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Proper 27 B, 2018: Written on the pages of your life

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In spiritual direction
there is an exercise – more than that really,
a concept –
that sometimes helps
with tracing the movement of God
in one’s life.
It is the idea that our lives, our
life stories, are scripture.
It turns out that when we learn to read
and tell our own stories,
in the same way we learn to read
other people’s stories
or those in books and in the bible,
then we begin to see the movement of the spirit
in a way we had not seen before.

In other words, every person’s life is scripture –
God written upon every day
and every hour
and every minute of every person.

In 2013, I left full-time professional ministry
as I had known it for thirty-three years,
and moved to a place
I had never heard of
until a couple of months before we moved there.
I embarked on work I had never done before –
which was serving a small congregation
in a small town,
in a very rural area,
not to mention
trying to become a published writer.

There was no way to know in advance
what, if anything, God was writing upon my life.
But it turns out, that was no different
than any other day in my life –
or yours for that matter.
Neither you nor I know
what God is writing upon our lives
at this moment in time,
in this phase of our lives.

We do not know, in real time as it happens,
what God is doing with us,
or how the quill of God’s pen
is scribbling through the pages of our lives.
But if we have an imagination,
and if we will embrace the spiritual wisdom
of those who have come before us,
then we may consider
that every day
and every hour
and every minute
has a whisper or a song or a verse
written on it.

Trusting that, even when we have not
seen it yet, is the muscle memory of faith.

I have a good friend who is an ordained minister
and he tells the story
about when he informed his parents
that he had decided to go to seminary.

His father was an insurance company executive,
someone who had done quite well
in that business.

My friend had tried insurance
and after some time knew it was not for him,
and that he needed to follow
that curiously compelling desire for ministry.
His dad’s response was simple and direct:
“I don’t understand how those people
keep score.”

For his father, it was clear
how to keep score –
job title, office view, salary, stock options.
How in the world
would someone keep score
in a profession where
no one has any real power or wealth,
and if they did,
they weren’t supposed to show it off?

Well, I hate to tell you this,
but clergy are terribly competitive
about congregational size, programs, and budgets – I call it “Steeple Envy.”
The church as an institution
has become obsessed with metrics.
We have fallen into the abys of capitalism
with its culture of greed and predation.

How do we measure the value of
a congregation of 48 active members
worshipping in an old wine bar?

I have been in moribund congregations,
that learned how to fill the seats,
but they were no more valuable with full pews
than they were with three-quarters empty ones.
They were more economically viable,
but no more valuable – if
we gage value by the Gospel instead of capitalism.

Fatness and plenty do not define abundance,
nor do victory and achievement.
Instead, abundance is defined by
the presence of God in our midst
in hours and in days
both wonderful and hazardous.
The definition of abundance
is that God has written,
and continues to write,
upon our lives
every day
every hour
and every minute.

More often than not
we imagine that WE are the authors
of our own stories,
and we go along the margins of the page
and follow the standard interpretations
of the story
as it has been given to us.
But just following that course is lazy;
and not very wise.

Let’s turn to the story from Mark
about the widow to clue in on value in the Gospel.
It is a reading placed in the lectionary
at only at this time of year, in the autumn.
That is very strange
and it should raise our suspicions
since it is a story from Holy Week –
you know, between Palm Sunday and Easter.

Placed as it is in the context of the Church’s stewardship season
it could be used as a cudgel
to beat us up about our contributions.

But when we hear it
in the context of Jesus being challenged,
attacked, and tested
by people with power and authority,
it is something else altogether.
You see, not only do we have to look and listen
for the words God has written upon our lives,
we also have to pay attention
to who else has been writing on our lives,
and then decide
if we are going to go along
with whoever has been writing those otherscripts.

If we think about Mark’s story
in its actual context
during the last tumultuous week
of Jesus’ life,
then we see that the power of the widow
is not that she gave her last two bits
to the Temple.
I mean really,
Jesus didn’t care about architecture –
in fact, in the next chapter
he tells them how the Temple
is going to be destroyed
because of injustice associated with it.

No, the power of the widow
in Mark’s story
is that she revealed the stinginess
and pomposity
of those who were in control.

What she did ripped off the veneer
of respectability
that whitewashed the self-centered intentions
of the current class of religious
and community leaders.
In short, her action was subversive.
Shewas subversive.
What I mean by subversive,
is that her act took what was considered
normal and accepted
and told the truth about it.

You see, subversive
doesn’t mean dark and treacherous
any more than abundance means fat and wasteful.
All we have to do to be subversive
is to tell the truth
on what is otherwise considered
normal and acceptable.
When we do that,
we let the genie out of the bottle.

Whether we are teachers or lawyers,
healers or bankers,
technicians or managers,
parents or students or retired,
we can be subversive
by finding ways to tell the truth
about what has otherwise
become normal and accepted.

We can find ways, for example,
of pointing to how our economy is based upon
greed and self-interest
and what happens to the environment
when consumerism is the economic engine.
We can find ways, for example,
of wondering why it would be considered
attempted murder if I poisoned
the well on your property,
but if I am a farmer or own a factory
and my toxic by-products
run off the land and into the lake we share,
I’m not a criminal.
Instead, I get years and federal dollars
to gradually reduce but not even eliminate
poisoning your water.

We do not have to be flashy
and eloquent with our truth-telling;
the widow wasn’t.
And Jesus,
until the last chapter of his life was written,
was more cunning than direct.
You and I can find ways to be subversive
and to corrode the protective shield that covers
the script that others have written for us.
That is our job it seems to me,
and what the widow was doing.

