The Fourth Sunday in Lent, 30 March 2014

“Who Sinned?”

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

30 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Santa Clara, California

I Samuel 16:1-13

Psalm 23

Ephesians 5:8-14

St. John 9:1-41

INI

Living in the Past

I just finished reading a book for my book club.  It’s by an author, a Turkish man, whom I admire greatly.  The title of the book is Silent House, and the author is Orhan Pamuk.  I thought of one of the characters in this novel as I read the readings for today.  Her name is Fatma.  She came from a well-to-do Istanbul family and married a doctor.  Now, her husband having died several years ago, she hides away in a seaside mansion that is crumbling with time, awaiting the visit of her grand children.  Her attitude toward life can be seen in this brief passage from the book:

“No, I wouldn’t fall for a lie in the form of a serpent.  I never drank, except once.  I was overcome with curiosity.  When nobody at all was around.  A taste like salt, lemon, and poison on the tip of my tongue.  At that moment I was terrified.  I was sorry.  I rinsed my mouth out right away, I emptied out the glass and rinsed it over and over and I began to feel I would be dizzy.  I sat down so I wouldn’t fall on the floor, my God, I was afraid I would become an alcoholic like him, too, but nothing happened.  Then I understood and relaxed.  The devil couldn’t get near me.[1]

Fatma is greeted by a great deal of sin in her life.  She despises the degradations visited upon her by the excesses of her husband, who was banished from Imperial Service in the Ottoman Empire, and was sent to live in anyplace other than the capital.  There he works on an encyclopedia to bring the Turkey of the east and the Europe of the west into an intellectual understanding.  His wife, Fatma despises her dead husband, and now she is forced to live with her manservant, Recep, who is actually the illegitimate son of her husband.  Recep is a dwarf.

So you may be wondering what is the connection of this story.  The Gospel for today is about blindness, about living with assumptions that may be the cause of our own blindness.  Fatma lives in a blindness that doesn’t allow her to forgive her husband, even in death, nor to understand or know her grand children.  For Fatma, and for the Pharisees, the neighbors, and indeed even for the disciples there is an assumption that precedes their awareness of what is going on about them.  The assumption is that the times, the individuals who live around them, and specifically the man born blind are damaged because of their own sin, or perhaps of the sin of others.

I wonder if that is our own assumption as well.  When I drive on the freeway, my overarching assumption is that everyone else driving with me is a fool – a sinner ignorant of how one really ought to drive.  Like Fatima, I can become obsessed with the “sinfulness” of others.  I obligingly cast stones at them.  It is a habit that infects our society, where we assume that anyone who doesn’t agree with us is somehow manifesting sin.

Seeing the Mote in our Own Eye

Saint Paul sees a different point of view.  “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.”[2]  Notice that both the darkness and light are something that is not outside of us, but is rather our essence.  The real danger is that we are darkness, and in our darkness can only see the darkness in others.  The grace that Paul hopes to convince us of is that we are really light, reflecting the light of the grace that God has given us.

If you read Face Book you will be overwhelmed by the social media’s ability to allow us to cast stones, to see all as darkness, and to objectify that darkness in the lives, politics, and hearts of others.  That is the operating principal in the Gospel reading.  Neighbors and Pharisees and Disciples can only see the man’s blindness guised in his own fault, in his own sin.  They are stuck in such a perception and condemn him to be equally caught in its malaise. 

Jesus asks us to see the mote in our own eye, before noticing the speck in our sister’s eye.  Such an attitude might silence the bad talk that we have for the others who don’t agree with us.  What might our social discourse be like if we saw only light and goodness in the speech of others, or met that speech with our own light and goodness.

Fatma lives a life of disappointment.  Her very family does not meet her standards for living.  Thus they attempt to bring together all the disparate parts of a politicized and polarized Turkey without her wisdom.  They’re on their own – a realization of the sins of prior generations. This ought to sound familiar to us, as we view what goes on about us and assume only the worst.

Resources for healing

The psalmist has a good perspective, and one that may be lost on us because of our own intimate familiarity with the 23^rd psalm.

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

you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.[3]

Jesus brings healing into the midst of the relationship of the blind man and those about him.  The psalmist is aware of the healing nature of God’s grace even when it is provided in the midst of “those who trouble me.”  Who troubled Fatma?  It was her husband’s transgressions, and unbeknownst to her, her own inability to forgive him.  Who troubled the blind man?  It was any who only saw his defect and who avoided seeing his evident wholeness in God’s eyes.  And finally who is troubling you?  Whose sins are so great that you cannot forgive?  Who’s troubled life seems to invade your own sense of goodness and forgiveness?

