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2 Advent C: God is Manna

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Well, preparing for today
was humbling and challenging.

Last week, inspired by the birth of my grandson,
I reached for the intangible.
I sought to capture an experience
rather than define or describe
a theological idea
or liturgical season.

Like any effort to capture an experience
for someone else, it failed;
but it failed pretty well.
It wasn’t a laser pointer
but it did hover poetically enough
in the vicinity of the experience I wanted to evoke,
at least according to those who stayed for the discussion.
And if Facebook is any indicator,
it reached about two-hundred more viewers
than an average sermon post.

So, it’s like that old preacher’s adage:
If you take your shirt off to make a point one Sunday,
what are you going to do the next?

Staring at the readings for today,
I just did not want to fall back into the usual –
which is taking an archeological pick and brush
to carefully remove some top layers
of historical soil and theological detritus
so we can see the context
around which the original text was written.

Don’t get me wrong,
I still think that is important.
In fact, I went back to see how I had
addressed these readings in the past.
Since they come up every three years,
I took a peek at 2 Advent, Year C,
all the way back to the year 2000.
I was not impressed.

So I want to lean on T. S. Eliot some more,
even though we do not have a reading from
the Four Quartets this week.
I want to stick our fingers
into the wet glob of goo
his poetry does, with its notion of the unity
of past, present and future.

The unity of past-present-and future is oh-so abstract
in comparison to talking about
John the Baptists’ historical relationship to Jesus.

It’s also not as concrete
as what we know about those two heroes
as we gaze back through the haze
of the Jewish-Roman war
that buried both of them
beneath a historical layer of sand.
The unity of past-present-and-future
is the stuff that cotton candy is made of
and can easily leave us with nothing
but a sugar high.

That’s the risk, but here goes.
In a culturally historic interview with Bill Moyers,
the academic, Joseph Campbell,
who specialized in comparative mythology,
offered us a brilliant metaphor
about the evolving lenses
through which human beings have viewed
life, meaning, and hope.

He pointed out that the tallest buildings
in the great centers of power,
were icons that reflected the central myth-making
power in each epoch of human history.

At first, temples to the gods and massive cathedrals
took the place of pride
as the focal-point of past civilizations.
But at some point,
at least in Europe if not elsewhere,
those religious buildings
become dwarfed by citadels of political power
and governance.
Great domes, palaces,
and massive governmental plazas
replaced cathedrals as the central focus of cities.

But then, beginning in the twentieth century,
even those most prominent government complexes
are made to look shabby
by huge modern towers of concrete, glass, and steel
built by corporate multi-national conglomerates.
Campbell didn’t live to see it,
but the grandest icons of that world now
are the huge sprawling campuses
of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and
other Tech companies.

It is a visual, even visceral example
of how past-present-and-future
live side by side in the same moment.
In cities both large and small,
these icons of human myth-making
live with one another.

In Geneva, we have 19thcentury
Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist Church buildings
on the hill looking down on
at a 20thcentury prominent City Hall in the middle of town.
But we do not have a dominant commercial building
because the economy is diffused
between small business, retail, and campus.

The point is this:
John the Baptist and Jesus
live side-by-side in the 21stcentury
with Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson –
and between them are all the highfaluting theologians,
criminal priests,
saints, martyrs, and black preachers
that have filled the air
with their ideas and witness.

It is simply impossible
to lift up the Biblical text
as if it were a photographic negative
we could hang to dry in a darkroom
so that we can see what it all really looked like.
Emperors Nero and Constantine;
Doctrines Nicene and Trinity;
theologians Augustine, Aquinas, and Niebuhr;
scandals Galileo, Inquisition, Colonialism,
witch-burning, and sex-abuse;
movements Reformation, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Fundamentalist, and Monkey-Scopes;
not to mention Evolution, Industrial Revolution, Einstein, Hubble, and landing on Mars;
all live side-by-side
in the same moment
with John and Jesus.

We are a jumble.

You and I cannot know Jesus and John
without the presence of Karl Marx,
Madam Curie, and Frederick Douglas.

Just think about that…
All that past is folded into this present moment.
And the future?

We know the likelihood
that a comet of enormous proportions,
like the one that blotted out the dinosaurs,
is in our future.
We may not be alive to suffer it,
but we know it is out there – just a lottery pick away.

We also know that the chickens of our decadence
are coming home to roost too –
environmental degradation caused by
our willful neglect, waste, and denial
is piling up and may soon swoop over us
with accelerating speed.

We know that in the future artificial intelligence
and robotics will eliminate nearly all the jobs
and many of the professions
that were elements of the Industrial Revolution
and Age of Information.

If Da Vinci’s drawings of helicopters,
tanks, and flying machines
are an example of the human imagination
wandering centuries ahead of its ability to actualize it,
consider the implications of movie narratives
such as Star Wars, the Hunger Games, and the Matrix.

You see?
Past, present, and future
are all folded into the dough
and we cannot separate it.
It all gets baked together
and is in us.
But do you know who or what
lives only in the present?
The one thing
that is neither past or future
is God.

While we can fiddle with past descriptions of God,
and read copious predictions about God,
the experienceof God
is once and only
in the present – now.

God is manna – that divine food
given to the escaped slaves
to sustain them in the wilderness.
Remember its properties?

It could be eaten
but not stored or hoarded.
It could be harvested at that moment
but never left to the next day.

God is our manna,
available in the moment
but never truly grasped in the past
or predicted in the future.