You see, if we start reading the book
God is writing with our lives
it is subversive
because it will agitate us
and those who know us,
to reconsider how we have organized
the world in general, and our lives in particular.

I think it is possible to read the book
God is writing with our lives
while sitting in a tree,
holding a gun, and waiting for a deer to show up.

And it is possible to read that book
while folding clothes at The Linden,
knowing they will just get unfolded again.

And it is possible to read that book
walking the dog
and smelling autumn leaves on the sidewalk.

It is even possible to read the book
God is writing on our very own lives
while we are at work
or running errands
or doing any number of mundane
and routine activities.
But…
none of those is a ‘gimme’ –
we have to be paying attention.

We have to wake up.
We have to DO things that wake us up.
We have to intentionally make our feet
step outside the lines of routine
and so leave the ordinary.
We have to push ourselves
to do something different
and feel the difference.

We have towalkoutside the lines
and talkoutside the lines
and think outside the lines –
even if we go back inside the lines
like a rubber band snapping back into place.

It is the journey
and the jumble
and the activity
that will have allowed us to see
and hear
and read
the book God is writing on our lives.

We won’t actually get to see the whole book –
probably only a sentence
or a paragraph if we are lucky.

But that is how we pay attention:
by waking up
in the midst of the ordinary.
It sounds easy of course, but
we know it is not.
It is never easy to push ourselves
beyond a comfort zone.
It goes against our nature.
Nobody likes it.
Nobody.

But that is how we begin to decipher
the script others have written for us
from the one that God is writing for us.
We wake up
in the midst of the ordinary
and the routine.

We wake ourselves up,
or we find friends
who will wake us up,
or we DO things
that will wake us up.
That is what the widow did
for anyone who was looking or listening.

She showed them the difference
between the contribution to breakfast
that the hen and the pig make –
you know,
giving an egg
verses giving up the bacon.
Then Jesus,
subversive as he was,
pointed it out for everyone else to see.
That is our job too:
to keep people around us
or do stuff
that will wake us up
in the midst of the ordinary.
Then when we wake up
we’re supposed to tell others what we see.

The value of this congregation
has not changed with the numbers,
nor the architecture.

Did you catch that?
The value of this congregation
has not changed with the numbers,
nor the architecture.

That statement,
all by itself, if embraced,
if lived out as if it were true,
is subversive.

 

All Saints’ Day 2018: The Bellybutton of the Galaxy

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In the year 2002, a young blue star
at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way,
made a sharp and unexpected turn.

That star was among a group of stars moving so fast
only something massive
could have changed its orbit.
How fast was it moving?
One-third the speed of light.
How fast is that?
Well, the Earth moves at about 43,000 mph
and the speed of light is over 670,000,000 mph.
So that little blue star
was moving at about 225,000,000 mph,
give or take a few million.

What has the sheer gravitational force
to coerce a star moving that fast,
to abruptly change course?
Turns out, because it is speed and mass,
we can figure that out with computers.

It is a black hole:
a monstrously powerful black hole –
and it is the bellybutton of our galaxy.

How powerful is this black hole?
Don’t ask me how they know this,
but the black hole at the center of the Milky Way
has already swallowed four million suns
and condensed all of it into a tiny space.

Now there are between 200 and 400 BILLION stars
and other stuff floating around in the galaxy,
so swallowing 4 million stars is a very small beginning.

But digesting 4 million stars
gives that black hole enough gravitational pull
to bend the orbit of a star
hurling through space at 225,000,000 mph.

All this came from a NYT article titled,
“Trolling the Monster in the Heart of the Milky Way.”

I understand very little of astrophysics but I love to read about it,
just like I love to look into the night sky
and wonder.
What is clear though,
is that there is a hungry black hole
hiding behind space dust and stars we call Sagittarius.
One day the Earth, or remnants of it,
will get swallowed up too.

If the fact that Earth will someday disappear
renders human life meaningless to us,
it is because we have pulled
a gelatinous mask of ego
over our eyes
and are unable to see
beyond our own feelings.

When existence gets boiled down
to being all about us, then
hope and meaning
are soon swallowed up
by the black hole of ego.

But if instead, we can lift our heads
and our hearts
above death, grief, and sorrow
then we can touch hope
and reach out and grab meaning.
That is what Isaiah did.
He imagined God
preparing a gourmet feast for us
on the holy mountain.
Isaiah somehow touched hope
as he looked at the apocalypse
and destruction around him,
in which the ancient empires smashed into one another
in war on every side like comets in space.

My suspicion is that he was able to do that
because he was able to rise up
above his own grief,
and peer out over the field of current suffering
and make out the images of life
that would return in the future.

In other words, like an ever-widening camera lens,
he enlarged his field of vision,
moving outward in concentric circles
until he could behold a vision beyond
his own self-interest…
behold a vision beyond his own self-interest.

When he did that,
he was able to imagine how the present moment
could be redeemed, and how new life
could grow in places it never grew before.
Isaiah was a master at it –
able to name meaning
and touch hope even while standing in dark times
with those otherwise
broken by despair.

It was not wishful thinking or fantasy either,
but poetic imagination
that opened up the dark hole of the moment
to explore the possibilities
of what might, and could happen.

It is comical how, not so many years ago,
if you thought there could be life on other planets
out there in the universe,
you were considered a crackpot.

Now there are teams of highly trained scientists
looking and listening for it –
imagining and theorizing which sectors
of the vast expanse
might be looking back at us.

