Cam Miller

2 Easter, 2021: Small Wire

April 11, 2021 by Cam Miller

For video version, scroll to bottom

Sermon Texts: John 20:19-31 and…

Small Wire
by Anne Sexton

My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels
dance on the head of a pin.

God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love.
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke.

I am asking for your grace here,
and perhaps indulgence.
This Anne Sexton poem
has a place in my heart
and life
that is abiding
and powerful.

Someone gave me
a handwritten version of it
that I carried for years and years
until is became too faded and frayed.
It was a double-sided gift
that only revealed one side
at the time I first read it.

Honestly, it has been so long
with so much water under the bridge
that I can’t clearly remember in detail
what was going on at the time,
except that I was considering leaving seminary –
in the very first semester.
Perhaps a bit like Thomas,
everyone else seemed to know more than me
and seemed so sure of what they knew.

I had entered seminary as an exploration,
not with any clear vision or understanding
or with a goal in mind.

Halfway through that first semester
I was pretty sure it was a mistake.
And trust me, if I couldn’t handle
The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.
then I wasn’t going to fit in anywhere.
It was a wide-open feminist, social justice,
and academically venturesome institution —
at least for its time.

But dang, if people didn’t walk around
talking theology
with the confidence of ideology
and as if it was obvious and apparent
for everyone to see.
It was like the week Thomas had to live through
with his colleagues all talking about something
he couldn’t understand because
he had not experienced it.
And to be brutally honest,
it had been five years
since I attended church
other than Christmas Eve with family.

Suddenly I was in the belly of the whale.
I felt like I was in the old horror/Sci-Fi movie,
”Invasion of the Body Snatchers”
and I was the last one left.

Well, along came this poem
from Anne Sexton.
She was speaking my language
and saying something I could understand.
Somehow she gave me a little confidence
with which to see through the bravado
being exhaled all around me.

Anne was just one of the reasons
I kept on going
but she came to symbolize so much more.
Then the other side of the gift
came along years later.
She was the one
who introduced me to poetry I liked.
She wrote poems I could understand
in a language
and with a concreteness
and frankness
that the poetry I read before her
never seemed to have.
All these years later
all those poems later
I count this poem, Small Wire,
as the first.

Okay, that was a way-long introduction
that was too much about me
and maybe not enough about us.
Except that I think maybe it is about us.

Faith IS “…a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web…”

But here is the thing about faith,
it doesn’t take goo-gobs of it
to be a person of faith.

”…God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love…”

How is it we came to think of faith
as a quantity?
It’s like the old McDonald’s cheeseburger, fries,
and coke that got super-sized
but now requires an athletic eating competition
to consume.

Faith isn’t an athletic ability
that measures whether you are a LeBron James
or Mr. Magoo,
one with obvious superior talent
the other a cartoon character.

Faith, authentic faith,
is always hung
by a thin wire
but we confuse faith with belief.

We have tons of belief
about all sorts of things.
We believe in conspiracy theories
and we believe that science will save us.
We believe the vaccines are not safe
and we belief they are the answer.
We believe in what Donald Trump says
and we believe that anything he says is unbelievable.

We believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
and we believe that Jesus is God.
We believe that Buddha uncovered the path
to enlightenment
and we believe that Mohammad
was the last of the prophets.

Those are all beliefs not faith.

Belief comes from the Greek word, PISTIS,
which denotes an investment of confidence
in something
or someone, but most especially
that something is true.
We believe in certain descriptions of reality
and act accordingly.
Beliefs are an intellectual assent,
a decision to give credit to something.
Beliefs are ideas about how things are
or the way things are supposed to be
and we back those with our confidence
and choices.

But faith is something else altogether.

In ancient Hebrew, the word translated into English
is EMUNAH and shares its roots
with the words for WOMB and MERCY.

Faith is experiential rather than intellectual.
It is what surrounds us
and holds us.
It is not something we “believe in”
it is an EXPERIENCE to which we say “YES!”
or even, “NO!”

