Sunday, May 29, 2016

Pentecost II, Proper 4, 29 May 2016


Preaching at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church
Berkeley, California

The Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 4
29 May 2016



“The Stranger”

I Kings 8:22-23, 41-45
Psalm 96:1-9
Galatians 1:1-12
St. Luke 7:1-10

INI

            There is something in our culture, I think, that expects the stranger to be extraordinary or exotic. Lately we seem to be seeing strangers as interlopers and threats, and yet every day we encounter the stranger.  We may not choose to acknowledge them on the street as they pass us by.  Several years ago someone did a study about civic behavior in San Francisco.  It was discovered that most people, when bumping into another person on the sidewalk did not offer either a “pardon” or any kind of apology. The sociologist determined that this had nothing to do with bad etiquette or rudeness, but rather a simple denial that one lived in a dense community. The stranger crowds us in, limits our perspective, and makes for fewer personal choices and freedoms according to contemporary thinking.
            We also have a fantastical view of what it must have been like to live in the time of Solomon or Jesus. I suspect that many of us view the ancient world as disconnected with the broader world; parochial and separate. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however. The ancient world was a cross roads of cultures, languages, and religions, and they all got mixed up. Even the nomads realized that they were not alone in their wandering, and thus had rather explicit rules and expectations about honoring the stranger, and hospitality. It is this reality that gives us a different perspective on two of our readings for today.
            Solomon is at prayer in the Temple in Jerusalem, and we see him in his role as priest/king – a role common in the ancient near east. In the first part of his prayer he acknowledges God’s greatness with language that is paralleled in the psalm for this morning, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath.” Hear the words, “O YHWH, God of Israel.” The verses that follow the first verses of our reading today are a rehearsal of a nation, Israel, and the stranger, and they give us clues as to when these verses were written and from which perspective. What is a reviewed are Israel’s experience with its God, YHWH, and the interactions with strange nations who act as God’s agents in guiding Israel, and pointing to God’s will. We move swiftly through passages that have shadows of Babylon and Persia and the return of the exile, and then back to remembrances of Egypt and deliverance from slavery.
            It is here that we begin to see a movement from the God who is Israel’s unique and personal property to an Israel that ought to welcome the stranger. Solomon bids God to listen to the stranger, “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name -- for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm-- when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you,” A religion that welcomes ideas from without itself – what a concept!
            There are several events that precede and prepare us for what Jesus does in today’s Gospel. If we look at the previous two chapters, we see a Jesus who is spading up the ground to plant new seed. He cleanses a leper, and heals a paralytic. He calls a tax collector to be one of his disciples. He calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath, and heals a man on the Sabbath. He preaches to people from Judea, Jerusalem, and the region of Tyre and Sidon. He expounds on our duty to love our enemies, and to stop judging others.
It is at this point where Jesus is confronted by the stranger, the stranger whom he and Luke have anticipated in the previous stories.  The stranger has sent emissaries, notable Jewish men from the synagogue. He has sent them with a request – that Jesus heal his servant. He is so deferential, that he requests Jesus not to even come into his house, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.” (This, by the way is a wonderful prayer that is said in the Roman Catholic liturgy and in the liturgy of the Church of England before the communion).
            The stranger has faith! What enters your mind when you see someone you don’t know sitting next to you in the liturgy? Apprehension, nervousness, guilt, curiosity? How about having a sense of hospitality. The stranger has faith, and comes to us as a gift from God. This is more than just being welcoming for the sake of Saint Mark’s Berkeley. This is being welcoming because God has so welcomed others and us. Yes, they may have a different perspective, and they may be unfamiliar with our ways – but they know God, as do we.
            We need to go back to the centurion for a second, for there is a detail that may have passed us by – one that might be useful to us. The centurion, the stranger, does not ask for healing for himself. He asks it for another stranger, his servant, who is described as one he “valued highly.” We could take a pessimistic view and discount the centurion’s altruism as just taking care of a good investment. Or we could take the other possible translation, that the servant was “dear to him.” It doesn’t matter for the stranger – the centurion – reaches out beyond himself to two other strangers. The one is Jesus, who he hopes will heal his servant. The other is the slave/servant, a member of his household. All of them are bound in an interaction that exhibits the community of love and responsibility that God expects of those who call upon God’s name. Lord, we are not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and our souls shall be healed.
           