As our telescopes and computer models improved
they widened our perspective
and now the discovery of other life out there
seems an inevitability rather than a laughable eccentricity.

So Christian faith must move from human beings
as the center of the universe
and the apple of God’s eye,
to something smaller
and something more a part
of something bigger
than ourselves.

Meaning and hope reside,
not in how you and I are feeling about
what is happening in our own lives,
but in a bigger picture.
Imagining what that bigger picture is,
is an act of stewardship.

Oh, now you knew I was going to go there, didn’t you?

Fear not,
I have never directly asked for money or pledges
in a sermon (at least that I can remember) –
and try to avoid it in worship altogether.

But we do have some lovely charts
and a nice story to share
with our pie today.

While we will talk about the role of money
in determining our future,
we won’t be asking you for a pledge today.

Stewardship is not about money.
Money is a toolof stewardship, not stewardship.

Stewardship
is the word that describes
the quality of our foster care
for that which has been given to us
to care for and nurture.
Stewardship is ourrelationship
to the matrix of life and resources
we value and use,
but do not own.
The Earth of course;
our children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren;
our neighborhood, town, city, and land;
our wealth and power,
if indeed we do believe that we do not really own
such things, but have use of them
to further the work of God’s love.
That is a big “if.”

Meaning and hope
are the core elements of life and faith,
and we have been made stewards of them
by virtue of our baptisms.

Let me repeat that please,
because it is about as important a declaration
as anything I have ever declared.

Meaning and hope
are the core elements of life and faith, and
we have been made stewards of them
by virtue of our baptisms.

Meaning and hope
are not fostered or nurtured
by how we happen to be feeling about the world around us,
they are cared for by what we DO.

So allow me to remind us
of what we have promised to do
as stewards of Meaning and Hope.

There are many more eloquent ways to describe it
but the language of our baptismal covenant
is utilitarian and specific, so I will use it.

Here is what we say we will DO
in order to be good stewards of Meaning and Hope:

  1. Continue sharing our ancient spiritual wisdom.
  2. Continue sharing community, communion, and prayers with one another.
  3. Persevere in resisting evil, which includes the acknowledgement and repentance of our own.
  4. Pointing to and sharing the presence of God in our midst, including where we discover it in the Gospel.
  5. Seek God in all people.
  6. Serve God in all people.
  7. Love our neighbors.
  8. Love ourselves.
  9. Be activists for justice and peace.
  10. Be respectful of the dignity of every human being.

I am going to repeat those again too.
They do not need any real explanation
because we all know how to do each one,
and we have all done each one
with varying degrees of success.
We have all neglected each on too,
with varying degrees of denial.

Here they are again:

  1. Continue sharing our ancient spiritual wisdom.
  2. Continue sharing community, communion, and prayers with one another.
  3. Persevere in resisting evil, which includes the acknowledgement and repentance of our own.
  4. Pointing to and sharing the presence of God in our midst, including where we discover it in the Gospel.
  5. Seek God in all people.
  6. Serve God in all people.
  7. Love our neighbors.
  8. Love ourselves.
  9. Be activists for justice and peace.
  10. Be respectful of the dignity of every human being.

If we do those things,
even some of those things,
and we do them on a regular basis
to the best of our abilities,
then we will be good stewards of Meaning and Hope.

Doing those things
allows us to widen the lens
upon which we see life,
and move out beyond our own ego-driven
excitement or despair.
Meaning and Hopewill never be discovered
in the range of human emotions
that react like electricity
to the events all around us.
They are uncovered and touched
when we move outside ourselves,
to the outer rings of perspective
where desire and grief
or pleasure and pain
are but some of the millions of molecules
in the atmosphere.
You and I, as Christians,
as baptized people of faith,
are the stewards of Meaning and Hope.

By doing those things
we say we are going to do
in the Baptismal Covenant, we enhance
our relationship to Meaning and Hope
and we become its stewards.

So now we know what this place is, Trinity Place –
Trinity Church.
It is not programs.
It is not outreach.
It is not worship.
It is not classes.
It is not food and fellowship.
Those are tools.
It is a place from which you and I
get the perspective we need
to be better stewards of Meaning and Hope
so that we can share it
among those with whom we live, and work, and play.
Whatever activities or programs we do here
is spice and gravy
on top of the real meat and potatoes,
which is what we do ‘out there’
in our daily, routine, and ordinary lives.

The power of Trinity Place
is what it fosters for those of us who come here,
so that we are empowered to go into our lives
with strength and renewal
to practice the elements of our baptismal covenant.
We are supposed to get strength,
and courage,
and wisdom,
and nurture here
so that we can go out there
and do what it is we have been given to do.

The things we do here
should also strengthen and renew us
for our lives, which after all
we live in fullness ‘out there.’

So I am hoping
that we can affirm this place,
and one another,
as a powerful resource for our stewardship
of Meaning and Hope –
our stewardship of naming meaning
and touching hope.

They may sound like big ideas
that live in the clouds above our heads,
but the ability to name Meaning
and touch Hope
is the difference
between God and a black hole.

Can I get an “Amen?”

 

Proper 25B 2018: A Story Full of Characters

by

The Gospel of Mark
is the shortest and most dramatic
of the four authorized gospels.
Mark is not only the first and earliest
of the four gospels,
he creates the pattern for the others.
But most importantly,
he is the best story-teller.

The tale I just read is not much to bark at,
just a homely little story
told in ten sentences,
but those ten sentences we just heard
are the hinge
upon which Mark’s whole Gospel swings.