At Christmas,
we can tell the story of baby Jesus
but we cannot re-create the moment.
At Easter,
we can re-tell about the empty tomb,
but we cannot duplicate it.
At communion,
we can remember what Jesus did
but the experience of that love
is only available
in any given moment we are in.
You see, that is what I think we are,
as church in the 21st century.
We understand now,
that those lenses
which claimed our fidelity
are only blurred glass through which we see darkly.
Whether temple,
state house, or bank,
none of them hold the truth about God,
and only God holds the truth about whosewe are,
and whatwe are,
and, most importantly,
what it is we can genuinely hope for.

So, we come here, around this Wayfair altar,
seeking an experience with God,
and sharing our experiences
as we try to figure out with one another,
what they mean.
We have all this past –
these human geological layers of time and history
stacked one upon another –
and we have to sift through it.
And for some reason, it is better done together, with others.

We know sifting through history won’t give us
the experiencewe’re looking for,
but maybe it will open us up
to the experience of God we seek?

And we have all this fear, anxiety, and blindness
about the future –
it is in the air all around us like dust particles
filling our lungs, hearts, and minds with confusion.
By coming together
and sharing Eucharist and food
and the questions on our hearts,
maybe it will open us up to the experience of God we seek?

Maybe that is why we come here in the 21stcentury –
that’s my guess anyway.
We come here,
whether we can name it at the time or not,
to get open.
We come here
to use the past to soften us,
and to look into the future to rattle us,
all so that we might be open
in the moment –
which is the only place where God lives,
and moves, and has being.

If you were to ask me why I come here,
to church, to Eucharist,
to hanging out with fine people like you,
that is why.
A place like this…is one of the few places we can come
where other people gather,
with the potential
to open us up to God
who is present only here
and only now,
only in this moment.

1 Advent 2018: Quivering over the unity of past, present, and future

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Well, there is nothing to bring on Advent
like waiting for a baby to be born,
and nothing harder than trying to write a sermon
than when your daughter is in labor.

Young Declan Miller-Uueda was born on Thursday morning –
which is my sermon-writing time – a healthy boy
with a happy, healthy mom and dad holding him.
Needless to say, gramma is there now,
and I will be soon.

I want to say, “Thank you!”
for the incredibly thoughtful surprise grandparents shower
you gave us in anticipation of his birth.
My daughter, Anne, and her husband, Dan,
were also touched by the kindness of people
they don’t even know
extending the love of community across the miles.
Thank you.

Now, Advent.

T.S. Eliot had a thing in his poetry about the unity of time –
it was a theological thing.
Eliot was deeply theological, an Anglican’s Anglican.
In fact, when I was in seminary
I took a semester course just on Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”
The only other semester course devoted to one person,
at least that I can remember, was to Paul.
I don’t think Jesus even had one whole semester
devoted just to him!

Anyway, Eliot had this notion of the unity of time –
that past, present, and future
are or will be one.
He plays with that idea over and over and over again.
It is, what I call, “a thoughtwall.”

Now, just so you know,
that piece from Little Gidding we heard this morning,
Eliot wrote with Pentecost in mind.
But his quivering over TIME speaks of Advent too.

Advent is a thoughtwall,
because both the beginning
and end of TIME
are thoughts that seem impossible
to climb over or to peek over to the other side.

That strain of eschatology that runs through the bible,
some of which we call apocalyptic –
like that passage we read from Luke this morning,
and even the eye-squinting prophecy
from Jeremiah that imagines the future –
finger and fiddle with TIME
like a knot of fishing line.
From way, way back in human history,
we have been mesmerized by TIME
and tried to make sense of the relationship
between past, present, and future.

If we think about it,
even the mythology of heaven and hell and morality
is simply playing different notes on the same keyboard.
We try to make sense of the relationship
between what is happening now,
with what happens after we die,
and how all that hangs together
with the entire communion of saints.

Our ideas and theories
about the Afterlife
are only one of many unsuccessful human efforts
at understanding,
reconciling,
and making peace
with the past, present, and future.

T. S. Eliot was trying to do the same thing
in his poetry,
and I confess,
this sermon is a similar quivering.

But all of our speculations about TIME
are wrapped up with our smallness
as we huddle beneath the vast expanse of interstellar space.
We want toknow,
and we want to understand
and we want to have some sense of influence or control,
but we are just so very small.

My little grandson, Declan,
is cradled beneath a huge, impenetrable cosmos
of powers and forces,
elements and dynamics
before which he is completely powerless.
And truth be told, sixty years into the future
when he will be a full-grown man, God-willing,
that powerlessness before the cosmos will still be true.
That is a truth, a fact of our very existence,
and if it changes at all over time,
it is only infinitesimally.

Did you see the news articles
about the object hurling through space
from another solar system,
and passing by Earth
on its way to yet another solar system?
It was an oblong shape
measured to be 750 feet long
by 115 feet wide, reddish in color,
and made of metal.
In fact, some Harvard scientists
are speculating it is a “light sail” –
literally, a probe sailing on solar power
sent from intelligent sources
from another solar system.

Meanwhile, I look out at the oak tree
at the edge of my yard,
squirrels unselfconsciously poking around in the snow
scratching for nuts without an inkling
of solar probes in the vast reaches of space beyond us.
The difference between those squirrels and us
is not all that great
when we start widening our perspective
outward onto the universe.

Or my dog,
sitting at the window staring at the squirrels
with not one bit of an inkling
that TIME extends beyond that moment,
or that space lengthens
into billions of light years beyond her yard.
You and I, in the grand scheme of intelligence,
are not that much more sophisticated
than my dog or those squirrels,
and not that much more capable
of unpacking what is
and is not
out yonder.

