Pentecost V - 17 July 2011

PREACHING AT ST. MARK’S CHURCH “Weeds” The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 17 July 2011 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church Berkeley, California

Isaiah 44:6-8

Psalm 86:11-17

Romans 8:12-25

St. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

INI

Fennel

I love fennel.  You know the plant, with the feathery leaves, a bulb that tastes faintly of anise, and the seed that definitely tastes of anise.  It is wonderful braised in meat stock, or served raw with a salad, or grilled and served with lemon.  It can be cooked with potato and then puréed, or mixed into other meats to make a very tasty sausage.  Fennel and pasta, fennel and pork, or in a nice sauce over fish.  Ah, fennel!

Then there is the fennel that has invaded my neighborhood.  Brought to California by some enterprising immigrant, the fennel that has graced so many Italian, French, and Greek dishes has become something of a nuisance.  It has invaded the basins around the street trees in my neighborhood.  Whole back yards of negligent homeowners have become fields of fennel.  It stands up, feathery and light green in vacant lots and train yards.  It is impossible to get rid of.  I hate fennel.

The weed is a funny thing – as it seems to be in the mind of an observer.  I had a late friend who had a wonderful country home up in Sonoma County.  There in the almost Mediterranean landscape, typical of Northern California, she made her home nestled in wild oaks, the grounds strewn with Lavender and California Poppies.  On a visit, as I accompanied Nancy through her yard, I saw her (to my amazement) uprooting hundreds of California Poppies and throwing them into her compost heap.  “Nancy,” I said, “you can’t do that.  Those are California Poppies, the state flower, it’s illegal.”  “Weeds!” was her succinct reply as she tossed another load into the heap.  Weeds, indeed.

 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.”

The Kingdom of Heaven?  We had best take notice.  Jesus wants to teach us something about our environment, and indeed about ourselves as well.  In his parable there is the seed – the good sown by the farmer, and the bad sown by the enemy.  Which however is which?  There is an economy in Jesus’ answer, which I will save for the close.  In the meanwhile, let’s savor the fennel, or the stinging nettles, or the tumbleweed. 

What both Jesus and Matthew assume is that we understand the allusion – that the field filled with both weeds and wheat (or whatever) is ripe for harvest, ready for the barns, ready to feed the harvester and the family that keeps the fields, ready to be useful.  The harvest is the people, you and me. What is interesting to me is the notion that an “enemy” has come to do the harm, not some nice Italian immigrant who planted fennel in her San Francisco back yard, not realizing that it would soon infest the whole of the peninsula.  Or nature – could Nancy not realize that the lovely poppies she hated so much were a product of nature, and not of someone who wished to annoy her. 

If the field is the harvest, and if the harvest is those who have grown up into the word, then what are we?  Are we the good plant or the bad plant – the grain, or the weed?!  (That would be an interesting tangent). 

Weeds and Crops

Over a decade ago, we became acquainted with cousins who live in Germany, in the Schwartzwald, in a small town called Swann.  Initial contacts were with my mother and my two sisters as they made their way to visit these new relatives of ours and were greeted one winter’s day in the ancestral village of Nabern – greeted by 40 individuals who had come to discover who we were.  The following summer, my daughter was in Frankfurt am Main, polishing up her German, and went to visit one of the cousins who lived there.  As Anna and Elle poured over photo albums, my daughter Anna suddenly startled.  There in the photos was one relative in a Hitlerjugend outfit, and another in a Luftwaffe uniform.  Suddenly she realized that she was no longer necessary the good seed, but that there was an aspect to her existence that was weed.  It would no longer be easy to cast aspersions on others. 

Just as Christ has two natures, both human and divine - an initial realization in reading this parable is that we may share that proclivity in that we are both seed and weed, good and bad.  Saint Paul, a couple of Sundays ago, put it well (or as well as Saint Paul can be expected to put anything).

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.  But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  

This convoluted and twisted argument, and psychological dilemma was put more simply by Martin Luther who stated the Christian (you and me) is simil Justus et peccator – at the same time justified and sinner.  We are wound up in each of these conditions.  We are seed and weed.  What will come of it all will have to wait.

