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3 Advent: Do you have two shirts?

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Washington National Cathedral

Video version follows the text
Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12:2-6; Theologies for Korah, a poem by Dante Michael; Luke 3:7-18

Alright, how many of you still have two shirts?
That’s what John the Baptist wants to know.
But as for me, as the poet wrote,
“I have learned to keep my head
while speaking the truth.”
That is a pun.

I dare say, there are not many other poems
about John the Baptist,
nor that many sermons.
It is kind of like preaching about John Brown —
another prophet who came to prepare us
but isn’t talked about in polite society.

We like our prophets
in the rear view mirror
after we have enough distance
to pluck the insect wing from their beards
and can no longer smell the musk.

We clean them up and sanitize them
so we can make national heroes of them.
Another word for it is domestication.
If they were alive
we could never get away
with domesticating them
because they just wouldn’t sit still for it.

On the other hand, nobody in their right mind
wants to be a prophet.
Nobody who has other options
ever sits around and thinks to him or herself,
”I think I’ll grow up to be a prophet.”

Whereas once upon a time
there were schools of prophets
and even professional prophets,
it long ago fell out of favor as a profession.

One generation of amazing prophets included
Amos, Micah, Hosea, and Isaiah
and somehow, miraculously really,
we still have their poetry —
lo, these twenty-seven hundred years later.

Decades and decades ago,
at the beginning of my ministry,
I attended a once vaunted institution
now closed, called The College of Preachers.
It was in the nation’s capital
on the grounds of the National Cathedral.
20th century greats like Reinhold Niebuhr
taught seminars there,
and after initially being an invitation-only program,
it came to be more open —
even to punks like me.

I anxiously drove to Washington, DC
from Indianapolis, Indiana
my “real” sermon text in hand
which we were instructed to bring.
Like everyone else, of course,
I brought one I thought was really, really good.
The first full day we delivered our sermons
to a group of colleagues all there for the same thing.

As I recall, I was one of the youngest of the bunch,
with longish hair and a bushy beard,
without a doubt, the least refined.
The feedback was nearly unanimous:
too harsh,
too radical,
too angry.
You can’t get away with talking like that
from the pulpit.

I was downhearted, of course,
but tried to stay open and learn
because that is what I was there for.

Somewhere toward the end of the week,
the faculty gathered us
to watch a video of the retired Presiding Bishop,

John Hines.
I had heard of him but that’s about all,
never read or heard him speak.
We watched as he ascended the tall pulpit
of the National Cathedral,
two canes helping him up the steps.
In the red and white of bishop’s robes,
he also sported a long beard —
at least in my mind’s eye.
I can’t find any photos of him with a beard.

Anyway, he was older in this video,
and clearly had to hold the edges of the pulpit
to remain standing.
But his voice boomed,
and filled every nook and cranny
of that vaulted cave.
As the camera panned the congregation
it was filled with fur coats
and Georgetown black suits
sitting there under the hot breath

of that lion who preach a wildly prophetic sermon.
We were all blown away
at the power of that man’s words
and his very demeanor – resonating as it did
out of a shrunken body that was crumbling.
All around the room,
all of us commented on the sermon
in glowing tones.

Then one of the faculty members
very quietly remarked,
”Isn’t it funny how Cam said nearly the same things,
but he was perceived as an angry young man.”

It is a hard reality to learn
that youth, gender,
race, and class
are robed in countless presumptions
that we cannot get rid of
nor deny.

Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus,
both brown men of color
adorned in the aura of poverty,
would be able to speak to us
in our world and churches,
still segregated as they are by class and race.

We have about as much chance
of changing that reality
as we do making a silk purse
from a pig’s ear.
But you know what?
With God, all things are possible.
(Jesus said that, I didn’t make it up).

There are more ways than poetry
and violent rebellion
to be prophetic.
Whenever we can offer a witness
that could cause other people to stop and wonder —
to stop and ask themselves how or why we did that —
and have their pondering lead
like ant tracks back to God,
we are being prophetic.

Someone remarked to me this week,
about how remarkable it is,
the robust quantity of goods and money
this small congregation
is able to collect and give away.

Indeed, during the pandemic shut down,
we were recognized in the diocese
as one of the few congregations
that were able to keep our outreach going.
In fact, it was then that we really began to accelerate.