In college, during the communion at the community Eucharist, I used to kneel there, not singing the hymn, ostensibly to pray – but really to look at those going to the communion rail.  What did I see in them?  Their grace?  Not always.  John was a classmate who troubled me, always wearing shabby clothing (his family was wealthy) always seeming to do things that disturbed others.  And there he was coming down from the altar having just partaken of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Baptized as I was, fed as I was, forgiven as I was – my antipathy for him had to give way to some other attitude.

Jesus heals the blind man because of his faith, and surely does the same for us, for we are all blind to some extent.  We all seem to lack the ability to understand and perceive the grace that surrounds every human being.  Yet Jesus still stands in our midst urging us on.  Some come to the table that is spread in the presence of those who trouble you.  Receive the bread and wine, receive the body and blood.  But most of all receive the healing not only for yourself, but also for the world around you.

SDG

---

[1]    Pamuk, O. (2012), Silent House, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, page 16.

[2]    Ephesians 5:8

[3]    Psalm 23:5

The Third Sunday in Lent, 23 March 2014

“Testing“

The Third Sunday in Lent

23 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Santa Clara, CA

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 95

Romans 5:1-11

St. John 4:5-42

INI

As we read these texts this morning there is one overarching theme that at least links two of them, and that is the theme of water.  It’s an appropriate theme this season, as we look forward to the Great Vigil of Easter and the renewal of Baptismal Vows.  It is however a theme that I am going to set aside in favor of another.  The theme I should like to take on is one that has aspects in each one of our readings, and is one that I think relates to everyday living and life.  Just before I sat down to write this, a young woman from Ethiopia dropped by and wondered if I would pray for her.  She had a four-fold request.  First of all she was going to be taking her drivers test on the day following, was nervous, and asked if I would pray that she might have confidence.  Test 1.  Next she was concerned about her parents who still live in Ethiopia and are Orthodox.  The young woman was concerned that they were not “born again” and that they would not meet the test of Judgment Day.  Test 2.  She told the story of her two brothers who were in failing marriages and were in danger of loosing their children in the courts.  Test 3.  Finally, she had similar concerns for her sister who was married and fearful of loosing her husband.  Test 4.  If you have not guessed it by now, I’d like us to think about testing and being tested.

Testing the times

Following the conversation that Jesus has with the Samaritan woman, which was in reality a session of the one testing the other about how one ought to live a life of faith.  (The woman relied on her Samaritan standards or worship at Mt. Gerizim, and separation from the Jews.  And Jesus was meeting all of her arguments with either the standard Jewish response, or with a metaphor that seemed to go right over her head).  They each are testing one another.  Jesus wants to test her assumptions about life, and suspects that she is a bit of a cynic.  Why else would she have had five husbands – a true test of the Law about Marriage.  He also wants to test the depth of her knowledge of what she truly believe, that which she put trust in (just as we discussed last Sunday – how her faith was creditable, like the faith of Abraham and Sarah. 

The woman, on the other hand, much to John’s delight, is testing Jesus.  What does Jesus know?  How does he know it?  If he is a prophet – what kind?  Might he be the Messiah?  All of this is churned up in her mind as possibility. All of this is fascinating stuff, ripe for a theological gristmill.  Does it, however, meet the test of what we need for today.  That she, a Samaritan, could recognize in Jesus the traits of the Messiah sends us a message about the inclusion of outsiders in recognizing the true value of following Jesus.  That is only a first-stage learning for the day, however.  The disciples in their seemingly perpetual ignorance push the agenda even further.

They are upset.  Jesus is speaking in public with a woman – with a woman who has had multiple marriages.  Jesus didn’t understand the need for social convention.  He was “testing the times.”  What might they permit, and what might they condemn?  Jesus is pushing to the root, to the radix, and being the complete radical he wants the disciples to understand the connection.  He teaches them about the fields “ripe for harvesting.”  Who is the woman, the Samaritan, the Gentile, the outsider, the sinner – who is she but nothing less than the harvest that Jesus has come for?  Jesus tests the disciples to see if they can see the reality that stands behinds Jesus’ mission.  “Test the times,” Jesus says, “and see if they are ripe for harvest?”

Testing God (Exodus)

Sometimes, like Abraham and Sarah, God leads us out into the midst of a place and says to us, “Do my will – do it here!”  And we look around and wonder what that might be?  Israel was in the midst of her flight from Egypt, and she could think of nothing other than getting as far away as possible.  Trouble quickly sets in – a very ordinary and everyday trouble – thirst.  There is no water.  (We can understand this.)  Do they meet this challenge with invention and courage?  No.  They complain.  First they complain to Moses and then they complain to God.  They test God, as Moses puts it.  They test God’s wisdom in leading them there.

