Sermon for Lent II - 24 February 2013

“A Purposeful Journey“

The Second Sunday in Lent

24 February 2013

Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church

San Francisco, California

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Psalm 27

Philippians 3:17-4:1

St. Luke 13:31-35

INI

Purpose:

I had lunch with my mother, Ruth, a couple of weeks ago.  I would regularly bring lunch to her on Tuesdays at noon, when we could visit together and share food.  Eating was a big thing to her – she loved it.  She was the complete carnivore, and she rejoiced in that.  The visits were always marred in my mind in that there was nothing to visit about.  At 96 years of age, my mother’s life had imploded into a nothingness that confused her and confounded those who sought to be with her.  In many ways, since my father’s death some 21 years ago, she had lost her purpose, and the options began to dwindle.  Sometime during the night as the 27^th of January turned into the 28^th she attempted to get up and collapsed and died.  Her journey was done, and her purpose was fulfilled.

We meet Abraham at a similar juncture in his life.  Called by God from the Ur of the Chaldeans into a new land, Abraham in a vision converses with God and realizes that life seems to be at an end, that he is childless, and that his purpose and his legacy is finished.  Someone else will have to complete whatever was set into motion by his life.  At God’s suggestion of a “reward”, Abraham complains to God:

“O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?  You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”

This seems to be just like Downton Abbey!  When, however, we see the scope of God’s past relationship with Abraham – who brought him up out of the land of his mother and father into a new place, who took him down to Egypt, who brought him back to these lands – we understand that God has more in mind for Abraham and Sarah.  There is more to the purpose that has yet to be revealed.

The Vision and the Promise

Do you dream?  Do you remember your dreams – write them down – think about them later?  My husband writes them down.  Fresh from bed he goes to his office and captures what he cans of the dreams of the just ended night of rest.  Dreams are the great platform upon which the promises of God are revealed in the Bible.  And there are so many dreamers – Daniel, Joseph in Egypt, Balaam, Samuel, Joseph the Husband of Mary, the women at the Tomb, Peter, Paul and many others.  These men and women had their minds opened up to a new possibility.  They were given the gift of promise.

Abraham sleeps – and here the verb is the same verb used when Adam sleeps and Eve is created.  This is the sleep of creation and a new thing.  He has a vision of an every day event.  In the ancient near east if two people were going to make a contract, one with the other, certain rituals were used to note the event – the promises that were being made one to the other.  A sacrificial animal would be taken, killed, and then divided into two parts and set on the ground.  Then those who were making the agreement would walk between the pieces, would walk on the blood of the animal, and make their covenant, their agreement.  So Abraham dreams, the animals, the mysterious passing of the torch and the burning pot between the pieces, and finally the promise – descendants and land.

Now Abraham has both promise and continuing purpose.  There will be an heir, there will be a family – like the stars of heaven, there will be a land, a home, and a place.

Jesus’ Purpose

In Nikos Kazantzakis’ book, The Last Temptation of Christ, we meet a confused and troubled Jesus who is being pursued by a dark Spirit – a black angel that chases him into the desert.  He flees to a monastery there to understand his purpose and his journey into life.  It is a Jesus that each of us can understand.  It is a Jesus who looks at the question of life and can’t come up with an answer right away.  Eventually, Jesus learns that this black angel is nothing but the Holy Spirit who is attempting to anoint him with purpose and destiny.

You are not so far from that spirit and that situation.  It is but a few years ago that you were in search of a new rector, but more than that.  You were searching out promise and future as well.  Like Abraham and Sarah, you were wondering who your family of faith might continue to be, and like Jesus you were a bit pensive and fearful of the prospects.

In the Gospel for today, it is not only Jesus who wonders, but others as well.  The Pharisees share some information that they think Jesus’ might find useful – “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  They don’t get it, and Jesus quickly reminds them that they are far from the mark.  Jesus purpose is continuous and evident.  He points out the signs of his purpose: casting out demons, curing people, and then he drops the big clue: and on the third day I finish my work.