Renewed with Water

And that is precisely Jesus’ answer to the question of “what then are we?  What shall we become?”  The economy of his answer is instructive of how we should not only live life, but also of how we ought to observe and honor our neighbor.  I know plenty of people who think that I make a marvelous weed – unworthy of the water that sustains me.  I suspect that you have similar relationships as well.  The slaves of the household approach the owner and wonder what to do about all of the weeds in their fields.  The owner (Jesus – God – perhaps even ourselves, urges their patience.  “Wait”, she says.  The owner is a wise woman, for in tearing out the weeds, she may lose some of her crop.

Paul makes the same comment in the second lesson for today: 

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Who have we torn out of our lives simply because they were weeds, inappropriate and troublesome in our lives.  And who has torn us out of their lives for the same reason?  This is Jesus’ economy of time – there is plenty of it, and we are enjoined to wait it out.  What will be redeemed at the harvest will be redeemed for our good.

It is important that we remember we are both:  weed and seed, good crop and bad crop, useful and useless, saint and sinner.  It is God’s judgment in the end as to what we have turned out to be.  For this reason, we have placed the baptismal font at the entrance to our nave – the place where we gather to worship.  It is a bit of an obstruction.  We will make it easier to get around in the coming weeks, but right now it confronts us in the middle of aisle.  It says something to us about our nature as a redeemed individual or a redeemed people. 

When I grew up, the liturgy of the Lutheran Common Service began with these words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” to which the people responded, “Amen,” (so be it!)  That was then followed by confession and absolution.  A similar realization was in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer where the worship was initially confronted with this collect:

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The instinct of both is to remind us of our dual nature, saint and sinner.  There is an aspect of the Lutheran entrance that I find to be instructive and helpful.  We knock at the door of the church, a sort of “Knock Knock?” moment. Realizing that we are both seed and weed, we invoke someone else’s name.  “Who’s there?”  “I am,” we say in our hearts, and continue with “but I am coming and entering here in someone else’s name, I come, “in the name of the Father…”  When we are obstructed by the font, we reach down with our fingers, touching the water and remember that in spite off our difficulties we are baptized and redeemed.  Using Jesus’ model of the harvest, the weed part will be overlooked, and we shall be retreaved as the ripe harvest, the product of the Sower’s finest intent.

We need to begin to look at ourselves in this manner, for in doing so we can begin to see the seed in others, their redeem ability, their being loved of God along with us.  So with no further ado, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.

SDG

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23 - 9 October 2011

PREACHING AT ST. MARK’S CHURCH “Glimpses” The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 23 9 October 2011 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church Berkeley, California

Isaiah 25:1-9


Psalm 23


Philippians 4:1-9


Matthew 22:1-14

INI

I.               Introduction

Friday night we sat down to dinner and instead of our usual Bach Cello Suite, or some jazz by Fred Hersch we ended up listening to a panel discussion presented by the Commonwealth Club of California.  Perhaps it was the participants that drew us to it:  Alan Jones, former Dean at Grace Cathedral, or Steven Krazny, commentator on KQED, or Bishop Bill Swing founder and chief guru at the United Religions Initiative, or the rabbi from Temple Emmanuel, or a reporter from St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in San Francisco.  More likely it was the topic – “Is Religioun facing the dawning of a new day?”  It was a shame that the panel wasn’t more diverse, 2 Episcopalians, 2 Jews, and a Roman Catholic.  Where was, I wondered, the Muslim, or the Evangelical Baptist?  And these were just the “people of the book!” Regardless, they were soon into the thick of it – how can we live together?  The talk was hopeful, but tinged with human darkness and zenophobia.  Our readings for today wrestle with these notions, sort of.  We have to be aware that they represent cycles of development in at least two major religions, so they will be pressed to come up with an answer that might be agreeable in our time.  Let us look at the glimpses that these writers have.