This is not meant as a boast of any kind,
just a moment to stop and recognize
that one way we can be prophetic
in this community, is to have an outsized heart.
Like John Hines,
many of us are no longer
in our best physical condition,
and that narrows some of our options.
But because of that very fact,
how and what we can do
is able to boom and resonate
our conviction
that with God, all things are possible.

I also believe
that by choosing to leave our building
when we did
and how we did,
and our dogged persistence
in the face of struggle,
that we can offer hundreds
if not thousands
of congregations around the nation
a prophetic message of hope.

(The congregation voted in 2016 to allow the historic building to become a boutique inn
while it moved into a former wine bar in downtown Geneva).

Being prophetic doesn’t require us
to eat insects
or break into armories
in pursuit of abolition.
We can also be prophetic
by living out a cherished value
in ways that other people begin to wonder
why we did that?

In the darkest moments of his generation,
Isaiah offered the poetry of hope and restoration.
Then, when prosperity made his contemporaries
forget who they were,
his poetry turned radical and challenging.

What he didn’t do
was sit around and fret
that no one would notice
and so be rendered speechless.

It is Advent
and after today
we turn the corner toward Christmas.
Next week the stories and images
we associate with Christmas
begin to leak through the purple curtain.
What we need to know
is that Christmas itself —
the stories we associate with
hot cocoa and silent night, are
at their core, prophetic stories.

More about that next week.

2 Advent Year C

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Scroll down for video version

 

Take good care — this is Advent.

Why do I say it that way?
Because the culture is hostile
to authentic presentations of Christianity.

If we are clear-eyed and honest about it,
authentic Christian faith
is disrespected in the Public Square
and silenced by subjugation
to stereotyped images on television and in the movies.

The culture is hostile to Christianity
because the Chemists of Culture –
those who mix the proportions and ingredients of
market economics, education,
arts, entertainment, and government,
are scared of Christianity —
of religion in general.
They should be.

Buddhism is not a threat yet,
at least here in the US,
so it has been lionized in the popular culture.

Islam? Well it has been ravaged
in the public square since 9/11,
and always presented almost exclusively
as a dangerous and violent theology.

Judaism? Polarized.
The actual faith and theology are obscured
by the Geo-political conflicts
between Israel and Palestine.

But Christianity?
In the United States, authentic Christianity
is the biggest threat of all.
Because it was once the dominant religion,
and still by far the majority religion,
and it has held sway for so long.

But take a look at that reading from Luke.

When Luke is going to tell us about the “Word of God”
coming to John the Baptist in the wilderness,
why does he begin
by telling us who the politicians are?
Why does he begin this story
by telling us it was in the reign of Tiberius,
under the local dictatorship of Pontus Pilate?
Or, as we will hear on Christmas Eve
when Luke begins to tell the story
of when Jesus was born,
why does he begin by telling us
that it was in the reign of Augustus
when Quirinius was governor?

It is because history is always told
from the point of view of the winners –
and by the professional historians
who work for the Chemists of the Culture.

If that culture is hostile to you,
and you want your story to be remembered,
then you have to peg it to the milestones
that the winners keep.

From the very beginning,
when we were slaves in Egypt,
we have understood
that we are counter-cultural in a hostile environment.
We have forgotten this from time to time,
and acted more like Pharaoh than Moses,
but it doesn’t take long to be reminded
about which is the spiritual path.

From the very beginning,
when we were prophets
warning the kings and the religious authorities
that their decadence and consumerism
was going to lead to a tremendous national tragedy,
we have understood
the social and economic implications of being spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were healers for people who had been marginalized
because of their illness and woundedness,
and when we became marginalized too
because we dared to embrace them,
we have understood the subversiveness
of being spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were prophets, messiahs and disciples
who were reformers of a religion that had become
fat and corrupt around a hierarchy of men,
enmeshed and beholden to
the economic and military powers,
we have understood that rubbing salt in their wounds
is part of what it means to be spiritual people.

And though our religion
and our leaders and institutions
have often become
hawkers and shills for the economic culture,
we have always had strong currents in Christianity
that remembered…
Those that remembered ordinary spiritual people
are yeast for justice,
advocates for mercy, and
the lovers of peace.

And that, my friends, is the Christmas story.
We have already begun telling it
and will continue to tell it through Advent –
building week by week
to that moment on Christmas Eve.

It is a story told from the margins of society
with a profound and poignant reminder
that being spiritual people,
we are always working against the culture.