Like all experiences
we hold onto them or we do not.
They slip away into memory
and fade in importance,
or we hold onto them
and keep them present.

In fact, “to hold onto”
is a common Biblical interpretation
of the word Emunah.
Faith is the experience of holding onto God.
That is why it is hung upon a thin wire —
because experience for us
is a spider’s web
upon which we dangle.
We are always playing with memory
of experiences
and interpreting and re-interpreting them
so that they conform
to our beliefs.
Belief has confirmation bias
built into it.
We look for what we believe
and when we find something that contradicts
our beliefs,
we look to re-interpret it or discard it
of somehow make it conform
to what we thought in the first place.

Faith does not interpret.
Faith does not subject experience to analysis.
Faith holds onto the experience.
Like awe or joy,
once we start analyzing faith
it is gone.
We hold onto it
or we don’t,
and then it fades and is gone.
It does indeed hang from a small wire.

But just like a cough
and love
cannot be concealed,
even a small cough
and even a small love,
a small faith held onto
is enough.

So I guess I am inviting you too,
to redefine faith, and
decouple it from belief.

Truly, a small faith
held tenaciously over time,
is enough.

Beliefs are a dime a dozen
and we have bunches of them.
But the experience of faith?
The experience of God’s presence?
The experience of the Creator-of-all-that-is
in the moment with us
as if the very womb that holds us?
That is a rare and precious moment
to hold onto for a lifetime.

I don’t know if I’ve ever said it before,
but thank you, Anne. Thank you.

https://youtu.be/N5QTGdMPq_I

Easter Day, 2021: Sun

April 10, 2021 by Cam Miller

Link to the poem, “The Sun” by Mary Oliver: http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_thesun.html

For the video version, scroll down

I begin with that Mary Oliver poem:
“…and have you felt for anything
such wild love —
do you think there is anywhere, in any
language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the (son)
reaches out,
as (he) warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed…” – Mary Oliver, The Sun

Well, really,
Mark has met Mary Oliver
and raised her bid.
Mark ends his Gospel
at an empty tomb
from which his closest friends
run away shaking with dread —
and tell no one
”…for the were afraid.”

This is Mark’s answer to Mary Oliver’s question:
“do you think there is anywhere, in any
language,
a word billowing enough…”
to describe that experience?

Mary, Mary, and Salome – who
the Gospel of Thomas says were disciples –
have braved everything else
the men were too scared to withstand.
But this one thing,
this empty tomb,
was too much even for them.

Something so terrifying
they told no one.

I want to simply be present
to their fear
and respect Mark’s silence.
I want to recognize
there is no word or words
billowing enough
to hold the moment
we are pointing at.

I do not want to be one of those
preachers
who yammers on
about things he or she has no business
speculating about,
because they don’t know.

I do not want to be one of those
pastors
at the graveside
who tells the family
that God wanted
their son or daughter or spouse or parent
in an attempt to fill the terrible gap
and empty tomb
that all of us look into
more than once
in our lifetimes.

Instead, I want to be Mary Oliver
who recognizes
there is no word or words
billowing enough
to deliver anything sensible.

I want to be Mark
who understands the story never ends
and does not try to tie it altogether
and put a bow on it.

You may have a theory
about what this story is about,
and you may have a speculation
that fills in the gaps,
but I am going to be so bold as to say:
“You do not know.”
The archbishop don’t know.
The pope don’t know.
The Dali Lama don’t know.
The preacher
the teacher
the physicist
and the biologist – they don’t know.

Matthew, Luke, and John
were not content to leave off
where Mark does –
running away from the empty tomb
and telling no one,
for they were afraid.
But they didn’t know either.

What is our problem?
What is it about us
that we cannot stand in awe of mystery
and simply be present to it –
and have that be enough?

What is it about us
that we have to color in every box and shape
and leave nothing empty at the edges?

This story
brings us back to the mountaintop
where Moses crouched down
between the rocks
and watched as God passed by –
but only the backside of God
because to look upon the face
the Creator Of All That Is
would mean certain death.
We cannot look upon God.
We cannot not know God.
The part,
teeny and tiny as we are,

does not get to see
or know
or understand
the whole
of which it is only one small part.