If we can crawl up to that truth,
the hard and scary fact of our smallness,
we can begin to feel authentic humility,
and what it means to be in awe–
or as the ancients called it,
standing in the “fear of the Lord.”

By fear, they did not mean afraid, exactly.
They meant something more like that shaking,
shuttering joy I felt
even hundreds of miles away
from where Declan was born.

What I am trying unsuccessfully to point to,
to help us actually touch,
is a feeling –
or maybe it is more of a moment.
It is that moment of being awakened,
when something opens us, and out rushes…amazement.

Advent is best appreciated
as an embrace with that feeling – or experience –
rather than as an explanation
or idea
or some concept.
It is like Eliot’s effort to unify past, present, and future –
we can’t really do it
but trying to wrap our minds around it
brings us, sometimes, if we are lucky,
into that experience.

Maybe, it is more like looking
at a candle flame or the fire-light in the dark.

We can sit there thinking about fire,
and what we know about the physics and chemistry
that makes it possible
for wood or wax or wick to burn.
We can explain it
or we can enter the light –
literally, allow our thoughts to enter the flame
and experiencelight.
We can encounter the light
within the darkness and experienceit,
or we can miss that encounter and simply
remain in the explanation of it.
That is what I mean about embracing Advent.

This is where the church-thing we do
and spiritual community, is subversive.
We operate on a different level
but we do so in plain sight.
We begin a new year
and we start a new season
while everyone around us is still in ordinary time –
just going about their business
as if nothing had happened.
But we know something has happened,
and it is beyond rationality.
Something has happened,
and it is beyond normal awareness.
We are too small to see it
or hear it
or understand it,
but on some intuitive, maybe even musical level,
we know it is happening.

So we ritualize it –
and then we wait to see if, suddenly,
we will be forced open
and something like a wind will rise up from within us
and blow out in what can only be called amazement.
It sounds whacky and crazy, I know,
but that is what we are doing here
on an ordinary Sunday in this former wine bar
sharing prayers, song, and Eucharist.

So, I invite you into Advent,
not as an idea
or with some twenty-five cent theological explanation.
But as an experience.
Allowing ourselves to become open
to our smallness,
open to awe and joy
and unutterable amazement
before the window on deep space
or in the presence of a new born.

It brings a clog to our throat
and a stinging tear to our eyes
and somewhere inside we call out,
or quietly whisper,
“Thanks be to God.”

1 Advent 2017: Birth or Death?

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TEXT FOR PREACHING

Isaiah 64:1-9

Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and descend,
make the mountains shudder at your presence—
As when a forest catches fire,
as when fire makes a pot to boil—
To shock your enemies into facing you,
make the nations shake in their boots!
You did terrible things we never expected,
descended and made the mountains shudder at your presence.
Since before time began
no one has ever imagined,
No ear heard, no eye seen, a God like you
who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who happily do what is right,
who keep a good memory of the way you work.
But how angry you’ve been with us!
We’ve sinned and kept at it so long!
Is there any hope for us? Can we be saved?
We’re all sin-infected, sin-contaminated.
Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.
We dry up like autumn leaves—
sin-dried, we’re blown off by the wind.
No one prays to you
or makes the effort to reach out to you
Because you’ve turned away from us,
left us to stew in our sins.

Still, God, you are our Father.
We’re the clay and you’re our potter:
All of us are what you made us.
Don’t be too angry with us, O God.
Don’t keep a permanent account of wrongdoing.
Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us.
Your holy cities are all ghost towns:
Zion’s a ghost town,
Jerusalem’s a field of weeds.
Our holy and beautiful Temple,
which our ancestors filled with your praises,
Was burned down by fire,
all our lovely parks and gardens in ruins.
In the face of all this,
are you going to sit there unmoved, God?
Aren’t you going to say something?
Haven’t you made us miserable long enough?

“The Divine Dream” by Abraham Heschel

There is a divine dream which the prophets and rabbis have cherished and which fills our prayers, and permeates the acts of true piety. It is the dream of a world, rid of evil by the grace of God as well as by (our) efforts…to the task of establishing the kingship of God in the world. God is waiting for us to redeem the world. We should not spend our life hunting for trivial satisfactions while God is waiting constantly and keenly for our effort and devotion.

The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy and ambition. We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities. The martyrdom of millions demands that we consecrate ourselves to the fulfillment of God’s dream of salvation. Israel did not accept the Torah of their own free will. When Israel approached Sinai, God lifted up the mountain and held it over their heads, saying: “Either you accept the Torah or be crushed beneath the mountain.”

The mountain of history is over our heads again. Shall we renew the covenant with God?”

Mark 13:24-37

“Following those hard times,

Sun will fade out,
moon cloud over,
Stars fall out of the sky,
cosmic powers tremble.

“And then they’ll see the Son of Man enter in grand style, his Arrival filling the sky—no one will miss it! He’ll dispatch the angels; they will pull in the chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.

“Take a lesson from the fig tree. From the moment you notice its buds form, the merest hint of green, you know summer’s just around the corner. And so it is with you. When you see all these things, you know he is at the door. Don’t take this lightly. I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too—these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.

“But the exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven’s angels, not even the Son. Only the Father. So keep a sharp lookout, for you don’t know the timetable. It’s like a man who takes a trip, leaving home and putting his servants in charge, each assigned a task, and commanding the gatekeeper to stand watch. So, stay at your post, watching. You have no idea when the homeowner is returning, whether evening, midnight, cockcrow, or morning. You don’t want him showing up unannounced, with you asleep on the job. I say it to you, and I’m saying it to all: Stay at your post. Keep watch.”

SERMON

I love that graphic image
in this morning’s translation of Isaiah:
“Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.”