I understand this place used to be a farm.  Well, all of the places around here used to be a farm.  The question we need to ask, like Israel, is “Why are we here?”  That’s a bit different than “Why on earth did you put us here?”  Rather we need to explore what God expects us to meet here.  Maybe God wanted them to experience their thirst (and later their hunger) and to discover what they really thirsted and hungered for.  That is what the dialogue with the woman was all about.  What was Jesus’ thirst all about?  Why had the woman come to the well?  Why have you come here this morning?  The test is not for God – but rather the test is for us and our faith.  What will we do for all the spiritual thirst and hunger that is around us?  How will we know unless we go to the well and ask?

Testing ourselves (IInd Lesson)

Perhaps it is not God we need to test, or Jesus, or anyone other at all.  Perhaps it is ourselves that we need to test.  Paul writes to the Romans:

“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”

Paul knew a great deal about being tested, and he never ceases to relate its trials to his readers.  Here in this passage he highlights the positive development that comes from suffering.  Well, we need to be honest here.  It is not suffering that Paul speaks of here, but rather affliction – something affecting us from outside of us.  Is it God that afflicts us? (Such as the Israelites thought?)  And here the disciples enter the picture again preferring to connect affliction with past sins.  Afflictions are the result of some defect, so wrong act on our part.  Paul begs to differ.  Afflictions lead us to know our need of God. 

The ladder that he describes for us: afflictions (sufferings), endurance, character, and finally hope, are a description of our personal development in faith.  Where was Nicodemus on that ladder, or the woman at the well, or the disciples, or Mary, or Joseph, or you?  Where are you on that ladder, or can you be in multiple places?

Yes sometimes we are placed in the midst of afflictions – and we endure them, and that is what our faith is all about.  Just as Jesus endured both cross and grave, so we are invited to do the same – in our baptism.  Afflictions come and go, but the final results of enduring them, the character of self and the development of hope, endure forever.

Religion is not a magic striking of the rock.  It is rather the understanding of what we think ourselves to be and where we think ourselves to be and then matching that up with God’s will.  “Come unto me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  We will always survive the test – that is the wonder of salvation.  What challenges us now is where do we go once we have drunk the living water and have left the well to go home?

SDG

The Second Sunday in Lent, 16 March 2014

“You shall be a Blessing”

The Second Sunday in Lent

16 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Santa Clara, California

Genesis 12:1-4a

Psalm 121

Romans 3:1-17

St. John 3:1-17

INI

You shall be a blessing

I was walking down Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley one day when I encountered a bunch of teachers and their preschool students.  I smiled at them and went on my way.  From behind me, as I continued on to my office, I heard one of the teachers shout out, “Father, we need a blessing.”  You can’t wear a clerical collar and ignore this kind of request, so I turned back, and laying my hands on each of them blessed them.  Some weeks later, I was crossing Shattuck Avenue.  This is street second only to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley for encountering the unexpected.  I was in a cross walk.  Suddenly I heard, “Father, I really need a blessing.”  So I turned to face the man who had made the request, and there on the sidewalk I blessed him and talked with him.  Finally, we were at Il Fornaio, a restaurant in San Francisco.  After the meal, I went to the counter to buy some cookies, for which they were well known, and to pay our check.  The young woman stationed there looked up at me, looked at my collar and burst into tears.  “I am so unhappy,” she said, “I really could use a blessing and a prayer.”  And so it was, there by the cash register and the pastries, I prayed with her and comforted her.

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

It is interesting to me, that had I not been wearing clerical garb, these individuals would not have asked me to bless them.  And I would have not known their need.  Abraham comes to us straight out of life.  He has a wife Sarah, and a nephew Lot, and lots of servants, and cattle.  This is a man of substance, who the Lord calls out of life and says,  “I will bless you, if you go to the place that I send you.”  But the final part of this transaction is the blessing part, where God promises to bless and to make Abraham a blessing as well.  It is no easy transaction, this promise and command that God proposes to Abraham.  It has both cost and risk.  It also has a future, and not just the future hoped for by the tribal peoples of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Their hope was the survival of a name, a family, and a tribe.  That will be Abraham’s hope and conundrum as well.  In the future it will appear as if there is no future for Abraham and Sarah’s family.  It will take a divine promise to accomplish that, and Sarah will laugh at the prospect.  But right now that is all behind them – for you see, in the Hebrew mindset the future was behind you, because you couldn’t see it yet.  By your side was the present, and in front of you was the past, which you could revisit and observe.  The future was unknown, and in the midst of that unknowing, God says, “Go from your country.”