II.             Isaiah’s Oracle

First Isaiah is in the thick of it.  Those writing later in his name will have a glimpse of a wider view of Yahwism, but for now we have a prophet who is struggling with the notions of a national God, and national priorities, that suddenly breaks through to a wider vision of what might be.  The first reading begins with an oracle that rejoices over the defeat of national enemies.  Isaiah assigns to them the fate, an uninhabitable and ruined city, which will soon be Jerusalem’s fate.  It’s rather like a national schadenfreude – a deeply felt joy at someone else’s sorrow.  Isaiah doesn’t stop there, however, for that is not his point.  This defeat is the sign of Yahweh’s superiority, and of Yahweh’s destiny to be the one God.  He is not standing in a new theological place, for his counterparts in Egypt, Canaan, and Ancient Near East had similar notions about their own national gods.  He develops his dream further.

III.           Isaiah’s Banquet

Isaiah talks about a fine banquet, set with fine foods and wines, but there is more than that.  This is the messianic banquet – a banquet that is more than just satiating our nutritional needs.  There is healing in this banquet. 

And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Isaiah’s time was no different than our own.  The national gods fought against one another.  But here, on this mountain, the traditional seat of gods, there was something different.  There was a healing that was to be available to all peoples, and the threat of death was to be abolished.  This is a remarkable prophecy given that Isaiah’s hearers would soon be dealing with death, and war, and bloodshed in good measure.  Isaiah paints a picture of a universal situation in which all are involved.  Even the psalmist who dreams the dream of the 23^rd psalm knows the reality of human life:

You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me

Perhaps what the prophet and the psalmist are attempting to tell us is that yes, the shroud has been lifted so that we might not only see that we live in difficult times, troubles all around us, surrounding even our celebratory meal, but that God is there also, guiding and protecting us.  This had to be the faith that the Exiles took with themselves into Babylon, or in the Diaspora in Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and Rome.  The mountain was no longer Zion – the mountain was wherever God fed them.

IV.          Matthew’s revisioning of the Banquet

Matthew wrote his Gospel in difficult times, and his writing mirrors those troubles as he attempts to relate the Good News of Jesus with the dangers and challenges that surrounded them.  The Palestine of Matthew’s time lived with the reality of a Jerusalem that was once again destroyed, this time by the Romans.  The Jewish leadership had largely abandoned the land, and those that did gather in Jamnia in 90 CE decided that those who followed Jesus were out of the family and out of the faith.  Thus when Matthew takes this story of the Banquet that he shares with Saint Luke, he puts his own twist upon it.  Luke’s much gentler version follows his program of the invitation into the Kingdom of God of those who are lowly, the poor, the dispossessed. Matthew’s banquet is put on by a great king, and his guests, like Luke’s rudely dismiss the banquet invitation.  It is here that Matthew adds new elements, the slaves that call others in, who then are slain, and the son who is slain.  Matthew is living deeply in the troubles of his time.  The Christians who listen to his Gospel are now the “other”, the “ones outside”.  Deep rifts of family and of religion form a scrim through which we hear his Gospel points. 

The good news is that the invitation is given to all, as in Isaiah and in Psalm 23.  All are invited to attend.  And it is at this point we come to the question that the panelists on KQED attempted to address, and which we are all bidden to take up.  Who is in, and who is out?  How do we look at the other, and how do we judge life?

Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

The house of prayer is full.  It is filled with all who have been bidden to come and who have accepted the invitation.  It is amongst all these that the banquet will be served and eaten.  It is these who will take delight in the invitation of the king.  Some are good, and some are bad, but all have been called.  Matthew is aware that this new covenant in Jesus is not attractive just to some Jews, but to others, slaves, wealthy people, gentiles, and all sorts and conditions.  It is at this point, in a further addition to the Lucan text, that he asks the real question.  Who is to be chosen?

V.            Matthew’s Robe of Righteousness

In this final paragraph, really a separate parable from the Banquet parable, Matthew wrestles with the notion of righteousness.  Who will be right with God?  He does this through the story of a man who comes to the banquet, but who is not adequately or appropriately clothed.  Last Sunday, Greta Jane came to her baptism clothed in a white baptismal robe.  Had she come in purple or green or any other color, we would have wrapped her in white to signify her presence among us as one clothed in righteousness.