It should make us angry on some level,
that our story is never truly told
in the public square —
at least not with any authenticity.
I do not mean from an evangelical point of view
because we know and respect
that our story is not everyone’s story.

But all the Christmas stuff
we see and hear
on the radio or television,
or Lowes and Walmart for crying out loud,
is sentimentalized yuck.
Those manger scenes and decorations,
and fa-la-la carols,
are stripped of any true spiritual content.

Instead, they are totally appropriated
by the Chemists of Culture
to reinforce the story
they want us to spend our money on.

Being spiritual people,
we understand that the story of Christmas
is counter-cultural and subversive,
and we share in the joy of surprise
when those who never knew it
suddenly stumble into that wisdom too.

So let me conclude with this whisper from the past
that blows like a January wind into the future.
The words of this prophet are the same distance from us
that Luke was from Jesus.
It is the Christmas story we wish to unleash.

In the reign of Joseph R. Biden,
when a woman named Hochul was Governor;
in the time an Argentinian named Francis
was Bishop of Rome,
and an American Black man
named, Michael, was the presiding Bishop;
in the second year of Valentino’s administration
in the city cradled by a region known as Finger Lakes;
the Word of the Lord came to an oddball group
of people gathered in a former wine bar
at the heart of the city.

As it was written in the words of the prophet:
“This is our hope.
This is the faith that we go into our lives with.

With this faith
we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair
a stone of hope.

With this faith
we will be able to transform the jangling discords
of our nation into a beautiful symphony of community.

With this faith
we will be able to work together,
to pray together,
to struggle together,
to stand up for freedom together,
knowing our freedom cannot be paid for
on the backs of peasants and sweatshop workers
in other regions of the world.

When we allow freedom to ring,
when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city
we speed up that day when all God’s children,
black and white,
Jews and Muslims,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing the words
of that old (African American) spiritual,
‘Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’”

You remember those words
and that prophet, right?
(The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

THAT voice,
that wisdom,
that vision,
is the same voice
and the same wisdom
and the same vision
that spiritual people have always told —
the same as Luke’s voice we read this morning.

It is the whisper that changes the chemistry of culture.
It is the current that subverts the course of the stream.
It is the relentless hope
that never, never, never has and never will
be beaten down
by the Chemists of Culture.

No matter how successful they are in subjugating our story
for their economic and military purposes,
the voice and the wisdom and the vision
escape.

Now take care.
This is a tough season for spiritual people.
We see things
and know things
that weigh heavy on our hearts and minds.

We understand what is going on
and we recognize the motives of people
who are led by profit more than prophets.

It is a weary season for spiritual people
who are by nature and desire healers.
We see and feel the woundedness of others,
even as we experience most acutely our own wounds.

So take care.
Spiritual people need to be nurtured
in such a difficult season.

Allow yourself to be held in the arms of community.
Allow yourself to find the arms of those who love you most closely.
Allow yourself to stop and breathe
and remember the larger picture…the deeper hope…the greater love.
Allow yourself to rest and be touched
by the peace of God that surpasses our understanding…

The mysterious and even whimsical movement
of the Spirit through ordinary moments
and our time in history.

Allow yourself to stop and look around
and see the marvelous people in the world around you – even here, even now –
and know they are a gift.

Who would have thought,
given what we have been told
by all those that are hostile to Christianity,
that a religion could be so spiritual
and that being spiritual
we could be so counter-cultural…so subversive?

Take good care – this is Advent.

4 Advent 2019: A Dirty Sermon – as in earthen

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This sermon is kind of dirty.
I don’t mean obscene,
I mean muddy – as in, earthen.
You will be happy to know
it is kind of short too’

I am looking forward to Christmas Eve this year,
when I can just kind embrace the readings
instead of feeling as though
I need to reach in and unpack them.
But then, that is the difference
between Advent and Christmas.

What we just heard from Isaiah
is not about a virgin
nor is it about Jesus.
On the other hand,
we do not know exactly what it is all about.

Here is the historical context
down and dirty.

After King Solomon there was a civil war
in which Israel went one way
and Judah another.
Israel was the northern section of what we
think of as Israel today,
and it had all the good stuff:
farm land,
water,
pastures
and a fairly strong military.

Judah was the southern end
and it had Jerusalem,
and deserts and wild places
where no one could survive,
as well as the Dead Sea
in which nothing much lives.