Here is what I mean.
Mark takes ten chapters
to tell us about the last three years
of Jesus’ adult life.

Remember, Mark does not bother
to include all that mythology
surrounding Jesus’ birth.
Instead, Mark begins with a fully-grown
and mature Jesus
who is suddenly swept up
into an amazing spiritual awakening
at his baptism.
It starts with a bang –
all of a sudden, one day a spectacular
event changes his life
and the history of the world going forward.

Then Mark takes ten chapters
chocked full of stories that
leads up to Jesus’ fateful decision
to take his road show to Jerusalem.
Mark takes TEN chapters
to tell us about three years in the life
of the adult Jesus.

But then, he takes SIX chapters
to describe the last WEEK
of Jesus’ life.

So, ten chapters for three years
and six chapters for seven days.
The hinge, between these two episodes,
is the story of Blind Bartimaeus.

This ten-sentence story
is a microcosm
of everything in the ten chapters
leading up to it;
and it is a foretelling of everything
that will be told in the next six chapters

Here are the pertinent bones on this skeleton.

First, the story of Blind Bartimaeus
takes place on a stage dripping with drama.
Jericho was an incredibly opulent resort city.
It was, in Jesus’ day,
home to the summer palace for King Herod.
We have descriptions of several palaces
in Jericho, where even just some of the homes
had magnificent sunken gardens.

It is no accident that the hinge
upon which the big story swings
takes place in Jericho.

Jericho was the intersection of the world
in those parts. Literally.
No kidding, at Jericho two Roman roads
met like cross hairs in a sniper’s scope.
There were only a few roads in the world
that could host chariots
and heavy traffic, not like today
when we need GPS just to decipher
which varicose vein
will take us where we need to go.

One Jericho road
went straight to Jerusalem and Damascus,
while the other Jericho road
went all the way to Rome.
It was the point of decision –
for Jesus and his followers.
It was the very moment
that split past and present,
safety and danger,
control and vulnerability.

Turn back, and they could go home
to the people and places they knew best:
the smaller villages and towns
where Jesus’ rural images
and down-home zingers
aimed at the principalities and powers
were appreciated.
Turning back
would take them to the people among whom
he was popular and well loved;
it would be safer and wiser.

But if he turned the parade toward Jerusalem,
that urban citadel of Roman occupation
and religious authority,
it was unclear what might happen.

In that caldron of political and religious power,
Jesus would be viewed with suspicion,
and it would be dangerous
because trouble-makers and agitators
were rubbed out like bugs on a picnic table.

So, the stage could not have been
more dramatic or evocative:
opulent playground of military
and political power
where past and future intersect.
It was the very moment, we could say,
where Time stood still.

There are such moments
in human history,
those with a longer hang-time
in which momentous events seem to stand still
just a little longer,
and just a little more pulsating
than the moments surrounding them.
Though we do not have any real-time record of it,
Blind Bartimaeus and Jericho
was that kind of a moment.

Lurking in this thickened moment
are several of Mark’s central actors
who I want to shout out.
These are important characters
who actually tell the story
throughout the chapters of Mark’s gospel.

First, the Roman Empire is a character
and is always lurking around between the lines
in all of Mark’s stories.

The empire does not always have a line to deliver,
but it is always there
because it was a foreign occupying force
making every day miserable
for Jesus and every other peasant.

Another character of course, collectively,
are ‘the disciples:
Jesus’ students and close associates.
We know the twelve famous ones
who were important enough to be named,
but there was also a bigger group –
sometimes numbered at 70.
In Mark’s stories,
the disciples are almost always present
and, whether an individual or group,
they serve as a foil or the brunt of humor.
Mark caricatures the disciples
as bubble-heads
who should know better, yet never do.

The disciples, above everyone else,
should “get it” but they just don’t.

Then there is ‘the Crowd’
which is also a unique feature of Mark.
It is another collective character,
a legion of faceless, nameless, odorless people
who are dependable in their demeanor.

The crowdis especially graphic
in this Bartimaeus story.
Jesus and his disciples AND the large crowd
were leaving Jericho, it says.
The crowd, as in many of Mark’s stories,
serves here as a narrative witness to the events.
Butthe crowd,
whether in Jericho, Nazareth
or Jerusalem, also share common characteristics.
Usually they are hungry and thirsty,
if not for food thenfor a miracle or a magic trick.
And ‘the crowd’
won’t take “no” for an answer.
In this sense ‘the crowd is also a foil.

Jesus, according to Mark,
routinely tries to flee or avoid“the crowd”.

So, there are the bad guys: the Romans.
There are the clueless guys: Jesus’ disciples.
And there are the needy guys: the crowds.

Then, just to make it a little more complex,
there is the marginalized guy,
often a female or child,
poor or ill, and in this case, Blind Bartimaeus.

There is always a Bartimaeus in Mark’s Gospel
but usually unnamed:
a leper,
a bleeding woman,
a woman with a dying daughter,
a widow…
a quadriplegic carried on a mat,
a possessed lunatic exiled to a cemetery.
They are quite colorful,
and often these marginalized ones
are the key to the punch line.

So, all these characters appear
in the ten little sentences of this hinge story.
Each one has at least a cameo
in this scene so thick with drama
it is a bug in amber perfectly preserved for us.

Bad guys,
clueless ones,
the urgently needy,
and the outsider:
All on the same stage of history
all at the same time.

But of course, there is one more character
we haven’t named yet: Jesus.
Jesus represents God’s agenda.

So, we have all the characters
in their places
all on the same stage
where history and time are about to intersect.