We only get glimpses –
traces
a fragrance
a mere scent
or reverberation
of what has already passed by.
That is all we get,
and to have any more
is to disappear
into the holy ether.

So today we celebrate
the end of our story.
Isn’t that fantastic?!

We celebrate the end,
which is a brazen total mystery
pointing toward something that is infinite.

We live one day at a time
in the midst of the infinite.
Hold that for a moment.

We live one day at a time
with the infinite.
We live in a restricted zone,
unable to leave it
without dying first.
And all around us,
on every side
and in every moment
is the infinite
that cannot be restricted to any place
but which also moves through
our space
like a spring wind
carrying the hope of summer.

Well, that is the best I can do
at saying something
about such wild love
that there is nothing, in any language,
no word billowing enough
for the pleasure
of standing here, empty-handed…

Palm Sunday 2021: This is not about once upon a time…

March 28, 2021 by Cam Miller

A video format follows the written text of this sermon…

There is an argument that bubbles
just under the surface of Palm Sunday
and Holy Week – at least among some clergy
and planners of liturgy
who think about things
rather than just doing them.

It is not a very important argument
considering our current moment
snarling with anger
and anguished with grief
over mass shootings,
COVID deaths and job losses,
and the choking, shivering, and sweating
of the planet.

It is a little thing really
but I get agitated about it every year.
I want to observe “Palm” Sunday
on this day each year
instead of “Passion” Sunday.
I want to reserve Good Friday
for the reading of the Passion –
and broken up into bites during Holy Week.
But that is not the way we do it anymore
and believe it or not,
there are some aspects of tradition
and ecclesiastical protocol
I avoid betraying.

The reason we don’t do “Palm” Sunday
instead of “Passion” Sunday
is you guys.
Fretful Church fathers and mothers
bewail the fact
that few people attend Holy Week services
these days – and for a long time now.
Not even Good Friday,
though there are some interesting folks
who wouldn’t miss
Ash Wednesday or Good Friday
even though they don’t attend the rest of the year.
But anyway, the anxiety
among those with strange collars
and who dress in drag each Sunday
is that you will hear the triumphalism
of Jesus’ Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem
but by-pass the torture and execution
on your way to Easter.
If that happened it would, they say,
be cheap grace.

You, and I mean you who are not ordained,
have to experience Jesus suffering on the cross
in order to be able to celebrate the resurrection.
It is an absolute necessity they say.

Never mind that it is a story we tell
and not an event we relive on cue.
It is the church continuing to act as if
it sets the cultural table
and as if it sets the stage for what the rest of us
can see and understand about life as we live it.

That is what bugs me most, I guess.
The church, still acting as if this is Christendom.

All of which you probably could care less about
and wonder why I am yammering
about something of so little consequence
when this is Palm Sunday
and we are still separated by a virus
and the world all around is flopping like a fish
desperate to return to the water.

Okay, I am going to tell you
but don’t blame me if you get upset.
This story,
this so-called “Passion” story
falls on dead ears.

Our place in this story
is not in the crowd laying down palms.
We are not in the crowd jeering him
and asking for Barabbas to be freed.
We are not members of the Sanhedrin
or scuttling clergy
plotting against him.
We are not among the disciples
scared and brave and angry and scared again.
We are not among the brave women
who hang tough with him.
We are not the soldiers who abuse him.

We are not the haughty Herod
or malevolent Pilate who execute him.
Clearly we are not him either.

So who are we in this story?
We are a long, long way away.

We only appear between the lines.
We are the Romans back in Rome or
somewhere in Italy
who employ people like Pontus Pilate
and who deploy the legions.
They didn’t have drones back then,
but if they did,
Jesus and the disciples may have all been wiped out
because drones are much cheaper
and often more effective
against revolutionary riff-raff.
And that is what really matters to empire.