The straight-talk from Isaiah helps us deal better
with that excerpt from the great 20th century American rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Christians get squeamish when it comes to
tough-talk about God.
“Either you accept the Torah
or be crushed beneath the mountain,”
is a threatening interpretation of God that modern Christians, particularly liberals, usually object to.
But Isaiah’s lament about a God that is nowhere to be found,
when a loving, faithful God should be active,
is pretty clear and understandable.

Jesus has more of the same.

In the preamble
to what we heard from the gospel this morning,
Jesus warns his buddies:
“…In those days there will be suffering,
such as has not been seen from the beginning of creation
that God created until now, no, and never will be…”

The worst suffering ever!
That is saying something,
because human beings have known an awful measure
of suffering.

Jesus is warning them that they are going feel pain,
and it is going to be awful, so watch out for the signs:
The sun will fade,
the moon will cloud over,
fire will fall to the earth,
and the cosmos itself tremble.
Not good. Welcome to Advent.
Advent, remember, is the little four-week season
before Christmas.
It is a ‘get ready’ season.
The days are surely coming,
when God will fulfill the promise,
says another prophet (Jeremiah).
And the way he says it,
it sounds a heck of a lot more like a ‘threat’ than a promise.

In the popular imagination,
that time that will surely come,
that Jesus and other prophets predict,
is known variably as
The End Time
The Apocalypse
The Rapture
or the Eschaton.

It is almost always imagined as a violent ending.

The end of human history
is also imagined by many Christians today
to be the defining moment that will reward their faith,
while punishing or condemning
the absence of faith or the ‘wrong’ faith,
in a multitude of other people.

I prefer to imagine these and other calculations
by prophets whom I hold in high regard,
as a birth instead of a death –
the first breath of bountiful air
rather than the last draw of a snuffed-out life.

To be honest, I do not expect God to suddenly
put a zipper on it and wipe us out.
I prefer Isaiah’s other image of God, read elsewhere,
that God will wipe away every tear.

On the other hand,
like most moderns who have been taught
at the knee of Carl Sagan and Neal deGrasse Tyson,
I also expect that one day,
the Earth will be reduced to a cinder cooling off in space
after our sun dies –
which all stars finally do.
Sooner or later
the end will arrive
and whoever is around in those days
will have to contend with what it all means.

But on this first Sunday of Advent,
as we receive these Biblical readings
about a violent end-of-the-world,
it is worth thinking about WHY
those ancient people expected such violence.

It is because,
when you have little knowledge about the environment,
and your sphere of control is tragically narrow,
then a sudden apocalypse
would be consistent with the rest of your experience.

Think about it:
those ancients did not get much warning
about a storm like Irma or Maria –
our satellites watched those storms sweep across the ocean
before finally crossing the threshold of human habitats.

In Isaiah’s or Jesus’ day, storms just hit – BAM!

So did the Roman army – BAM!
The ancients never saw the legions coming
as they came marching ant-like over the horizon.
There was no warning about the cohort
who raped your daughter
or cut off the hands of your son
or took your bread and goats – BAM!

No warning about the Bandits who attacked;
or the lion that ate your neighbor;
or the famine that swept the population;
or the disease that only began
as a little rash
and ended with internal bleeding
that finally gushed blood from every orifice.

Our existence, yours and mine,
obscures how raw the lives of our ancestors were.
It is said that all of us here,
regardless of how much or how little income we have,
enjoys a quality of life
better than historic kings, like Henry VIII.

You and I often know about social mayhem
and natural disasters long before they arrive,
and our day-to-day existence is so sanitized and anesthetized,
not to mention protected,
that we create violence in movies, television, and video games
because somehow, scaring ourselves is entertainment.

It is little wonder that those ancients
anticipated the end of the world,
and that it would arrive with a rush of violence,
because that was their everyday experience.

Also…if God does not use the end-of-the-world
to finally reverse their fortunes,
for which they had long been on the losing end,
then when was the scale of justice going to get balanced?

And if it was not going to be God cleaning up in the 9th Inning,
then who, what, or when?

So, it is not so difficult to see why the ancients
envisioned apocalypse at the end of time –
and maybe even longed for it.
But what boggles my mind,
is that so many modern recipients of consumeristic privilege
also hope and pray for apocalypse!
I don’t get it.

But as I said, I want to put a different twist on Advent.

But let me also interject here,
that we will be missing most of our normal observation
of Advent this year.
Because we have invited the community into Trinity
for a concert next week,
and it is a Christmas concert;
and because the non-churched
and the non-liturgical churches do not recognize Advent at all;
and because that is much of the audience
we hope is here next week;
we are greening the Church for Christmas today.

We will not put up all of our Christmas decorations,
but we will do a lot of it
in the name of hospitality and welcome
to the wider community for the concert.

And…we will also miss the dramatic conclusion of Advent this year,
because the fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Christmas Eve.
So Advent is getting short shrift here this year.

Even so, we can practice the spirituality of Advent.

We do not need the color purple
or the absence of Christmas decorations,
or graphic apocalyptic threats,
to practice Advent.
We need only imagine we are awaiting a birth, not a death;
painful yes, but joyous beyond words.

In Advent, together, with one another,
we become a gaggle of slightly anxious
friends and family
watching the maternal belly of expectation
expand…waiting, waiting, waiting.

It is not even our belly,
not even our baby,
but we know that when it comes
everything
will suddenly be different.

It is not even our belly,
not even our baby
but we know that when it comes
everything
will be different.

And you know what else?
We don’t even know its name…
We don’t even know the name of the thing
that is coming,
that is gestating in the womb of the universe.