Let’s see what happens.

The bad guys are indifferent.

The Romans merely observe the festivities
at Jericho, benignly, and only later,
in the days ahead,
when it perceives a threat,
does it act.

But when it does act, it acts swiftly
and with sufficient violence
that the irritant is immediately snuffed out.
Coercive authority, Mark may be telling us,
does not risk its hold on power.

Less in the background and holding the moment,
The crowd also watches.

The crowd, amoeba-like,
moves around the scene
and gives definition to its edges.
Dogs bark.
People shout.
Children kick.
Some jeer some cheer.

The crowd is content so long as it has
a good show.
It gets surely though,
when it does not have enough
to feed its attention.

The crowd in this story,
is following along being fed,
holding in its fingers the insiders,
the outsiders,
the bad guys, and
the hero.

The insiders, of course,
are the dunderheaded disciples
who play the fool.

How many times
have the disciples witnessed Jesus
respond to people at the margin?
How many times
has Jesus lectured them
about their indifference to suffering?
How many times
has Jesus reminded them
that the first will be last and
the last will be first?

Still, even after ten chapters
and moving into the crescendo of the narrative,
their knee-jerk reaction to Blind Bartimaeus
is to stifle him: “Shut up!” they bark.
All they can see is their own parade
and that Jesus is too busyon the stage of history
to stop for some miscreant beggar.

It is as if all of Jesus’ words and deeds
have been to no avail, and
have not changed those disciples one iota.
Mark might be saying
out of the side of his mouth, that insiders always
have a steep learning curve.

The outsider, of course, is Bartimaeus.
He will not shut up.
He may be marginalized but he is not powerless.
He does not whine.
He does not fall back under his coat
or cover his face
or whimper “Woe is me.”

He refuses to act like a victim
even though he has been victimized.
In fact, he takes a huge risk.
Here is one of those details
that can be easily missed
if we only read the story from 10,000 feet.

The only thing Bartimaeus owns
in the whole wide world,
is his coat.
That was standard for beggars
and just about any outsider in those days.

Your coat was your blanket,
the only thing you had to sit on in the day,
and the only cover against the cold at night.

It was priceless.
For those who had nothing else,
their coat could be the difference
between life and death.

Given that he was also blind,
for Bartimaeus to throw off his coat
and run forward,
where he may never find his coat again,
was an act of radical trust or bold desperation.
It was an all-or-nothing kind of play.

For Bartimaeus, Jericho that day,
was an earth-shattering moment of decision –
just as it was for Jesus
in relationship to his future.

Okay, everybody is in place
and we are frozen in that moment
when history and time
hang like LeBron James
for an extra second or two: Jesus stops.
On the stage of history,
at the intersection of Past and Future,
Jesus stops.

Jesus stops for one lousy beggar.

Like the more ancient story of God
hearing the cries of puny Hebrew slaves in Egypt,
Jesus hears;
through the noise of the crowd
and through the protest of the disciples,
Jesus hears.
And like God in that Exodus story of old,
once he hears,he stops.

Jesus turns his attention away from history,
away from the drama of the moment,
and asks, “What do you want me to do?”

That is the nub of the story.
There are all kinds of possible conclusions
we could draw from Jesus stopping,
and among them could be,
that Mark wants us to act on our stage in history –in our own stories –
the way Jesus acted in Mark’s story.

In other words, we need to be listening
as Jesus did,
and when we hear,
we need to be stopping
as Jesus did.

To act like Jesus
instead of the other characters in this story,
our focus needs to be lifted away
from the drama of our own parades,
and with keen ears,
listen to hear the people and events
for which our stopping, and our acting,
may be needed.

I do not know what that looks like
in your life
any more than you know
what that looks like in my life.
But both of us know, that in those rare moments
when we have listened and heard,
and when we have actually stopped
our own parade to respond to others in need,
that we suddenly found ourselves
on new avenues we never expected to travel.

I think, if we really want God in our lives,
that is how to make it happen.

Proper 24B 2018: Agnostic Faith

by

The woman in the red dress
“…shook a fist, then opened hands in praise.”
(Last line from “Job’s Question on Nevis” by Grace Schulman)

As I finished this sermon,
closed my computer,
and watched a man and his son
walk their Golden Retriever down the sidewalk,
I realized I was about to preach a sermon
that goes against 21stcentury secular wisdom
as well as a great deal of Christian theology.

It is also a sermon that is none-too-linear,
like faith itself is not really a shape we can define.
So I will just tell you straight out the conclusion
in case I lose you while trying to get there:
Acceptance of ignorance,
the humility of smallness,
and an agnostic faith.

What I love about that piece from Job
we heard this morning,
is that God turns Job’s questioning around on us.
It is such a beautiful prosecution
of the human mind,
and it so graphically answers
our indictments against God –
all those times we shake our fist
and demand to know “Why!”

God answers Job’s long river of questions,
and it says God answers him, “out of the whirlwind.”
God always talks to characters
in the Hebrew Scripture
from out of something wild:
a burning bush,
a smoking mountain,
a whirlwind.

“Who is this
that darkens counsel
by words without knowledge,” God asks.
What a great line.

God says the same thing to
Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica,
and Rabbi Kushner’s, “When bad things happen to good people” –
and all the sophisticated
and unsophisticated
efforts to explain the existence of evil
and suffering
and darkness
in a world created by a loving God.
“Who is this
that darkens counsel
by words without knowledge?”

About such things we have no knowledge.
What we are asked to do is just rest
in that splendid agnosticism of faith
and truly trust God,
as God asks to be trusted.