It is almost impossible for us
to hear this story
and feel its true resonance
because we do not listen to it
from our perspective.
We try to shoehorn ourselves into it
through somebody else’s part.

We don’t get the fact
that it was and is our agents –
people who work for us
to keep us safe and sound and secure
within our borders –
who kill people like Jesus.

Instead, we make our liturgical dramas
and our Passion Plays and movies
and feel just awful
when we see the reruns each year.
But we feel awful in the wrong place.

We feel awful for Jesus
as if he is still suffering.
Instead we should feel awful for ourselves
because we are still doing it.
And by “we”
I mean those of us in the controlling classes
all around the world –
in the U.S.
and across Europe
and in China and Myanmar and Thailand.
Everywhere.

You see, this story
is about what happens
when the agents of God meet us.

They die.
When they get too close
or get heard too widely
or start to resonate beneath the surface
they die.

As long as we keep the focus on Jesus
instead of us,
or on what happened back then
instead of what we are doing today,
then the story remains just a fascinating story.

I get why the church does it this way.
It is no fun to do what I am doing right now –
de-mythologizing
so that it shatters our resistance.
But honestly, I can’t be part of the pretend any more.
I was never very good at it anyway.

The Passion is not about Jesus it is about us.

5 Lent B, 2021: Reversal Wisdom

March 21, 2021 by Cam Miller

While the story we heard from John
this morning,
does not appear in the other gospels,
one of it’s sentences does
and is clearly a preserved Jesus saying.
Here is that Jesus-saying as it appears
somewhat differently
in each gospel.

Mark: For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Matthew: He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Similar to Mark but without the gospel reference.

Luke: For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. Exactly the same as Mark but leave’s out the gospel reference.

John: He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Quite different.

There is a semantic difference
between these four versions of a Jesus saying
but there is also a significant difference
in meaning – a theological difference
if you don’t mind my using that term.

The semantic difference
hovers around the verb used:
whoever would save his life…
find his life…
love his life…
Or conversely, whoever would lose it
or hate it…

We could make mountains
out of mole hills over those differences
but without much significance.

Then there is a big fat difference in meaning.

Mark was the earliest Gospel
by perhaps half a generation
before Matthew and Luke,
and as many as two generations before John.
Matthew and Luke use Mark
to tell their stories,
and more often than not
following Mark’s chronology of events.
But then they make changes,
and when they do
they often make the same changes.

For example,
Matthew and Luke
have this saying from Mark
but they change it
and they change it in exactly the same way:
they cut off, “for the sake of the gospel.”

Mark’s Jesus says,
whoever would save his life will lose it;
and whoever loses his life for my sake
”and the gospel’s”
will save it.

Matthew, Luke, and John
leave off “and the gospel’s.”
That could be a coincidence
or happenstance of history –
because the version they received
didn’t include it –
or it could be intentional.

I think it is intentional
because it reinforces a difference in emphasis
between Mark and the other gospels.

Mark’s Jesus is fully human –
no miraculous birth story.
He has a spiritual awakening
at his baptism as a young man.
He comes into the awareness
of his special relationship with God,
just as any of us might.
At the end of the gospel
there is an empty tomb, period.
No resurrection stories
just the promise
that God will have the last word.

In Mark’s telling of Jesus’ ministry
there is special attention given
to Jesus training his students
to go out two by two
and do what he does:
preach and teach about the kingdom of God
that is breaking into the world
even here
even now.
Jesus is always pointing
to the Kingdom of God
that we are to create
”on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matthew and Luke echo this somewhat
but they also increase the pointing to Jesus.

Whereas Mark features Jesus
always points to the kingdom of God,
Matthew and Luke start pointing more to Jesus,
and by the time we get to John
it is a full-blown emphasis on Jesus.

So John’s Jesus
is talking about eternal life
with that saying,
rather than Mark’s Jesus
who is talking about this life.
John says, “…he who hates his life in this world
will keep it for eternal life.”

If Mark was standing alone
without these other versions of the Jesus saying,
especially John’s,
it could be a proverb
about how to live a more meaningful life
in this world.