Faith and Risk

We live in a culture that lives and indeed thrives with risk.  When I am flying on a plane, my mind will sometimes wander off to think about all of the thousands, if not tens of thousands of parts that need to function perfectly to keep me up in the air.  It’s a risk.  I guess that we could say that we are a society of faith.  Not the faith that was described to us by our parents; a faith in God, or in a book, or in a series of dogmatic assertions, but faith in something outside of ourselves. 

Jesus tries to get Nicodemus to understand that when he tells Nicodemus that he must be born “from above”.  Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus to say that he must be “born again,” and quickly sees the folly of such an assertion.  Jesus quickly corrects him – “You must be born from above”, and later “you must be born of water and the spirit.”  The common understanding of life and its causes are quickly brushed away by Jesus’ argument.  He wants Nicodemus to be open to something outside of himself, outside of his usual understanding of things.

Faith is risk.  It was certainly a risk for Abraham, which St. Paul thoroughly explores in the second lesson for today.  “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.”  Faith is to be persuaded that our relationship with God will ensure not only our own future, but also the future of those around us.  That was Abraham and Sarah’s hope – that the future would be ripe, full of promise, of benefit to future generations, and that their name would continue.  But did you get that one word?  Did you hear the word, “hope”? 

There are many Christians who would like to describe Christianity as a collection of certainties, of bankables and assurances.  Just as Abraham is asked to take a risk, to follow God into the unknown, so we, in following Jesus, follow after a similar risk and hope.  We do the same thing when we say the Creed, although we are led astray a bit with the culturally loaded English verb “to believe”.  The Latin verb “credo” involves issues of trust and taking someone at their word.  The core of the word is the notion of the heart, and the notion of placing something within that heart.  As any banker will tell you, “credit” a form of the same word, is a risk.

The Spirit and Living

We don’t know what happens immediately to Nicodemus.  He shows up again as a part of the Easter Narrative, but for now, John leaves him in sort of a stasis, suspended between what he knew as a faithful Jew, and what it was that Jesus was attempting to persuade him of.  We are, in many ways, in the same place.  Like Abraham, we may be asking, “where do I (we) go from here?”  What might be helpful is Jesus second comment to Nicodemus about being born of “water and the Spirit,” followed by a saying “The wind blows where it chooses.”  If there is something to grab onto here it is that notion of the “Spirit”.  It’s a good Hebrew word “ru’ah” and it means breath and life.  Jesus infers to Nicodemus that as God blew breath into the clay man Adam, and he becomes a living being; in a new sort of creation, the Spirit needs to re-breath us, so that we are living in a new way.

Why take the risk?  For Abraham it was about the future.  For us it is about living.  Remember the promise that is made to Abraham, “You will be a blessing?”  That is our promise as well – that is our task as well.  So as we are persuaded, as we believe, as we trust, as we have confidence in God, what do we do with that?  Do we rest in the comfort of the Spirit?  Or should we be stirred up?

Jesus makes a couple of comparisons at the end of the reading: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes (takes a risk with, trusts, is persuaded, has confidence in, places it in the heart) in him may have eternal life.  It is however, not just the life to come in which we are placed but also something more than that.  “You will be a blessing.”

On our sign out on Pruneridge Avenue I had the following comment put out there: “What are you taking on for Lent?”  It is the custom, you know, limiting ourselves during Lent – giving something up; chocolate, the gym, meat, smoking, alcohol, you name it.  That’s OK, but I think Jesus is really asking us to take a greater risk, something like that, which was taken on by Abraham and Sarah.  I think Jesus wants us to take on one another – not only those we know, but those who are strangers to us.  That’s what our house meetings and the IAF is all about.  It’s about understanding ourselves as both pilgrims (like Abraham and Sarah) and servants (like Paul).  As we do our community organizing we will hopefully find out what is expected of us by the community that surrounds us, and we will hopefully begin to understand what kind of person will be needed here, serving as rector. 

Water and the Spirit – that remembrance will help us understand who we are, and begin us on our path to do for others.  Touch the water as you leave and remember.  You’re walking with Abraham and Sarah now.