Yes, agnosticismof faith;
the acceptance of ignorance
and the humility of smallness…
Swallow that just once:
the acceptance of ignorance
and the humility of smallness.

In other words…there are things
we do not get to know
and making up beliefs
that fill the gaps in our knowledge
is an act of faith-less-ness
and a radical MIS-trust of God.
There are things we do not get to know!

But we are like the Zebedee boys
and host a restless child within us,
the one that never actually grows up
and who haunts our adulthood unto death.
That little kid inside
is always angling for a better place
and more knowledge
and more privilege
and more blessing
than we ever really get.

No matter how mature,
wise, and worldly
we become, there is always
that child within us
asking for more
and better and safer.

That same sad presence within us gets furious
when our smallness
and vulnerability
is revealed.
When we are confronted with uncontrollable outcomes,
and unfathomable ignorance,
plus our clear and absolute limitations,
that child within gets as angry and rageful
as any actual child with a temper tantrum.

But God is indifferent to our rage,
and God seems to be detached from our anger.
Instead, in Job and through other
sagely antiquity, God asks:
Where were you
at the beginning,
when the waters covered
the face of the earth?

Where were you when the sky was void of light,
and not a single heartbeat
could be heard
in the vast expanse
of interstellar space?
Where were you?

It is as if God says to us,
“Look, you are too small
and your perspective is too limited,
and your capacity to understand is outsized
by your desire to know.

“You can trust me or not,” God says,
“but there are some questions
you must live without the answers to,
so get on with it.”

Religion, deeply authentic religion,
the kind with a soul of depth,
is able to hold agnostic faith in its arms
and cradle it with tenderness.
Such faith is what the Hebrew Psalmists wrote –
what we call, ‘Laments.’

The ancient lament,
found in psalms like the one
Jesus quotes while hanging on the cross,
does as the woman in the red dress
when she tossed her spiked heels
and entered the ocean waves:
she shook her fist, then opened hands in praise.

It seems like a contradiction
but it is not.
It is the ultimate act of trust.

The lament that ends in praise,
is the moment of agnostic faith
when we rage against senseless suffering
or mindless evil and destruction,
THEN accept that we are in the humble position
to trust God or not.
At that moment,
at that intensely inflated moment,
we move forward
with a fierce and relentless hope
toward the world we are supposed to create, or,
we move forward with total cynicism
and resignation
that we live and then we die.

I am talking about a grown-up faith here,
not the religion of that inner child.

I am talking about a grown-up faith
that can stand to listen
to God prosecute our arrogant complaints:
“Where were you
when the earth was created
and a formless void?
Tell me, if you know so much,
how the Cosmosshouldwork.”

And so we are left on the beach
or outside a hospital room, at the grave,
or watching the madness unfold on television,
and all we can do
is shake our fist
then,
open both hands in praise.
And then…get on with it.

“Why!” we rage,
and then,
in the ultimate act of trust –
the deepest knowing there is –
we open that fist,
both of them,
in praise to a God
who loves us
and whom we are left to trust or not.

That, my friends,
is the acceptance of ignorance
and the humility of smallness
and an agnostic faith.

By agnostic faith,
I do not mean “no faith” or faithlessness.
Agnostic is actually a modern word,
first used in the late 19thcentury.
It is rooted in a Greek word, gnosisor knowing.
But it is a-gnosis,
in other words, not-knowing.

The most radical faith of all,
like the one that allowed Jesus to be arrested,
is to know
and to accept
that we do not knowthe mind of God –
but we will move forward
with relentless hope
and rock solid trust, anyway.
We do not know,
and we do not get to know,
and we refuse to make up answers
to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
Instead, we trust God and move forward.

That is a big, pull up your pants kind of faith
that puts in check the child within,
and accepts our ignorance and smallness.

So, I have just spent ten minutes
telling us what we do not know,
and encouraging us to resist pretending
we know more than we do.
Fine, so what can we know?

We have to shift our understanding of gnosis.
The definition of knowledge in our world
sounds quite a bit different than anything
we can know about God.
Knowledge today is defined as,
“facts, information, and skills acquired
by a person through experience or education;
the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.”

Knowledge in our world is fact-based
and is defined by understanding.
The kind of faith the story of Job commends to us,
is without understanding – but it is experiential.

The gnosis of God,
knowingGod,
is an experience
and not knowledge as we now define it.
Whether it is a still small voice
silently speaking to us from out of the whirlwind
of chaos in our lives,
or a loud and ecstatic Pentecostal explosion
of religious rapture,
knowing God is experiential.
There is no one language
and no single medium
through which this gnosis is received.
It can emanate from the verdant slopping bluffs
holding the rounded bowl of a teal blue lake,
or it can be received in the cacophonous chatter
of urban noise in which the crush of humanity seems too miraculously absurd to be accidental.
The poetry of life in all its forms and mysteries
whispers and shouts the gnosis we want most.

To be held by God
for even a nanosecond,
is to be marked forever.

We may question the experience
as it fades in the memory over time,
but even the thinnest of such holy moments
will not disappear as a mark on our soul.

Once we experience God
in nature,
in the touch of a friend,
mingled with the love we most desire,
encountered in a moment of despair,
arriving when least expected,
in beauty,
in suffering,
in a burst of hope,
in a sacrament,
in transcendental majesty in a whirlwind…

Whenever,
wherever,
however, we encounter
that power so much greater than ourselves,
it is a gnosis that never completely disappears.
It is a knowledge-without-understanding
that leaves its kiss inside forever.