As you likely know by now,
I am biased in favor of Mark’s Gospel
and of the four,
find John’s the most problematic.
That often puts me at odds
with the more orthodox elements of the Church
because it loves John.

But I want to turn toward John now
and appreciate the rich metaphor
he has given us –
because it is as apt
for living our lives focused
on this life
as it was to him about living this life
with an eye toward the next life.

First of all, I have to tell you
that the pulpit I preached from for ten years
had a little plaque underneath the light
which rested just above where the preacher
would place his or her notes.
It quoted today’s reading from John:
”Sir, we would see Jesus.”
I don’t know which predecessor put it there
but I suspect it is still there
at St. Stephen’s on the campus
of The Ohio State University.

No pressure, just show us Jesus.

The irony is that John doesn’t tell us
if Jesus ever meets with those Greeks.
Instead, he delivers to his students
one of the most insightful lines
from John’s gospel:
”I tell you the truth,
a grain of wheat must fall to the ground
and die to make many seeds.
But if it never dies, it remains only a single seed.”

I would like to divorce that metaphor
from its literal meaning,
by which John understands it,
and extend its connotation to life as we live it.

Think of the various grains or elements
of our own lives that could,
if we allowed,
enrich our lives
rather than in John’s sense
of life as defined by its ending.

For example, when we hold onto things we love
or that have been especially meaningful to us,
it can often spell its demise.
Change comes to all things
and all lives
and all relationships
but when we try to hold them in place
and resist the change and transformation
that is natural to everything,
we break –
or we break the thing we loved.

Resisting change makes us brittle
and the more brittle we are
the more likely we are to shatter
when changes we did not seek or want
come into our lives and relationships.

Parents watch as their children change
and become their own special free agents
with allegiances and values and activities
their parents may not share or even like.
When parents try to hold their children in place
and refuse to let them change,
the relationship will break
or become terribly toxic.

Likewise, adult children
see their parents change, and often,
witness their parents making choices
they don’t like or understand.
When children try to keep their parents
from breaking out of their childhood mold,
the relationship can shatter.
In our city of Geneva, as in many places,
the relationships between the police department
and the general public, as well as
activists and government,
are changing.
The parties involved can become rigid
and resistant, and so end up brittle,
or they can accept that change has come
and seek to grow into new relationships
that are mutually beneficial
even if different from the past.

When something we have thought
or believed
or valued
has been buffeted
by countervailing ideas
and beliefs
and values,
we can cross our arms and say “NO”
to any and all challenges…or we can wonder.

We can get curious about how and why
other people are seeing things
differently from the way we
have always assumed
things should be.
We may not have a revolution of thought
but softening and opening
may teach us more
and allow for more growth
than brittle resistance at all costs.

The palpable fear and anxiety
about becoming just one minority among many
in various parts of the
White, Euro-centric community,
is leading to wicked efforts
to repress voting rights.

Rigid resistance to the change that is coming,
that is in fact happening now,
is leading many to extreme and ugly behavior.

That rigidity is poisoning them on the inside
and leading to a threatening toxicity
among all those around them on the outside.

Letting the way things have always been
go through their natural life-cycles
and die,
allows for vibrant
and surprising new life
to blossom.

This is true for us as individuals
with regard to our values and ideas,
as well as with our relationships.
But it is also true
with our institutions and social order.

Not all change is good
but all things change.

Not all change is what we want
but all things change.

We may be able to influence change
and be the architects of change
instead of its victim only,
but resisting it carte blanche
will mangle us
if not kill us.

”I tell you the truth, a grain of wheat
must fall to the ground
and die to make many seeds.
But if it never dies, it remains only a single seed.”

That’s a pretty good proverb.
John may have meant it about life after death
but it seems to me
pretty good advice –
maybe even a warning –
about how we live life now.

Peace be with you,
and may your curiosity lead to many deaths
with abundant life that follows.