The Journey

My mother was on a journey – one that she really didn’t ever understand.  She was however aware of the movement and events that made up her journey.  Abraham and Sarah were on a continuous journey that extended over a great deal of time and space.  From time to time they needed to check in on their journey to both understand and effect the purpose of their journey.  The psalmist for this morning is on a journey as well.  It is a journey that extends from distress to a sublime longing for God, from the battlefield to the beauty of the temple, from loneliness to a relationship with God.  Jesus is on a journey as well, with a bitter end.  Jesus goes to Jerusalem, the place that kills the prophets, and Jesus is the prophet.  He goes in spite of the bad news that the Pharisees bring, because that is his purpose.  His coming, his journey is a blessing to Jerusalem, and a blessing to those of us who follow him.

What will your journey be this Lent.  I ask this of you not only as individuals, but as a community as well.  Where will you go?  What is the purpose of your journey?  What is the promise of your journey?  As individuals you weigh the situation of your neighbors, your faith, and your family to determine how you might pray, how you might distribute alms, how you might share the promise and purpose with others.  The larger purpose of the community, this community, is just a summation of all that individual purpose and promise. 

In the second lesson, Paul speaks about being imitators of Christ, and in the 15^th Century Thomas à Kempis wrote a book of spiritual disciplines that he entitled Imitatio Christi.  It consists of four “books”, each of which suggests an arena where we might discern our Lenten purpose.  He suggests an awareness of Spiritual Life first – an awareness that extends beyond the Eucharistic Fellowship here, in this place, that moves out into the world of our lives.  In the second book he suggest that the Christian “take up the cross” and take on whatever life gives to live it out in the manner of Jesus.  In the third book that is cast as a dialogue between Jesus and a disciple, Jesus suggests that the disciple not only imitate him, but incorporate himself into Christ.  Finally the fourth book discusses the role of the Eucharist, and the nourishment that the Eucharist offers in our journey.

So, where shall you go, what shall you do this Lent?  Be an Abraham, be a Sarah, and have a dream.

SDG

The Baptism of Our Lord - 13 January 2012

“Relationship”

The Baptism of Our Lord

13 January 2013

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

San Francisco, CA.

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

St. Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

INI

I was so glad when your Rector, Dana, sent me an email asking for a brief bio and a photograph.  It is a risky business on our parts, yours and mine, to come to this place and to engage in the interactions that surround the enterprise of preaching.  One might think that I might come here, bestow my wisdom upon your, and leave it at that.  Preaching, however, is a more fearful enterprise.  It is a dialogue, if only in all of our minds, but hopefully in our future as well.

In a sense I come to you as a stranger, at least for some of you.  And in another sense I come as no stranger at all.  It seems that we have been joined together at that font, over there, or at fonts like it all over the world.  We enter this place with the same name, the same identity, the same claim to authority.  We enter in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit – for that is the name that embraces each of us.  So now that we have been duly introduced, and have established that we have at least some experience one of the other, let’s jump into the texts for this morning.

Related to God

The second of the Isaiahs puts words into God’s mouth and they are words that this Isaiah trusts, and words from which he attempts to construct a future for Israel.  God is described before Isaiah bares witness to what God wants to be.  “The One who created you.”  “The One who formed you.”  At the most primary our relationship to God is as one is related to the one who made us – I like the wording, “who formed you.”  Jeremiah would use this same notion and supply it with an image as well, that of the potter, moulding the clay.  It is from this platform of being formed and made by God that all else will follow, and interestingly enough, all will end.

If we or our world are formed by anything, it is the voice of God.  In the first creation story, God speaks, “Let there be light.” and there is light.  The voice and the hands of God are at our very beginning.  It is a powerful voice as we see in the psalm for this morning.  The voice is a powerful voice, it is a voice of splendor, it breaks forests of trees, it thunders, it splits the flames of fires.  It is a voice that gives us a voice – for we cry out “Glory!”  Why?  What does this glory mean?  The glory of God is all that happens about us in heaven and upon earth, all over which God has suasion and power.  Thus, we are God’s glory along with the awesome night sky.  How might that be?  I forgot to mention one of the things that the Voice is – it is a voice that “is upon the waters.”  Now this has a great deal of meaning to those see the God of Israel, for it brings a memory of the Red Sea, or of the Jordan River where God’s voice indeed was upon the waters.  God has been upon the waters of the new Israel as well.  God has roiled the waters of your font with the wind of the Spirit, and all who are born again there are infused with that Spirit and that voice.  Yes, our relationship in word and water.  We related to one another in Baptism, and God as our parent, our mother, our father in the same water.