Matthew is attempting to get us to understand two things.  The first is, who is the final judge? – which he identifies as God.  God is the one who knows the good and the bad, the called from those who are chosen.  From Matthew’s point of view, certainly the followers of Jesus are among those who have been chosen.  But there I another point, and that is what is righteousness?  What does it mean to be right with God?  Our Anglican understanding of this connects each of us to the acts of Jesus – the righteous one.  But is there more?  Is there a clothing of acts, deeds, prayers, sacrifices that truly set us apart?  And our panelists wondered if that righteousness was truly the property of only one religion?

For me, for me, the banquet is the Eucharist, set and presided over by the Christ.  But what is the banquet for others?  Who is led to eat and drink in God’s presence and what is their understanding of that action?  We live in times in this country where some would answer that question with a single place, a single thought, a single mindset.  God however is the judge, and we are not.  Let us go out then, filled with the meal, and refreshed in mind, body, and spirit, and listen to all who are called to the banquet.  And let us be filled with good works but for them and with them. As Isaiah said:

Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.

This is the LORD for whom we have waited;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

SDG

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - 25 September 2011

 PREACHING AT ST. MARK’S CHURCH

“States of Being”

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

25 September  2011

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Berkeley, California

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Psalm 25:1-8

Philippians 2:1-13

St. Matthew 21:23-32

INI

Lessons in Humility

I’d like to begin this morning with a quotation that seems to embrace notions of humility, if not outright depression.  It is a quotation from Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, a semi-autobiographical recounting of his family’s history, and a model of what we need to talk about today.

Everything passes away – suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence.  The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth.  There is no man who does not know that.  Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars?  Why?

I think that the basis of our prayer may actually be a reflection of our various states of being.  When we are high, full of life and of love, appreciative of each day and of creation itself we greet God with thanksgivings.  And when we are low, brought down by the world or by those around us, full of Bulgakov’s suffering, pain, blood, hunger and pestilence, then we greet God with petitions and laments.  Our life seems to be a journey between these two points, manic, depressive, or some point somewhere in the middle.  On that journey we greet God with meditation and reflection, listening for answers.

In the second lesson for today, a reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, Paul would teach us some lessons of humility.  His purpose in writing these people is to commend to them behaviors that are fitting of the Christian life, and that will serve them well in their life together.  They, these people of Philippi, are his prize, and Paul wants to further their Christian education, and their life in community.  He has already commended to them the value of steadfastness, and our reading today begins with a recommendation of the value of harmony and unity:

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

This will be followed by lessons on obedience as well, as Paul wishes to take the lessons of his own life and apply them to his fellows in Christ.  The gem of his teaching, however, is in something that he borrowed from an unknown source.  It is an ancient hymn that follows the trajectory of Jesus own life, and this Paul proposes as a model to the Philippians.

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

In the first three strophes of this hymn we become of aware of three states of being for Jesus.  The hymn proposes a “Divine pre-existence” much like John proposes in the prologue of his own Gospel.  This is followed by a strophe on the Humility of the Incarnation – that God (here Jesus taking on the morfe Qeou, the form of God should deign to become flesh, or as the hymn states it, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  It is a rather stark view of something that we take as charming and compelling – the Babe in the Manger and all of that.  Paul, in using this hymn, understands the deep humility of the crèche.  But there is more, as we all know, having followed Jesus on this path many times before.  The final of the three strophes is the humiliation of death itself – a shared fate, and a final outcome.

I could go on and preach in this vein, as many others have.  It is standard fare, this humiliation stuff, and we become quite familiar with it in Lent, indeed in Holy Week, during the Triduum, perhaps even in Advent.  I wonder, however, if we all can afford this sense of Humility.  Perhaps we do ourselves a disservice if we remain only here holding the wonderful mystery of the Humiliation. 