Here at Trinity we are experiencing that pregnancy
with great intimacy.

It is clear we are in a womb about to be delivered –
being born into a world we do not know yet,
and about to become a creature
we are not yet certain about.
Change is coming,
the cervix is thinning
and we know something is about to change.

It is the kind of change
about which we can never be certain what it will delivered;
the kind of change we cannot manage;
the kind of change we cannot usher.

A Harvard professor named, Ron Heifetz,
who writes about leadership and change,
has a nifty little way of distinguishing
between categories of change.
He says there is, “Continuous Change”
and “Discontinuous Change,”
and they are very different.

Continuous change is the one we like, if we like change at all.
It is the kind we can anticipate,
manage, and plan.
For example, we can plan the renovation of a building;
we can anticipate stuff wearing out
and requiring replacement;
we can manage a rainy-day fund
to pay for unanticipated events.
We can count on our body aging and so exercise,
eat right, and manage how much of the unhealthy stuff
we will allow ourselves to indulge.
All of that is continuous change,
and its main descriptor
is that is comes out of what has gone on before.
We know what to expect because of the past.

Then there is the other kind of change.
For example, we were getting so good
at anticipating and managing
the economic cycle of recession and inflation,
that many very smart people
actually began to talk about how there might
never be another
unanticipated change in the cycle.
No more recessions
or inflation, they were saying.

Then, all of a sudden,
something called the “Housing Bubble” happened.
Chaos ensued.

That is the kind of change we hate –
the chaos of discontinuous change,
or something that happens
that has never happened before.
Such change does not come out of previous experience,
it comes out of nowhere – or seems to –
and we are caught with our pants down (so to speak).

In the midst of discontinuous change,
the skills and know-how
we have used before to fix things,
does not work.

We instinctively try harder and harder and harder
using what we know has worked before,
but it does not help.

Old ways of doing things do not work
because things have really changed,
and our previous know-how
simply does not work.

We are suddenly out beyond the boundary
where we have never been before,
and we get the creeping feeling
there are things out here around us
that are very, very dangerous.

Because we get scared about not knowing what will happen,
and because we hate being out of control,
our first inclination is to reach for technology to fix it.
If we just have the right gizmo
or the perfect way of doing something
or a better program
or a new image…
But there is no fix, not yet,
and not with anything we have at our disposal.
And you know what?
Advent is a season intended to open us up
to discontinuous change –
the kind of change we hate.

Advent is a season
that invites us into discontinuous change
where the best thing we can do is wait…
wait and listen,
wait and observe,
wait and see what, if anything, God is doing.

Now, I know that a lot of us
do not believe God is doing anything
or ever does anything.
We inherited that kind of Deism
from Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment smarties.
It embarrasses us to talk about what God is doing
because we can’t prove it even if we knew it.

But Advent is a season to listen
and observe
and see what God is doing,
because we are in fact
surrounded by a time of discontinuous change.

We would be hard pressed
to think about an institution in this country
that is not cracking open,
falling apart,
or on its way to becoming something very different.
It is not just organized religion that is falling apart:
Health care,
Education,
Government,
Politics,
Business,
Economics,
Law,
Journalism, and Entertainment…
In all of them, the familiar scaffolding
that has held them up and made them work,
is disintegrating
well before we know what will replace it.
Those who keep applying
the same old fixes
as if doing so will make things better,
look and sound increasingly loony and even pathetic.

But nobody else is looking especially brilliant either –
as if they have the answers.
The reason is, in times of discontinuous change,
there are no experts
because the answers haven’t been named yet.

You and I may have imagined
that we were just entering the season of Advent,
the one that would take us
through the four weeks before Christmas.

But in fact, we have been entering Advent
for quite some time now,
and we are going to be in it
for quite some time to come.

There are no experts.
There are no gurus.
There are no answers.
To pretend there are,
and to follow those who promise them,
is to risk becoming deaf and blind
to what God is actually doing in our midst.

We may think we know what to hope for,
just like all those Christians who hope
for the end of the world to come.
But our vision is too small,
and our imagination is too limited,
and our hope is too flimsy
to unveil what God has in mind for us.

We need to wait instead…
wait and listen,
wait and observe,
wait and see what God is doing.

So, I invite us into a quiet little Advent
in which we wait…
wait for the baby that is coming any minute now,
next month,
tomorrow,
or years from now.
Wait for the scaffolding to collapse
and reveal the phoenix
that will rise up from the ashes.

I invite us into a quiet little Advent
in which we wait…
knowing that the best gift we can receive
is one we can’t even hope for
or anticipate
because right now,
in this time of discontinuous change,
we do not even know
what we do not know.

In invite us into a quiet little Advent
in which we wait…
wait and listen,
wait and observe,
wait and see
what God is doing – and expect
that God is doing something…even
if we do not know what.

 

 

3 Advent 2016: Midwife to the Holy

by

It is a dangerous world.

Justice is suspended slightly beyond our reach
over a precipice we cannot span.

The Earth we call fragile
will fume and crack and shake,
and likely grow and thrive and produce
eons after our species
has made it uninhabitable for our kind.
It is a dangerous world.

The dark is not darkness to God
but it is still an absence of light to us –
the activity of human evil
foment greater threats to our safety
and greater chaos at the shores of our hope.
It is a dangerous world.

The Season of Advent
is all about the dangers of the world we live in.

I know that all over of the town and city,
and throughout the country
preparations for Christmas
begin right after Halloween,
and intensify until red ribbons and white lights are everywhere.

