari from her. The brother grabbed at the length of cloth hanging from her shoulder and pulled. A great length came away in his hand, but Draupadi was not exposed. He grabbed at more of the cloth, but the more he pulled, the more unwound from over her shoulder. 

As Draupadi sang, she looked toward heaven, and saw Krishna standing over her shoulder, bolts of cloth pouring out of his hand held near the small of her back. Tears of joy, relief, and salvation poured from Draupadi’s eyes, and she sang another hymn to Krishna’s holy name. 

Finally, the Kaurava brother gave up, a pile of sari cloth looming higher than Draupadi herself beside him. Draupadi looked up at Krishna again. He winked at her, and disappeared from her view. 

I was reminded of this story this week as I contemplated the story of the road to Emmaus, because it seemed to me to provide a mythological echo. The Pandava’s were in their darkest hour. Through a misguided attempt to do the right thing, the Pandava’s lost everything, their property, their dignity, even themselves. But even though all seemed lost, they were not alone. Although Krishna was at first unseen, he revealed himself to Draupadi in the moment of her greatest need, and gave her salvation and hope. 

The disciples on the road to Emmaus, too, were in the midst of a great personal tragedy. When Jesus had been killed, all their hopes had been killed with him. Their teacher had been shamed and executed as a criminal, and they had little else to do but to crawl away in their shame, lick their wounds, and wonder how to carry on. No doubt they were not just slinking away due to disappointment, but fleeing for fear that those who had killed Jesus would next be coming after them. The game had been played, and they had lost. In fact, they had lost it all, and no doubt they wondered what was left living for. 

Yet in the hour of their great dispair, they were not alone. Although as yet unseen, Jesus was near, and spoke to them words of encouragement and hope. And as he spoke, their hearts burned within them, reigniting that hope, and perhaps even, a will to live. And when that stranger broke bread with them, they recognized that Jesus had been with them all along. 

This has not been an easy winter for many of us. There has been a great deal of illness among us, a great deal of struggle, a great deal of pain, and not a little bit of despair. But the hope of Easter is that death is always followed by life, that winter is always followed by Spring. And that through it all, regardless of how cold or dark or bleak or hopeless things appear, we are not alone. Even though he may be unseen, the Holy One is with us, speaking a word of comfort and hope when those things are in such short supply. 

And it is when things seem their darkest that his Presence is made known to us, winking at us over our shoulder, warming us in a child’s smile, or revealed to us in the simple act of breaking bread with our friends. We have not been left alone. As bad as things seem, we have not been sold into slavery or thrown to the wolves. Emmanuel means “God is with us,” and it is both a name for Jesus, and a promise. 

A few weeks ago I told you about my health crisis, about my despair, and about the naturopath who gave me hope and put me on a very restricted diet. I am relieved to report to you today, that after only three weeks, my daily pain level on a scale of 1 to 10 has gone from an average of 6 and 7 to an average of 1 to 2. It feels truly miraculous. I had begun to lose hope, I had begun to wonder if I was going to be able to continue living with that much pain, and going to this practitioner was a last ditch effort. 

Like Draupadi, I cried out in my despair to the Holy One, and I believe my prayer was answered—in the form of an ill-tempered Jewish naturopath, perhaps, but if God can appear as Jesus, a late-blooming Jewish carpenter or Krishna, a blue-skinned flute-toting cowboy, God can come in even more unlikely forms, and who am I to judge? I am, instead, exceedingly grateful, relieved, and much to my own surprise, once again hopeful. 

I know I’m not the only one who has felt the touch of grace, of salvation, of hope in this Easter season. God has been good to us, and God has not abandoned us. But not all of us are out of the woods yet. We continue to pray for Berta, and most of us know someone who is still trapped in fear and despair. But although we symbolically celebrate the Easter promise once a year, it is not actually a seasonal truth. The Easter promise is eternal: even in our darkest hour, when all seems lost, we are not alone. God is with us, in the end, darkness and despair will not win out. Hope and life will triumph, not just because we have faith, but sometimes in spite of our despair. 

Not everyone saw Krishna standing over Draupadi’s shoulder, but Draupadi did. The disciples on the road did not recognize Jesus at first—it was only gradually that they realized that he had been present. Just so, it is not always obvious that God is with us, especially when the pain and despair is at its greatest. But this is exactly when we should call for him, and when we should look for him. Because we will find him, even in something as simple as the breaking of bread. Let us pray…

Jesus, when we dwelt in the tombs, you descended into hell, 

you found us, and you trampled down death by death, 

restoring life and liberating us from despair.