SDG

Sunday, May 22, 2016

The Feast of the Holy Trinity, 22 May 2016


Preaching at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church
Berkeley, California

The Feast of the Holy Trinity
The First Sunday after Pentecost
22 May 2016





“Wonder”
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8 or Canticle 13
Romans 5:1-5
St. John 16:12-15

INI

            It is not without some sense of dread and soul searching that the preacher approaches this day. Its sermons are more thank likely rife with heresy and equivocation, and yet someone must say something on this day that honors the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Russian icon, depicting the Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah, which serves as the representation of the Holy Trinity is perhaps the most eloquent, and the most appropriate and useful for us as we worship the Triune God. It is clear and succinct and yet it has a mystery to it that invites us to explore.
            There is in contemporary Christian life a tendency to either seek complete understanding of all that Christianity has to offer or to ignore that which we cannot understand. The black and white nature of how so many Christians respond to social issues speaks to this observance. Where the Scriptures are quite obtuse or mixed others find definite answers and absolute truths. And some of us, when confronted by mystery and controversy through our hands up into the air, running away in state of denial and avoidance.  Or, as Alan Jones says, “Mystery doesn’t sell well – Certainty does!” There is a key to all of this in the readings for today, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures, a reading from Proverbs. The other readings contribute as well, but its heart is in what the author of Proverbs attempted to show us by showing us the beauty of Wisdom and of the creation that surrounds us and that indeed is we ourselves. It reminds me of a response on the part of God in the face of Job’s advisor’s challenge: The Almighty! We cannot find him, preeminent in power and judgment, abundant in justice, who never oppresses.” To this effrontery and lèse majesté, God does not mince words.
“Where were you when I founded the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its size? Surely you know?
Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

Into what were its pedestals sunk,
and who laid its cornerstone,

While the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God* shouted for joy?

Who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb,b

When I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling bands?

When I set limits for it
and fastened the bar of its door,

And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther,
and here shall your proud waves stop?
These words could be read with anger and with a loud voice and timpani, but they can also be read with beauty – for that is what God is attempting get Job and his companions to see – the beauty of what God has done, and on the basis of that to worship, to adore, and to believe.
            There are two parts to the Proverbs passage.  In the first four verses of the lectionary selection we meet Wisdom standing in the midst of life. She stands at the cross roads, and in the places where humankind gathers to meet out justice. She is the center of life, and she is God’s constant companion. This is a very incarnational idea – that God should be in our midst and one of us. That is where the latter verses take us – to see where Wisdom stands beside God to witness his acts in creation. The inventory that the author of Proverbs takes is one that takes our breath away, as we survey the wonders of Creation. And that is the very thing that these proverbs wish to convince us of.
            Will you learn something new this morning? Perhaps not – and that will be OK. You may go home today without any new sense of what the Trinity is or will be in your life – but if you go home with a sense of wonder – then we shall have done something here. God calls Job away from all his sufferings and troubles and to just wonder at it all. The spiritual says it well, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble. Whether it be the crucified Lord, the thoughts of Mary as she ponders her son, our own new vision of Mt. Hood on a clear day – we need to tremble and wonder.
            We do things around here.  Like God, with Wisdom present, we create. We form and shape, we destroy and make new, we come and we go – and we make mistakes. It is at that point that we need to retreat to the wonder again, and leave behind the sorrow of error. I talked with a young woman this week. Her life was a catalogue of mistakes with men, with her family, with her daughter, and most of all with her self. She was lost and confused and full of questions and anxiety. I asked her if she could forgive herself all these things, and she could no longer answer. She was caught up in a world of wonder that God would allow such a thing – to forgive myself and to accept it. I’ve been there – have you?
            The Trinity is relationship and community. It is wonder. It is something to give us pause and prayer. It is a model of living and creating life. The closing verses of the first reading say it well.
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race."



