Monday, September 26, 2011

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

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

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 11th, 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