Help us, when things seems bleak, 

To to call upon thee, to look for thee, to find thee,

In the sure and certain hope of resurrection,

For we ask this in thy holy and irepressable name, 

Emmanuel, God is with us, now, and forever. Amen. 

Our co-pastor, Fr. Richard, loves to confound newcomers to our parish by insisting, “I am a celibate priest!” Since Richard’s wife has just been introduced to them, they are understandably confused. Richard, an impish Englishman delights as much in their confusion as he does in his explanation. “In our parish, we honor celibacy, chastity, and virginity…” he begins, and those of us who have been there for years can pretty much mouth the words along with him from there. 

Celibacy, chastity, and virginity are not exactly popular subjects in mainline churches, but then, ours is far from your typical mainline church. We are Congregationalist (NACCC, not UCC), and choose to call only pastors ordained in the apostolic succession. We worship in a high Anglican fashion (we use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer adapted for inclusive language—lots of “thees” and “thous” but few “Lords”) and dogs are welcome at all services, and may take communion along with human parishioners if they so desire. 

But it is our trumpeting of celibacy, chastity, and virginity that mark us as truly unusual. It was Richard’s idea, and I used to think he was nuts. Now I just think he’s freakin’ brilliant. Richard’s genius was to recast celibacy, chastity, and virginity from the realm of sexuality into the realm of politics—specifically congregational polity. 

The priests in our parish are celibate because we have no administrative power or responsibilities whatsoever. We make no decisions, we handle no money, we oversee no accounting or, really, anything else. We preach, teach, lead liturgy, visit the sick, and absolutely nothing else. We are completely celibate as regards to power in the parish. 

The parishioners run the parish entirely on their own, and when they meet to decide on a matter, clergy have voice but no vote (we share this distinction with canine parishioners and humans under the age of thirteen). Of course our opinions carry some weight, but when the time to vote comes, we sit on our hands, and honor the discernment of the wise people of God who call us to serve them. 

It is also our responsibility to remind parishioners to be chaste in regards to their own power. All human parishioners over thirteen years of age have one vote, and therefore share equal power. Parishioners are chaste when they do not try to dominate others, insist they get their way, or otherwise force their will upon the community. 

Ideally, our parish makes all decisions by consensus. We remain chaste by not moving forward on a matter if everyone does not agree, or those who dissent do not give their permission. If we must resort to democracy, we consider ourselves to have failed. All major decisions are made in a quarterly parish meeting, while the nitty-gritty details of running the church are handled at a monthly meeting of the trustees, an elected board. All meetings are open to all parishioners, and any decision of the trustees can be brought before the quarterly parish meeting for review by any parishioner. 

You might think we move slowly, but that is not the case. I have rarely experienced a congregation that is more loving of one another, more in sync, or that moves with such speed. It is nothing short of miraculous, and I think it is largely due to the fact that everyone feels like his or her virginity is honored. 

In our parish, virginity is understood as owning one’s own power. Every person is a virgin, and does not hand their power over to another. Every parishioner feels empowered politically, has authority to exercise his or her ministry with the support of the community, and has a real sense of ownership of the parish. 

To extend the metaphor further, any incident of forcing one’s power upon another—or upon the community at large—compromises peoples’ virginity, and can only be described as political rape. In my opinion and experience, political rape is the norm, not the exception in spiritual communities. It is shocking to say so, yet many of our parishioners have been wounded by abuses of power in other communities, and are relieved to find safe haven in our polity. By calling political rape what it is, we reveal it’s wrongness, and can embrace another way of being together. 

So long as the clergy are celibate and the people are chaste, no abuse of power mars the life of the parish. I have served this parish for thirteen years, and we have never had a single serious incident of the misuse of power, either by clergy or by parishioners. We may be an eccentric and eclectic bunch, but we are nothing if not a harmonious church family, and we all feel privileged to be together. It is a safe place to be, and we are all grateful for it. 

Our parish sits only five blocks from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and a few weeks ago our ministerial intern brought her cohort to visit our historic arts-and-crafts-style building, and to spend an hour interviewing me as one of the pastors. They were incredulous as I described our policy of celibacy, chastity, and virginity. One of them protested forcefully, “But what about your pastoral authority?”

I must admit my response was not terribly pastoral—I laughed out loud. “What authority?” I said. “I have no pastoral authority whatsoever. I don’t tell anyone what to do or what to believe, nor do I make any decisions. I have lots of pastoral responsibility, however. I am responsible for visiting sick parishioners, for delivering thoughtful and inspiring sermons, and for reminding people to be kind to one another and chaste in their use of power. But authority? Oh, no. I have none.” I am, after all, a celibate priest.