SDG

The Day of Pentecost, 15 May 2016


Preaching at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church
Berkeley, California

The Day of Pentecost
15 May 2016






“All About the Family”

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17
St. John 14:8-17, 25-27

INI

The Spirit of Slavery
            Paul is mindful of his Jewish congregation in Rome, but is also mindful of the Romans that they have become and that have joined with them. He asks them to look back in time from whence they came. The great salvation story that was the backbone of Jewish Salvation History and that serves the same purpose in the Christian Liturgical Year was the story of Israel’s redemption from its slavery in Egypt. Subsequent periods of oppression, such as the Babylonian captivity, the tyranny of Seleucid kings, and the bad treatment under the Romans always were likened to that period in Egypt. Thus Paul wants to set a base line against which he is going to measure what we have become in Christ. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” The slavery he will subsequently discuss will be of an altogether different nature, but the emotion impact of the word and its notions will serve his purpose well.
            We should not think that this is a concept that has been left behind in our time. We have slaves all about us, and we have our own history with this institution that seems to be rearing its ugly head again in our political discussion and discourse. The slavery of our time can be both overt and subtle, as we see ourselves in slavery to consumerism and convenience.  Those would have tempted Paul’s people as well, but he was more concerned about their sense of self, and their actual condition under the Law (and here I begin to revert to some very solid Lutheran roots). Paul is not pleased with the Law because it gives us a wrong sense of who we are in Christ. Laboring with a burden of guilt or unrealized forgiveness we may not have the joy that is part and parcel of being a follower of Jesus.
On being Adopted.
            Noble’s family gathered at the door just now to bring their child to baptism. They made promises there and they and the priests signed him with a new sign – the sign of the cross. Paul would have us, would have Noble, would have his parents and sponsor, and would have all of us understand three subsequent modes of being once we have been anointed by the Spirit. There are three of them mentioned in the second lesson for today. The first is that we are adopted; the second that we are children, and the third is that we are heirs.
            Adoption in the ancient world, was mainly concerned with the families of elites and the succession of wealth from one generation to another. In the Jewish world this was largely handled through adoption and levirate marriage, but again the emphasis was on economic and social concerns. The Roman world was quite familiar with the idea of adoption, so Paul’s development would have found a knowledgeable audience. He takes it in a different direction however. In some sense Paul poses it as a contrast to slavery. It is an altered condition where the relationship of an individual to a parent or family is fundamentally changed. Thus, at the doors of the church, Noble is adopted into our family, into our community. It is not only entrance; it is inclusion.
We are children of God.
            Paul leads us by the hand to a further understanding. “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” It is a redefining of what we mean by family. For many in the ancient world, members of the family were defined and respected in relationship to their economic and political value for the family. When Peter quotes the prophet Joel in his sermon to the crowd at Pentecost, he raises the notion of a radically different understanding of people. It is an understanding that the spirit does not discriminate, that the Spirit is a prodigal as well, broadcasting her wisdom and knowledge widely and with broad effect. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
            So we lead Noble to become a child of God. As we witness this act of washing with water, anointing with oil, and praying for the Spirit, we need to recognize that we are children as well, belonging to the same family that see God as not only creator, but parent and care-taker. Jesus reminds the disciples in the Gospel for today that they have an intimate knowledge of that relationship with God, “You know the Sprit, because that Spirit abides with you, and will be in you.”
Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
            Paul closes today’s pericope with this statement, “we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” The suffering will happen in a moment, for Noble is to be baptized into the death of Jesus. The glory will also happen in a moment for Noble is to be baptized into the resurrection of Jesus. Baptism makes us heirs. And now we have the whole progression: slave, adopted, child, heir. In our world, we may not have seen this development in our own being and understanding of ourselves. At the end of the liturgy we will welcome Noble and his family into our midst. Here is the hard part, however, we must always welcome any who come into our midst as heirs of Christ. Most of all we must welcome ourselves as a redeemed and forgiven people. At the peace, when you greet the people around your remember that you share a status with them – that you are family with them, for we are all heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. So I say it for one last time during this season of Spirit, and on this day of baptism – The Lord is Risen Alleluia – He is Risen Indeed Alleluia!


SDG