4 Lent 2021: There is more than orthodoxy

March 14, 2021 by Cam Miller

I am going to do something Gnostic-like,
since the Lenten Book Study has been reading the Gnostic Gospels.

I have “discovered”
a new ancient manuscript
that includes a strange version of John 3:14-21,
those verses we read today.

They seem to be parallel verses to John but different somehow,
as if it is a new gospel about the same things but with a very different outcome.

They were found in
”The Secret Gospel of Cam.

It goes like this, beginning at verse 14 (Cam 3:14-21), and I’m going to break at the verses so you can compare the two gospels:

3:14 Unlike the magic which Moses was said to use
in order to protect people from poisonous snakes in the wilderness, Jesus died while trying to lead humanity away from our toxic self-centeredness.

3:15 His death showed us that some things are greater than even life itself.

3:16 God so loved the world, and so loved Jesus, that God suffered with him, and is present in our suffering too.

3:17 It was not inevitable that Jesus would die in his effort to show us about creating God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Learning from him would save us from so much self-inflicted suffering.

3:18 When we refuse to believe that we can create a just and equitable community on earth, and live in harmony with the rhythms and wisdom of nature, then we condemn ourselves to lives lived within hostility, greed, war, and the ravages of a depleted and diminished earth.

3:19 And this is the judgment: that we suffer the consequences of our choices. There is no one to save us but ourselves – though God will help us if we allow it.

3:20 None of this is secret or hard to understand. We can readily see our demise in what we choose to do or not do.

3:21 Likewise, those who awaken from this terrible self-destruction will heal from its toxicity, and grow in understanding with a new depth of love. God is present through all of it, but it is not until we embrace this wisdom that we know it.

Well there it is, and just like those Gnostics
I am going to come out and say
that just because something is orthodox
does not make it true.

Orthodoxy is merely one form of Christianity
and by no means the gate-keeper of its wisdom.
In fact, I would go so far as to say
that orthodoxy has been a toxic virus to Christianity
as often as it has been of benefit.

I am not sure that statement could pass
the General Ordination Exam
in The Episcopal Church, but who knows?

You have heard me say it before
but Mark and John disagree with one another
on some very basic points about Jesus
and what came to call Christology.
Which one is true?

Likewise, Matthew
and Luke
each have points of view
that differ from John and Mark.
Paul is off in a world by himself,
or actually, in a world also inhabited by Luke.

But unlike Luke,
Paul doesn’t care what Jesus said or did,
he only cares about who and what Jesus was and is – according to his opinion.
Which one has the truth?

Until the late twentieth century
the custom of orthodoxy
as well as most other forms of Christianity,
was to throw all the gospels in a blender
and find ways to produce harmony.
What emerged was packaged in Italian culture,
or with a French, British, German,
Dutch, or Spanish imprint.

That was then carried around the world
and forced down other people’s throats.

But now, for the last fifty years or so,
something else has emerged – parallel
with the traditional orthodoxy
and alongside orthodoxy of Evangelical Protestantism.

It is the process of listening to each gospel text
for what it says and proclaims,
and allowing those texts to be
the separate and independent voices
that they were originally.

And in addition, we have discovered
other texts, many of which
were suppressed by early orthodoxy.
We have started listening to those texts too,
to hear what other voices existed
in the earliest Christian movement.
And as we have listened
we have realized there is a chorus –
sometimes a cacophony –
of many voices
with many beliefs
and many proclamations
all about Jesus
and what he means for life as we live it.

The result is to understand
that John’s voice was just one voice,
and his view of Jesus
just one lens.

All of which is to say,
that I can read you that bit from John’s gospel
and seek to understand where John was coming from,
and be clear and honest about what he proclaims,
and then say to you, “uh uh.”
Unlike John’s gospel,
I do not believe that God so loved the world
that God sent Jesus as a tragic Hercules
to save it,
and that those who believe
in THAT Jesus
will be saved and have eternal life,
but everyone else will be doomed to hell.