Redeemed by God

Isaiah recognizes in this God the one who redeems us.  To help us lean into this phrase we need to leave some of the theological baggage that accompanies this word, “redemption”, and invest it with more meaning.  The notion here is that someone else has us, has control over us, has acquired us, and is requiring a payment of some kind so that we might be returned to the original owner.  Isaiah’s ideas are more real, however – real for the people of his time.  The reality?  Well, it’s wartime; and there has been deportation, exile, separation from home and family, longing, waiting for a reunion.  Sound familiar?  It should for it is the stuff of our time, of every time really.  It is from these realities that God wishes to redeem us.  For the ancient Israelites it was redemption from the huge powers of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria that had meddled with the people of God.  Redemption is made not only at the heart of theological problems, but at the heart of real life as well.

We know the times of which the prophet speaks for we know the story.  The story we know even better is the story of our own lives.  Isaiah sees God as allowing God’s people to pass through the waters, and walk through fire.  Life can seem that way sometimes, and probably is.  It is interesting to listen to John the Baptist for a second, with these promises from Isaiah yet in our ears. 

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

This reacquisition of our lives by the God who first created and formed us is the real and spiritual redemption for which so many long.  The question that will follow in these Sundays after the Epiphany is “What shall we do with these lives that have survived difficulty?”  And we wonder whom might we yet notice who has yet to understand this redemption given to us in water and word.  Why would God redeem us if not for some kind of purpose or usefulness – perhaps to serve as an example to someone for whom God is a stranger?   Perhaps a quote from Carl Jung might help us here:

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Brought together by God

Do you know the person next to you?  If not, at the peace, you can meet them and understand your common relationship in God.  What is quite remarkable is the new ground that this second Isaiah makes in our understanding of who is related to God and why.  Before this time, the common understanding was that God was the God of Israel.  Although there are legal provisions in the Hebrew Scriptures for welcoming the stranger and the foreigner, God is still the God of Israel – a national god.  Isaiah sees something that exceeds this idea.  Following a recitation of lands (Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba) given up for the sake of Israel, God talks in an expansive way about those who are God’s own:

“I give people in return for you,

nations in exchange for your life.

Do not fear, for I am with you;

I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you;

I will say to the north, "Give them up,"

and to the south, "Do not withhold;

bring my sons from far away

and my daughters from the end of the earth--

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made."

There is a small battle going on amongst Christians about baptism.  Is it a sacrament that keeps people out, or is it an invitation, an open door, a promise of belonging, a chance for a new life?  We may be having this battle because we don’t talk about baptism all that much.  Isaiah can help us in that regard, for he pictures a God, a profligate God, who invites all.  It is not only the chosen, who have been created and formed by God, but also all the nations, and all the people.  Perhaps we need to begin with ourselves.  That is what Jesus does.  He is baptized (the details are not offered and the specifics left unstated) and then has a grand realization of what he is and what he is to do.  “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

If this can be our understanding of our own status in God’s sight, “you are my daughter, you are my son, I am well pleased,” then we can begin to live life differently and relate to not only God, but to our neighbor differently.  “Bring my sons from far away, and my daughters from the end of the earth.”  That is our challenge on this day, not only to know ourselves as the redeemed, but all as the object of God’s redemption.  In the second reading for today, St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles relates the story of the apostles who go up to Samaria (the land of a hated people) to confirm that some gentiles had been baptized.  They lay hands on those who had been “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”, so that the Spirit might come upon them.  This is a hard lesson for Peter and John, but it is one that they learned – Jesus is Lord of all.  How will we learn it?  What shall we both remember and do?  Perhaps as Luke notes about the people who meet John the Baptist in the wilderness, we also need to be a people who are “filled with expectation.” 

SDG

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