SDG

The First Sunday in Lent, 9 March 2014

“Entry”

The First Sunday in Lent

9 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Santa Clara, California

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7


Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19


St. Matthew 4:1-11

INI

Baptismal Entry

A few days ago, at my first meeting at Saint Mark’s with the search committee, your Senior Warden, Kim, graciously took me on a tour of the campus.  As we entered the parish hall, a group of women was doing something in the kitchen, when I heard, “Are you the new guy?”  A pause hovered in the air.  “I don’t know yet!” I quickly replied.  Well, I guess that I am the “new guy”, and together we will be beginning a journey not only into Lent but also into a sojourn, of some together, while I help you discern what it is that you want to be during this interim period, where it is that you would like to go, and with whom you would like to take the subsequent journey.  That will be some hard work, and it will take sufficient time for the Spirit to work within us as well.  So let us walk together.  Next Sunday, we will do some praying over this, to enable our common journey.

I asked the altar guild to put the Baptismal Font at the entry to the church.  Are we having a baptism?  No.  But it will serve as a useful touchstone for us as we try to remember what we are all about here.  This is good for our interim status, as we ground ourselves into our on-going status as God’s baptized and redeemed people, and it is good for our Lenten journey that ends at the Great Vigil of Easter where we will renew our baptismal vows and take on the baptismal reality.  So, when you greet the font, remember your forgiven and redeemed self, full of God’s goodness and grace.

What follows Baptism?

Jesus had an extraordinary baptism.  First he had to convince John the Baptism that he even needed to do it.  In Matthew it is a deeply interior experience that Jesus has.  The voice from the heavens is only known to him, and the dove that descends upon him is only seen by him.  How much easier it might have been had the crowd seen and understood these actions, but they are known only to Jesus.  In the center of his being, he has to confront the ministry that is now thrust upon him.  This deeply personal wrestling which Jesus does reminds me of a passage from Nikos Kazantzakis’ book The Last Temptation of Jesus.

“’Someone came last night in my sleep,’ he murmured under his breath, as though he feared the visitor were still there and might overhear him.  ‘Someone came.  Surely it was God, God…or was it the devil?  Who can tell them apart?  They exchange faces; God sometimes become all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle.”[2]

The muddle, as Kazantzakis calls it is discerning who is calling us to do what.  We live in a world of constant temptation.  Our culture is based on it.  Open a magazine or turn on your television and you will be tempted to consume all sorts of things.  This is a template for our life after baptism – what to do next, what to taken on, what to leave behind.

Jesus’ intentions, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, are to follow the example of Israel.  Thus, like Israel, he is driven into the wilderness.  Israel walked through the waters of the Red Sea (please get the baptismal inference), and then had all kinds of new realizations as they navigated the wilderness.  They grew hungry, they depended on God’s protection, and at the end, they inherited a new land.  These distinctions will become important for us as we struggle to understand the Jesus who is tempted in the wilderness by the Devil.  It is the devil, you see, who takes Jesus’ intentions and turns them into an invitation to turn away from God.  Israel was hungry, and Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread.  Israel was protected by God, and Jesus is tempted to do extreme things to test God’s desire to protect.  Israel was promised a land of “milk and honey” and Jesus is promised “all the kingdoms of the earth.” 

All of this Jesus puts aside, but in it he understands the human dilemma.  In a desire to “know good and evil”, both Adam and Eve test God’s intentions about the tree.  They soon learn both good and evil within their very own bodies.  It becomes a question of what to do next.  (A very similar question to our own situation here at St. Mark’s).

Enabling a Baptismal Life

I’d like to get back to that “new guy” idea.  Whoever it was that asked that of me was onto something really quite important.  In his explanation to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, Martin Luther has this to say in his Small Catechism,

What does such baptizing with water signify?

It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man or woman daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Saint Paul has a similar notion in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans:

“We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

There’s that new guy and gal thing again.  It is what we are called to be first and foremost.

As we discern together, and as we think about what God is calling this parish to both be and do, the foundation of baptism will serve us well.  It is that fountain from which so much understanding springs.  We need to begin with ourselves, and then look beyond to the other.  If we can have certainty about our own righteousness through Jesus, then we can have an equal certainty about what we might be called to do.  Psalm 32 says it well:

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; *

I will guide you with my eye.”

If we follow the logic of the psalm we will arrive at a status of blessedness, or put more accurately, a status of happiness.

So, while were here together, I promise to do some things for you.  I will always remind you of your baptismal status.  I will always feed you with the Eucharist.  I will always be about the business of forgiveness and grace.  I will listen to your story and I will share my own.  I will challenge and I will be challenged.  I will pray for you, as I hope you will pray for me.  Most importantly I will gather with you as a common family around Word and Sacraments as together we await the Spirit who wishes to breathe new life into us.

Life after baptism can be a hard business.  It is, however, never done alone.  It is done accompanied by the prayers of the saints and the faithful.  That will be our business together.  The new guy.  The new people.  A new life!

SDG