I am more in line with the beliefs of Mark
whose Jesus was a preacher first and foremost,
and a healer and exorcist by default.
Mark’s Jesus saw what is wrong
with how we order the world,
whether in empires great and small.
That Jesus pointed out our ugliness
while also pointing to our hope.
We can, if we choose,
bring God’s kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven –
that is what Mark’s Jesus proclaimed.
Paul and John
got all focused on eternal life
instead of THIS life.
God’s kingdom
as it is breaking into our world
here and now,
was one of Mark’s special features.

But orthodoxy
and the Big Church
always liked John and Paul best.
It became all about “one true belief”
and accessing the power to enforce it.
Bah humbug.
That was then and this is now.

Here we are disrupted, as the saying goes these days.

We are disrupted
by pandemic
and internet
and online worship
and diversity
and a shrunken orthodoxy with no power
to enforce its will as the one true belief.

In fact, because of all of that,
congregations are fast becoming geographically
unfettered, with people
zooming in from wherever they are
on this great blue planet.
That will be disruptive too –
to have communities of faith
tied together not by creeds or doctrines
and not by neighborhoods or cities,
but by…well, by what?
That is the big fat question.

For so long Christians have been formed
and organized by the walls of buildings
and the borders of parishes
and the strictures of doctrine.
Here in our worship video this week and last
we have the contribution of photographs
submitted by someone who lives in Calgary, Alberta.
We get messages and gratitude regularly
from the Southern Tier, Ohio, Indiana, California, Florida and elsewhere.
Donations too, once in awhile.

What will the community of faith
be organized around in the future?
When it is no longer a brand name
or a creed
or even knowing one another,
what will be the source of cohesion?

I do not know the answer to that
any more than Mark knew if John
was part of the same religious movement
he was in or not.
Looking back at those first three hundred years
of the Jesus movement,
scattered across vast distances
and very often unknown to each other,
may give us a hint
and a guide
for our own future.

You may wonder if I have a point in all of this?
The first point, sort of obtusely,
is that if the Lectionary is going to
give us snake magic in the desert
and your-condemned-for-your-sins
kind of readings,
then I am going to push back.
I need to say out loud what you already know,
and that is, that just because it is written in the Bible
doesn’t mean it’s safe to consume.
And to say that
means to take on orthodoxy
in whatever form it is still appearing.
It is important to put orthodoxy in its place,
just like you and I need to be put in our places too.
No one and nothing
holds the one and only truth.
That was Revelation Number One
when Moses first met God:
”I will be who I will be,” God said
from out of a burning bush.
In other words, “stop trying to put me in a box
with an ingredient label and sell-by date.”

We have wisdom that we have been given
from prophets and sages and at least one messiah;
and we have guidance from scholars, teachers,
and spiritual guides;
but what to do with it
and how to interpret it
and where to apply it
and how to employ it – that is our work.
No one can do that work for us
and no one can take that work away from us.
It is what it means to be baptized.
Baptism
anoints us as agents of God’s love
authorized to help
bring about the kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven.
Our authorization doesn’t come
from bishops, priests, and deacons
or any word-weasel preachers,
it comes from our being anointed.

Ultimately, our understanding of what “holy” is
and how God is present
and what that means for life as we live it, is on us.
The community of faith can help us with that task
but it cannot do it for us.
Becoming agents of God’s love
with a sense of mission
and at least a theory about how it all works,
is a risk for each of us to take.

So go re-write that passage from John
as you see fit, if you think it gets you anywhere.
Or go have a cup of coffee or tea –
zoom it if necessary –
with someone you like
and tell them what you imagine about God.

Slip your old skin
like a snake in the garden
and discover something you never thought before
and something you never did before
and see God in a person, place, or thing
you never imagined God before.

That’s our work.
Have fun with it.

The peace of God be with you.

2 Easter, 2021: Small Wire

For video version, scroll to bottom

Easter Day, 2021: Sun

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Palm Sunday 2021: This is not about once upon a time…

5 Lent B, 2021: Reversal Wisdom

4 Lent 2021: There is more than orthodoxy

Trinity in Time of Pandemic

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