The other half of the hymn

How powerful are you?  How rich are you?  Where in the human hierarchy do you stand and take your place?  And here we need a corrective, for in the eyes of the majority of the world we are powerful.  We are indeed rich.  But I wish to press further, to a deeper thing, and to a place that we don’t often acknowledge.  It is a place that we seem to be unable to see in our own lives, and that we find off-putting in the lives of those around us.  I want us to look at ourselves from an emotional or from a mental perspective.  I want us to begin to understand our powerlessness.  Edna St. Vincent Millay put it well:

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you

All through my life? – sharing my fire, my bed,

Sharing – oh, worst of all things! – the same head? –

And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too.

Perhaps this is indeed the starting point for many of us.  Humiliation we know quite well, and in spite of all that we have and are capable of doing, it is this sense of pain and humiliation that defines us in some sense.  We are, all of us, beggars asking something of life, hoping for a release a sense of redemption.

This last week at the clergy conference we did some studying with Eric Law, who took this humiliation – exaltation trajectory to a new place for me.  Paul wants to teach humility, and that is well and good.  However, might our message be from the last three strophes?  The exaltation of Jesus by God, The power of the Name, that Jesus is Lord – that he has suasion and power in our world?  Yes, let us start at the nadir, and not assume that we are at the zenith.  Let us start at our low point, recognizing that we share in the suffering of Jesus, and that it does not end there.

What is the Good News for you?  Forgiveness, nourishment, being made clean, healing, fellowship, mutual care and understanding – these are all the things that we can do for one another if we move from humility to exaltation.  It would do us well to share these resurrected states of being, so that the resurrection is not just a far off tale, but rather embodied in our own rise to all that God intends for us.   Pain may be always with us, but the resurrection abides there as well.  It is God’s promise to lift us up and to bring us to God’s presence.  John reminds us, in the words of Jesus, “and I when I am lifted up will draw the whole world to myself.”  And this being lifted up is not to the central point of the cross, but beyond that – to the tomb and to the resurrection.

Like the lamp on the hill, our lives of both humiliation and exaltation – modeled on the life of Jesus – can speak powerfully to our world.  Even more so, we need to hear and listen to those whose lives seem to be only humiliation and distress, and remind them of the power of God lifting them up.  And to those who seem to be gorged on the feast of greed and self-aggrandizement in our world today, we need to remind them of the grace of humiliation.  Wherever we are on this cycle, the movement to Calvary, or the opposite movement out of the tomb, it is something to be shared.  Paul ends our reading with power – the power that we all have as we walk and journey with Christ. 

“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you.”

And as Bulgakov beautifully stated:

.  Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars?  Why?

SDG

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost - 11 September 2011

PREACHING AT ST. MARK’S CHURCH

“Icons”

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

11 September 2011

__________________________________________________________________________________

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Berkeley, California

Genesis 50:15-21

Psalm 103:1-13

Romans 14:1-12

St. Matthew 18:21-35

INI

Green?!

I got a telephone call from our good deacon on Thursday who wondered if we should use the liturgical color of red (red being the color for martyrs) for our services of remembrance today.  “Or, perhaps”, she said, “White!”  I paused for a moment and then said, “I was thinking of the possibility for purple – for penance and forgiveness.”  We left it hanging in the air – these possibilities of adding an additional layer of symbolic meaning to a day already well freighted with it.

It took me a while, and a couple of conversations, not necessarily about September Eleventh, but rather things and people in general that I began to see the light.  And it was in a deeply moving conversation with someone else, who was actually there, that I knew what we needed to do.  I knew what the color needed to be, and what the symbolism needed to convey.  The color was to be green – you know, the endless green of Ordinary Time, the green that comes with the rebirth of the earth during the Rainy Season (or for other parts, Spring).  It was to be the green of life, and of the living.  That is what it needed to be. 

Why?