Acceptance of ignorance,
the humility of smallness,
and an agnostic faith –
which is a faith that knows without understanding.

That kind of faith is powerful,
indelible,
without understanding
yet enough to move forward with hope.

 

Proper 22B, 2018: It’s not about the legality of divorce, rather, the nature of marriage

by

Those readings from Job and Maya Angelou
are juicy and wonderful:

“We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.”

Man, just that sentence alone, is enough
to stutter over for a goodly amount of time.

Then from job,
we could spend this time
debunking the myth of Satan
the way I de-mythologized the idea of Hell last week.
But that would be boring
compared to Maya Angelou,
even if the story of Job is fascinating.

What we are stuck with, however,
is Jesus’ words on divorce
which cannot be left
unexplained and unchallenged.

Last week Jesus told folks
to pluck out their eyes
and cut off their hands and feet,
but I felt no compunction
to tell you that was bad advice.
I was pretty sure you wouldn’t go home and do it.

This week, however,
because divorce is common among us,
and because The Episcopal Church
clearly contradicts Jesus’ strict admonition
against divorce, I feel the need to address it.

Now, when I do this –
cover territory we’ve traveled down before –
I feel like I am repeating myself and
doddering on senility.
But that is not what’s happening.

It is because some things
cannot be allowed to go unsaid –
they are too raw or too much present
in and among us.
Like I said, there was little danger
that anyone was going home
to pluck out their eye last week,
but today’s excerpt from Mark on divorce
can set our teeth on edge
and also leave us with a very wrong idea
about Jesus and divorce.

In addition to all of that,
it is useful to consider today’s topic
in the context of how we treat Scripture differently
than fundamentalist Christians do,
and how we can arrive at a very different
conclusion about divorce,
than Roman Catholics do.

We can engage in coherent dialogue
with Fundamentalist Christians
about how to live in peace and wellness
as we share the earth together,
but we cannot have a coherent dialogue
with Fundamentalists about Scripture.
The reason is, we would be having an
apples to oranges conversation.

Today’s reading from Mark
is a portal through which to see
this very difficult problem
that faces many of us on a very personal level
as we find ourselves in uncomfortable
and even painful circumstances
with family members, friends and co-workers
who are Fundamentalist or Biblical Literalist’s.

The first huge divide between us
and those who believe
the Bible is the literalword of God –
given or even written directly by God –
is that they believe whatever is said in the Bible
is absolute, just as God is absolute.

Secondly, they believe the Bible
is the sole revelation of the mind of God –
that what is written in the Bible
is the only way we have to know for certain
God’s intention and hope for us.

But for The Episcopal Church
and progressive Christians,
the Bible is only onesource of revelation –
and the Bible is notabsolute.

Because of what Fundamentalists and Literalists
believe about the Bible,
their world is a closed system:
it is as if they live in a stone house
with each stone a dictate of the Bible,
held together by the mortar of authority
and fellowship with their Christian community –
emphasis on theirChristian community.

Take out even one stone,
such as Jesus’ words on divorce,
and the whole house will eventually fall down.

The Fundamentalist way of thinking about the Bible
it is truly an all-or-nothingproposition.

So, any discussion about theology
between our two perspectives on the Bible
is a comparison of apples with oranges –
in other words, we are not
even talking about the same fruit.

In talking with people who believe
that every word of the Bible is literally fact,
we imagine we are talking about the same thing –
the same kind of fruit –
but in fact, we are talking about
wholly different things
even though we are both talking about the Bible.

How our tradition understands the Bible
as distinct from Fundamentalism,
is clearly seen in how we understand
Jesus’ teaching on divorce.

First of all,
when we hear the words of Jesus
we must begin by listening to them in the context
of his century and his generation,
rather than begin by hearing them in our context.

Here is how we do that today.
“Some Pharisees came to test Jesus,” which means it was a hostile question.
“They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’”

The question being asked of Jesus
that you and I do not hear,
because we are Christians
living in the 21stcentury, is this:
“Hey Jesus, do you agree with Rabbi Hillel
or are you on the side of Rabbi Shammai?”

I’ve talked about Hillel and Shammai before
because they were the elephant in the room
whenever Jesus was teaching.
They were the greatest thinkers of their day –
the leading authorities on how to interpret Torah.

Shammai was the conservative,
and what we might call today a Torah Literalist.
Hillel was the liberal,
who believed that
interpretationof Torah
was necessary and not otherwise absolute.

Shammai taught that Chapter 24, verse 1
in the Book of Deuteronomy
allowed a man to divorce his wife.
Hillel also taught that Chapter 24, verse 1
allowed a man to divorce his wife.

But they disagreed
upon the grounds and requirements
of divorce.

Shammai taught that adultery
was the only grounds for divorce,
while Hillel said that any reason was legitimate,
but that the man could only divorce his wife
if done in the proper and humane way.
Both taught that only the husband
could sue for divorce.

So that is the context
in which Jesus is asked this question.

We need to recognize that the legality of divorce
is not in dispute –
only the groundsfor divorce.
Jesus does not disagree with the legality of divorce;
he makes a theological comment
about the nature of marriage.

And by the way,
we should also understand that polygamy
was still legally practiced in Jesus’ day.
Having more than one wife
was not illegal,
irreligious,
or adulterous,
and Jesus never makes a case against polygamy.

What Jesus says,
is that Deuteronomy 24, verse 1
was given to us because God understood
our hardness of heart.
In other words, God ‘gets’ human beings.