But in the eye of that commercial storm
that has been brewing now for over a month,
in liturgical Churches like ours,
the four weeks before Christmas
are held as an important “Season” all its own.
For 14 centuries in fact,
Advent has stubbornly struggled
to hold back the tide of Christmas until,
on December 24th,
it can no longer withstand the procession of time.
Why have a season like that,
when everyone loves Christmas?
Why hold back Christmas or try to diminish its splendor.
Because, quite frankly,
it is a dangerous world.

You see, the Christmas spotlight is focused on an infant.
It is difficult for us to see past that sweet baby.
In the story of a small family
nestled around a newborn child,
need to be prepared to see and hear
what lies at the dark edges of that manger.

It’s tricky.
We receive newborns with “Ah!” and “Oooh.”
And that is as it should be.
An infant is more marvelous than we can possibly say.

But the season of Advent gazes into the gap
between the promise of what is to come –
that blessed baby –
and the chaos that is here and now.

We peer into this gap at Advent,
knowing that Christmas is just beyond us
but averting our gaze
even though we would rather stare at the promise
than at the chaos.

Even so, Advent is not a punishment;
rather, it is a method
of building spiritual muscle.

To look into the gap
between what has been Promised
and the Chaos that is here,
is to become wiser
and stronger
and more savvy
in a world that requires us to be clever not innocent.
It is a dangerous world.
Today, in Isaiah and Matthew,
we hear the promise of a different kind of Creation:
A NEW Creation.

In the NEW Creation
weak hands will be strong,
lame legs will dance,
thirsty deserts will gush,
dry sand will well up,
the exiled will come home,
and the captives will be ransomed.

The NEW Creation
will be under the reign of God instead of Chaos.

The NEW Creation
is not yet born,
but it is alive.
The NEW Creation
is a tender green shoot
still gathering shape in the dark, wet soil of winter.

But it is ALIVE.

Notice, please, that you and I are not promised
we will be alive
to see the world free of chaos,
only that the reign of God is coming.

The promise is simply
that the Creation is moving toward
an order that sustains life
in all of its mysterious complexities,
while at the same time slowly moving away from Chaos
with all of its attending threats.

Now the voices of cynicism and disbelief,
the thinking limited to pure reason,
and the dogmatism of science or economics
as the only possible lenses
through which we should interpret the world,
all have dismissed
the possibility of God’s reign.
There is no sense in arguing with them
any more than it makes sense to argue
with dogmatic religious thinking.

But for those of us in between –
who look for light and life
upon the entire spectrum of possibilities,
and have fewer limitations about what is possible,
there is something else.

There is an ancient wisdom.

That wisdom whispers to us
that we have a promise
and the promise is coming.
At the same time
it warns us about the Chaos within which we live.
But what this ancient wisdom asks of us
is to live AS IF,
as if we were already under the reign of God.

It asks us,
with the full sobriety of knowing the potential cost,
to live as if the promise has arrived.
All the prophets,
from Moses to Jesus to Dorothy Day,
tell us that by living AS IF
God’s reign is already here,
we become midwives to holy.

Let’s stop right there.
I want us to think about that:
Midwives to God.

As God painfully labors
to bring forth the New Creation she has promised,
we can be her midwives.
Midwives to God!

If you think this is just a metaphor I am playing with…
you’d be right.
But it is a metaphor that is cast in the mud of reality.
There are more ways to assist
in birthing the New Creation
than the number of stars we can see with the naked eye.
Conversely, there are countless ways
we can contribute to the Chaos as well.

But today I want to leave us thinking about just one way
we can act as midwives to the holy.
It hovers around that punch line we heard in the Gospel:
The least in the kingdom of God
is greater than…(you fill in the blank).

Or we can come at it from the negative.

The only way human beings are able to rape and murder –
or eve to hold, voice, and act with bigotry –
is if God has been turned into a mirror.

Let us make no mistake about evil –
and by evil, I mean the plain old human kind
with not supernatural about it.
We are all capable of tremendous evil.
You and me, and everyone we know,
is capable of deadly and awful behavior.
Let’s just be very honest and clear about it.

The German soldiers
who assisted in the genocide of 12 million people,
or the German middle class
who watched silently as Jews, homosexuals,
and leftists
were scape-goated
and then gradually reduced to the status of vermin,
were ordinary people like you and me.

The Cambodians,
Guatemalans,
Salvadorans,
Rwandans,
Russians,
Bosnians,
Iraqis,
Turks…pick a country
where repression and genocide
has been practiced openly within memory.
In every single one of them
we can see ordinary people like you and me
slipping into silence
and passively accepting evil
until it becomes a full-blown participation in that evil.

The point is: no one here is immune,
and each one of us
is capable of practicing and participating in evil.

Think back to the war of your generation
and your youth:
W.W.II,
Korea,
Viet Nam,
the Gulf Battle,
Iraq,
Afghanistan…
How easily did the words, “God and Country”
slip off our tongues?
How seamless a garment
was the establishment of war
with the establishment of religion?
How snuggly did the Gospel of Jesus Christ
fit into the flag of the Constitution,
and how quickly did Jesus’ face and manner
come to reflect our own as we opposed our enemies?

When God becomes the mirror
in which is reflected
all that we want to see and believe about ourselves,
then any horror is possible and justified.
It is then the world is made
an even more dangerous place.

Our greatest threat
is not from Atheists or Agnostics
who relegate God to irrelevance;
it is from our own capacity
to project our desires,
and our prejudices,
and own fears
onto God
as if they were coming down from heaven
instead of wafting up from our own darkness.

The Gospel has an antidote for this threat –
something that can shatter the shiny reflection
of any mirror.