The Texts

Well, let’s take some before I answer that question.  I was stunned a few weeks ago when I took a peak at the lectionary to see what today’s readings might offer us on this day of remembrance.  In the first reading we hear of Joseph’s brothers again asking, after their father’s death, for forgiveness for selling Joseph in to slavery.  It was a request that was tinged with dishonesty as well, they not having the courage to address it themselves to him, guised it in a request by the father, that had never been made.  Joseph sees through all this, and yet forgives them, again.

The Psalm, a bridge between Psalm 102, a personal lament, and Psalm 104, a praise psalm of God’s continuing renewal of creation, this psalm (103) thanks God for the concerns of Psalm 102, and then veers away from the personal and individual to picture a God who brings forgiveness and life to all of creation. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our sins from us.”  And just we’re really clear about God’s intent (is this mercy intended for Israel only, or for more than that) the psalmist provides the vision, “The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed.”

In Romans, Paul asks us to tolerant of other people’s religious practices.  It was those who practiced dietary restrictions vs. those who did not.  Paul asks the Romans, and he asks us on every day, and especially on this day,

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?  Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?  For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”

And finally in the Gospel for today, Peter wants to set a limit on the forgiveness that he has been bound to offer.  “Shall I forgive as many as seven times?” Jesus’ answer is clear and overwhelming, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven,” in other words the perfection of offering forgiveness – an infinity of forgiveness.

This is the context that the lectionary serendipitously sets for us today:  Confession tinged with dishonesty, a God who will have all in the kingdom of God’s rule, a recognition that all of us, no matter who we are, will be subject to the judgment, so why should we judge? Forgive unceasingly.  Now, with that in mind let us take some time to see what this day calls us to do.

The Icons

The icon is a wonderful thing.  Through it (it serves as a sort of window, you know), through it we can begin to see the divine.  So as people kneel to be anointed with oil, and have hands laid upon them with prayers for healing, they can look through the icon of Our Lady and Our Lord, and see a mother’s tender care, or as the psalm for today describes it, “As a father cares for his children, so does the Lord care for those who fear God.”  That is the reality that reaches out to us, and that we are bidden to touch.

Many icons will be offered to us today: two tall buildings either standing tall, or in phases of destruction; care givers of all kinds responding to the destruction around and about them; the photos of those who were missing, or who had died; the flag; the terrorists.  What do we see through the windows of these icons?  Do we see our enemies?  Do we see our own failures as a country?  Do we see pride of country?  Do we see our need to forgive and be forgiven?

Peter’s question to Jesus is a good case in point.  When he saw someone who had done him wrong – he saw the need to forgive, but he also, apparently, saw an icon of the wrong that sought to put limits on what Peter was willing to offer.  He did not see an infinity of forgiveness that Christ bid him to offer.  It is a hard request, this forgiveness thing.  It is a hard thing to know what we need to do.

Perhaps when we are challenged in our ability to forgive we need to choose another icon, an icon different than the harm we have felt, an icon that shows forgiveness to us.

The Ordinary

As I mentioned earlier, I had an extraordinary conversation with someone this week, someone who was there, someone who was a witness – not only of the dreadful deeds of ten years ago, but of the ordinary forgiveness and humanity that Christ demands of us.  She told stories of kindnesses given to her, and was surprised, as she told her story, that she was giving such kindness back – abundantly.

This is the ordinariness of life that appeals to me.  This is the stuff that is required of us in any circumstances.  It teaches me that often the extraordinary: September 11^th, Hiroshima, Aremenia, Palestine, Jim Jones, the Sudan, all of these extraordinary moments in human history, are filled with ordinary human need and the ordinary human capacity to forgive, and to give what is needed at the time.  The icon of the cross should stare back at us as we remember these events.  It should stare back at us when we observe those who hurt us, or who are in any kind of need.  It should stare back at us when we fall into the deep depression of our own unworthiness.  “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us!”

Perhaps Paul says it best:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Please pray with me.  These are the words of Saint Francis before the crucifix:

Most High
 glorious God, 
enlighten the darkness
 of my heart. 
 Give me
 right faith, 
sure hope 
and perfect charity. 
 Fill me with understanding
 and knowledge 
that I may fulfill 
your command.  Amen.

SDG