God understood that we are human
and that there is no perfection
among human beings,
and that human beings may begin a venture
with the greatest of intention
but there is no guarantee we will finish it.
God, in Deuteronomy 24, Jesus says,
was letting us off the hook –
giving us an out and a backdoor, so to speak.

Now I can hear the perfectionist in me,
and those who are terribly scrupulous
and very hard on ourselves
about the slightest failure,
feeling uncomfortable that such huge backdoor
only leads to complacency.

But allow me to remind us
about the fundamental meaning
of one of the 10 Commandments
most associated with this issue.
“Thou shall not take the name of your Lord God in vain.”

We have been wrongly taught
to trivialize this commandment to mean
we are not supposed to saydamn
and other unsociable swear words.
That is not what this commandment was about.

What this commandment tells us,
is that we should never swear an oath
in the name of God.

For us, in our 21stcentury context,
that means we should use the Civil Oath
in the court of law, for example.
Why?
Because we are human.
Any oath we take,
no matter how earnest we are in our intent,
is never a sure bet.

We may mean what we promise
but not be able to keep our promise.
There are always forces beyond our control
that we cannot foresee.
And besides that, we are human
and we have frailties
and sometimes…we just don’t keep
the promises we make.

So, according to this commandment,
we are not to trivialize God-the-absolute,
by taking an oath in God’s name
that is anything but absolute.
In other words,
do not promise what you cannot guarantee.
Those ancients were very wise.

We need to be disabused
of the idea that when someone gets divorced
they have broken a promise to God.

In the Episcopal wedding ceremony,
we ask God to blessour promise to one another,
but we do not promise God
that we will never break our marriage vows.

So you see how interesting, complex,
and rich this seemingly absolute teaching
actually is?

But, having said all of that,
Jesus isn’t content to let us off the hook.
He always leaves us with some unique wisdom
on the subject,
elbowing his way to a position in between
Hillel and Shammai.

God understood you, Jesus says,
and gave you Deuteronomy 24, verse 1,
but remember Genesis?
God also created us male and female, one flesh.

Jesus insists that any conversation about divorce
include a reminder of the purpose of marriage:
which is to enjoin us
in a union that makes us one and interdependent.
And though the verbiage of Genesis
is male and female,
we have now said that this is also true
for men who marry men
and women who marry women.
Just another example that, for us,
the Bible on its own is not absolute.

What Jesus is pointing out
actually seems like an obvious truth:
marriage makes us one flesh
and even though we may get divorced
it literally rips us apart.

We know this to be true:
Whether we have been divorced
or had a deep and intimate bond broken
outside of marriage,
we know that divorce is not a separation
but an amputation.

Jesus is simply telling the truth.
The dissolution of a relationship
that follows the union of two people
in body, mind and spirit,
is an amputation.
It is painful and grievous
even when done for all the right reasons;
and even when the best possible healing takes place,
that missing limb will be with us in the next relationship
like an amputee’s phantom arm.

That is just the nature of things, Jesus reminds us.

It is his shorthand way of saying
we bring all of who we are
into this most intimate relationship,
so those with whom we have been intimate
will travel with us into the next relationship
whether we want them there to or not.

And as an aside,
this is also true of other profoundly intimate relationships,
like family – all of whom
migrate with us into our marriages.
Even if we were disowned by our parents,
and maybe especially if we had such a fracture,
they are a phantom limb in our marriage
still throbbing and sending signals
to our nerve endings.

So you see,
Jesus does not question the legality of divorce –
that divorce is legal is presumed
throughout the whole conversation.
But neither does he deny
the deep and pervasive truth of marriage,
and its physical and intimate union:
It makes us one flesh
and stays with us wherever we go
and with whomever we are with.

And there is one more thing
in these words of Jesus.
People were bringing little children to him
in order that he might touch them;
and the disciples spoke sternly to them.
But Jesus went ballistic and said:
“Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God
like a little child will never enter it.”

On the surface of it,
the debate about divorce
and the little kid-thing
would seem to be totally disconnected.
But they are not.

As I pointed out recently,
in another such Gospel story,
in the ancient world children, like women,
had no rights.
They were on the bottom rungs
of a rigid hierarchy of social caste.
Children had nothing to give
and therefore they had little worth.
They were vulnerable and needy
and merely a necessary hassle.
Children were like women,
who men could dismiss and replace.
But Jesus says, “No.”

Jesus tells the powerful and the insiders,
all of whom were men,
that when we stand on the margin
with women and children
and all others who are marginalized,
that then we will become open
to the Kingdom of God in our midst.

That translates to us this way:
When we recognize our power,
and then willingly enter into our powerlessness,
and stand with others in their powerlessness –
it will open us to God
in ways we have never known.
It is our presumption of power and control,
and our lust for perfection,
that keeps us from knowing God’s presence
even though it is always present
within and among us.

Jesus’ teaching on divorce
is really about the nature of marriage.
And his teaching on marriage
is really about sharing power and powerlessness.

Our Vision

Our vision…a Trinity Church known in the community as a welcoming home to everyone, responding effectively to the needs of our community, in collaboration with fellow Episcopalians and other faith communities

Our mission…to strive in our daily life and parish life to respect the dignity of every human being, and to treat each person entering our doors as if that person is Christ.

We are striving to be as open as the table Jesus hosted, in solidarity with the people of Geneva, and an accessible partner to others who share our sense of the gospel.

It also means we have opened ourselves to the future, and not only moved but adopted a new way of being church from the more traditional model. Join us at Trinity Place, 78 Castle Street in downtown Geneva, NY.

 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

 

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