“The least in the kingdom of God is greater than…”
When we swell with pride at our own power,
we need only look around to see God
in someone who is powerless.
Truly see them.

When we feel satiated and relaxed
in the comfort and safety of our own homes,
we need only listen for God
in the fear and anxiety
of those whose homes have been taken away.
Truly hear them.

When suspicion or animosity wells up within us
toward people we presume are not like us,
we need only touch them
because God lives within their body –
their gay, lesbian or heterosexual body;
their Asian, African, European, or hybrid body;
their well-educated, marginalize, or mainstreamed body;
their Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Buddhist body.
Truly touch them.

When the flag of our country –
and remember, in this congregation
we do not all have the same country and flag –
when the flag of our country
is pointed like a missile in flight
to attack the evil in some other country,
then we need to awaken to the sounds of our enemy – because somewhere
in that stereotyped mob of bad-guys,
God is calling out for us to listen.
We need to listen
and awaken to the God within “them.”

“The least in the kingdom of God is greater than…”
Just when we think we are being so good –
we see the least is gooder than us.
Just when we think we know the truth –
we understand that the least is wiser than us.

Just when we think we are right –
the least is proven more perceptive than us.

The Gospel has this built-in correction
to our nationalism,
our chauvinism,
our parochialism,
and our ethnocentrism.

Just when we have identified the borders,
corrected the membership list,
codified the rules,
painted God in the image and hues of a self portrait,
the Gospel says,
“The least is greater than you…”

Believe it,
or risk becoming
and doing awful things.
So if we wish to be midwives to holy,
and assist God in the birth of the New Creation,
we need to become good at recognizing God
in the least…
at the end….
or with the servant.

It is a dangerous world.

It is made all the more dangerous
by religious people who turn God into a mirror.
It is made all the more dangerous by us,
when we ignore the least
and the last,
and the servants.
All of them,
God has embraced
as greater than you and me.

When the Gospel is heard and taken seriously,
mirrors will be shattered.
When that happens,
God is assisted in her struggle
to bear forth the New Creation.

We have one more week of Advent.
The pressure is intense.
The cervix between God and us is thinning,
the veil nearly transparent.

We have one week left
to savor our role as midwives to God.

It should rightly make us speechless
even though we must speak;
and we must work furiously
to keep the chaos away
while God is in so vulnerable a state.
The way we practice our spiritual midwifery,
is to prepare a place in the midst of Chaos
for the New Creation to be delivered safely.

The way we practice our spiritual midwifery,
is to look in the places
and among the people
where we least expect to find God’s presence.

It is dangerous
but it is the birth of a New Creation
that gives meaning to the risks we must take
and even the life we must one day loose.

Let us hold back Christmas just a little longer,
and savor the incredible privilege
of being God’s midwife
in the birth of the New Creation.

1 Advent 2016: Finding Light in the Dark

by

kosovo-metohija-koreni-duse027We need to take care of a little business
before launching into the sermon.
You may have read the article in the Finger Lakes Times
about our development project,
or you may have heard about it from your neighbor
who read it and surprised you with it.
You could have also seen it,
if you are on the distribution list
for the diocesan online newsletter.

As articles go, it was pretty good,
but it had one glaring bit of garbled information.
I mentioned to the reporter that part of our hope
is not only to continue worshipping in this building
but also to have a satellite location downtown
from which to do ministry and program.
That got translated
as we would be leaving this building altogether.

I don’t know about you,
but I have received concern from friends
and acquaintances in the community
about having just bought a house
and now what will I do with Trinity closing?

So even though it was in the newspaper,
and even though it was said we would be here
and continue as a congregation,
those details still seem to get lost.

We’ll just have to keep telling the story
and tooting our horn
and finding new and better ways
to keep the word out that Trinity lives on.

Of course, the best way to do that
is to grow in number,
deepen in wisdom,
and strengthen our ministry and witness.
That is a one-step-at-a-time process.

And with that I would like to point out
what many of you have already noted:
that less than a year ago
we stared our grim prospects in the face
without the slightest idea IF
or how
or what
or when
even the possibility of a future
could be a wish, let alone a legitimate hope.
Nine months later, a full term pregnancy,
we are moving in a specific direction
with prospects that have changed categories
from wish,
to hope,
to opportunity.

Standing here on November 27th
I would also like to add that this experience,
of encountering light in the dark,
is the very substance of what we call “Advent.”

So keep that shared Trinity experience in the background the next few moments
as we explore this Advent theme a little deeper:
Light in the midst of dark.

I want to tell you something I know,
but in order to tell you what I know
I have to tell on myself
in a way that may be more personal
than some folks are comfortable with from the pulpit.

On the other hand,
it is not a big secret or anything either,
because it was in the newspaper last January,
and came up in my interview with the Search Committee.

I am a recovering alcoholic and drug user.
Now that is not a very exclusive club
and I am sorry to say it is becoming even less so.

Anyway, I mention it
because what I learned about myself and other people
during that time before recovery,
and in recovery itself,
is a guiding light for me in dark times.

Advent is about light in dark times, by the way,
as in seeing the path to peace
in the midst of war;
or reaching for equity
in the throws of oppression;
or perceiving the stillpoint
in the midst of chaos and imbalance.

So in order for me to tell you what I know –
the kind of knowing that both glows and gnaws
in the marrow of my bones,
and lines the sheathing of nerves along my spine
with both silk and sand –
I need you to know there was a time in my life
when I was owned, utterly consumed,
by the hungers and thirsts of my darker angels.

When I was trying to stop drinking alcohol
and using drugs,
I simply did not see
how stopping could possibly work.
I could not see to the other side of the river, so to speak.

I could see how bad it had become,
and I could see how much worse it was going to get
if I didn’t find a way to stop,
but I could not see how the heck it was going to happen.

Now anyone who uses mood-altering substances
does it for the same reason,
whether a mere social drinker or a drug addict.
The doggone stuff changes our mood –
when used well and properly
it makes us feel good
without having to pay a price for it.
Almost everyone likes a little bump now and again.
Heck, these days they sell stimulant drinks
over the counter
and advertise them as a daily fix
to help us through the day.

So like everyone else
who abuses mind-altering substances,
I was self-medicating in order to numb myself
against emotional pain.
The unfortunate thing for me was that I started so early –
getting high and drinking in seventh and eight grade.
You see, the earlier a person starts
the greater the impact on them over time.

There probably isn’t a seventh or eighth grader alive
who does not claim to have emotional pain,
even if the pain is stuff that seems pretty typical or silly
by adult standards.
So if a kid starts numbing it that early
he or she will never learn how to manage it.
That’s what happened to me.
I numbed myself for about fifteen years,
more and more thoroughly as I got older.

I knew that if I suddenly took away the numbing agents
that everything from those fifteen years and before –
from the tiniest injury
to the ugliest shame
to the most disabling anxiety –
would be right there in the room with me.

That is the first challenge people face,
if you happen to know anyone going through recovery.

Standing in the presence of anything and everything
that goes bump in the night
without any true experience or methods
for staying present to them
is daunting.

And by the way,
I am still learning how to do that –
it is never a once and forever thing.
Anyway, I discovered that acting as if
I could do it even if I was afraid I couldn’t;
and acting as if
I could do it even if I didn’t know how;
and simply putting one foot
right in front of the other
without skipping steps
or making leaps;
that if I did those things
I got to where I needed to go.

What I had to learn,
in other words,
was to make a radical act of trust
that I could get from here to there
even though I did not know where there was,
and even though I did not know how.

And in the process of learning how to do
what I didn’t know how to do,
and to get to a place I did not know where it was,
I learned some valuable wisdom
that has stayed with me.
I find it to be an especially potent wisdom in dark times.

Part of that wisdom is this:
When we ask the question “why?”
of a situation we cannot and will not
ever be able to answer with any kind of certainty,
we get stuck.
Buddha called them ineffable questions
and said it was a roadblock to enlightenment.

So instead, in the dark
when we need to go somewhere we do not know where,
or do something we are not sure how to do,
we need to take an outrageous
and radical step off the plank into trust.
We do not get to know why
we have arrived at this moment
any more than we get to know what
will happen in the next moment.
If we dither around with why and what
we will get stuck.

Now, because no sermon should be about me,
allow me to pivot away from myself
to someone with a lot more credibility, Isaiah.

We are going to be hearing from Isaiah
nearly every week in Advent and Christmas
so here is a little perspective with which to hear his prophetic poetry.

He lived in a very scary time.

Israel was divided.
The northern half had already been annexed
by the dreaded Assyrian Empire.
Judah, the southern half,
where the Holy City of Jerusalem was situated,
was paying bribes to the Assyrian Emperor
and ingratiating itself
like a sniveling Smee to a nasty Captain Hook
in order to keep from getting gobbled up.

Isaiah was a prophet
but even so he could not see
what was going to happen next.

He could see
the horrendous injustice in his society.
He could see
that the national and religious leaders
were living very far from the values they professed.
And he could see
an enormous disparity in wealth
and an economy based upon violence and war.

He did not know
exactly what was going to happen
but he could see trouble brewing
with little chance of avoiding it.

It was a time not unlike our own.

Isaiah was pretty sure
a national disaster was on the way;
a time when even the highest national leaders,
and the King himself,
would groan in despair.

He had no answer
for the injustices he saw.

He had no answer
for the fact that God,
who was supposedly a God of justice and mercy,
was not acting like it.
He had no answer
for what seemed like God’s utter neglect
of those who were most vulnerable.
He had no answer
for why bad things were happening to good people
and yet so many bad people
were getting away with so much bad.

What he did have, and what he did know,
was an understanding
that he did not have enough perspective
to perceive final outcomes.
He was powerless in that moment
to see or know
what he most wanted to see and know.
He knew he did not know enough
to answer the questions
that he and other people most wanted answered.

Even so, he refused to make up answers.
He refused to allow his dread of powerlessness
to provoke him into premature action.
He refused to attempt to leap ahead
because he could not tolerate the pain of the present.

And along with that embrace of his limits
and the understanding of his powerlessness,
he had one other small weapon
against the darkness:
Hope.

It was an outrageous hope
considering the barrel of the gun
they were looking down.

It was a hope born of trust,
and it was simply that God loves us
and cares for us
and is present with us.
Because of that trust
he could act as if…
as if
the right outcome
depended upon his small acts of love.

His or anyone else’s puny actions
were clearly not enough to make a difference,
but he trusted that if he did what he could do
it would be enough.

It was a hope
created by an act of trust
that even the gravest,
most horrendous dangers
were capable of being addressed and resolved
by one small love
added to one small love
added to one small love
until the sheer weight and power of each small act
overwhelmed the hazard
or enlightened the darkness
or righted the wrong.

Deep darkness
and overwhelming odds
require
that kind of trust
and that kind of hope.

At the end of our nose,
pushed up against us and smooshing our face,
is an overwhelming force
with unbeatable odds
against which we are powerless to succeed.
So the only option to cynicism
or despair
or utter hopeless,
in any such situation,
is to act as if…
as if
one small act of love
and one step at a time
can possibly lead to the other side.

That is what I know.

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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