Israel never stopped wanting to take Judah back.

Time pressed on after the split
until Israel made a pact
with neighboring Aram,
which had its capital in Damascus.
Aram was also a vassal state
of the growing Assyrian empire.
Together Israel and Aram agreed to attack Judah
and then divide it up between themselves.

Ahaz was the king of Judah
and understandably, he was freaking out.
Isaiah was the prophet-poet
who tried to assure Ahaz
to stay the course.
Isaiah promised Ahaz
he would live to see the day
when God proved faithful to Jerusalem.

Isaiah tells the king to ask for a sign,
any sign, for God to show Ahaz
that God will protect Judah.

For some reason the king won’t do it.

So, Isaiah GIVES him a sign:
A woman, who shall remain nameless –
as most women of the bible and history have been –
will have a child, also nameless.

That child will be a peasant child
indicated by his diet of honey and curds.
By the time the child is old enough
to judge between right from wrong –
6 to 10 years old, maybe –
Ahaz will be able to see
that the kings of Israel and Aram
rule over an empty bunch of nothingness,
while Judah will be okay.

Oddly, that is a long time to wait for a sign
when you have two armies at your door.
That is what I mean that we don’t really understand
this passage –
other than its context.

Unlike scientists and engineers,
prophets and poets, like mystics,
are allowed to be cryptic
when they want to be.

But what we can be sure about,
is that this passage from Isaiah,
which was written 700 years
before Jesus was born,
is not about Jesus.

Rather, it was about something
that had to do with Ahaz
and the crisis he was facing.

Even so, Matthew comes along
almost eight centuries after the fact,
and tries to use Isaiah
as evidence or proof that Jesus is
the long-expected messiah.

Matthew constantly uses Hebrew scripture
written three-to-eight-hundred years before Jesus
as if it were written about Jesus.
It was his attempt to “prove” his Gospel claims.

I have no doubt
that Matthew believed what he was writing,
but it is also clear the vast majority
of first century Jews took no stock in it.
Especially the learned Jews
of Matthew’s generation
who understood how far-fetched
Matthew’s use of their text was.

The truth is, we get no proof for things like messiahs.

Heck, we don’t even get proof for love,
so the whole idea
that there is textual or historical evidence
or any kind of proof about things like messiahs,
is just absurd.
It is not our business anyway.
And actually, that is the larger point
of Isaiah’s big poetic prophecy to Ahaz:
trust God because you do not get to know.

Maybe D.H. Lawrence was onto something
when he wrote,
“Jesus was never Jesus
till he was born from a womb, and ate soup and bread
and grew up, and became, in the wonder of creation, Jesus, with a body and with needs,
and a lovely spirit.”

Incarnation,
which is actually what the Christmas story is about,
has to do with body-ness.
Everything we can know
can only be known from inside a body.
No body? Then no mind –
no-thing without a body.
Even an atom has a body – an electron shell.

We are embodied creatures
and everything we know about
is embodied in some way, somehow.
And what we are really saying
with Christmas
is that God is embodied too.
God is embodied in creation.
God finds a way to be embodied, somehow,
even in human flesh.

That is a big idea
that can’t be proven, of course,
except for those
who have experienced
the embodiment of God’s presence.

But those folks can’t prove it to anyone else,
any more than you and I
can actually prove we love someone –
no matter how deeply
or passionately we love them.

But then, that is what
our hands and feet are for – for embodying love
so that others can see and feel
what is otherwise not seen.
Our love requires embodiment
in order to be experienced.
Without embodying our love
it would just be an idea,
or something we say
but which has no real-world imprint.

Christmas,
when we take off all the baubles and wrapping,
is earthen, simple,
and practical.
For all the religious talk
about spirit
and Pentecost
and other-worldly mystical-stuff,
our religion is really quite earthy.

It is dirt-bound
gravity-held
and physically embodied
in flesh and blood.
It is then delivered with hands and feet –
and occasionally
with words that make a difference.

Using our bodies to make a difference,
to literally, get down in the mud
and create a new world
that looks
and acts
and feels like one rooted in love,
is our religion.
That is what we are, or are supposed to be.

The rhetoric of creeds and hymns is,
well just rhetoric
until the moment
we embody some of it.

So, like I said, it is not too complicated
or even spooky
in any kind of religious way.
Rather, it is about what we do
with our hands and feet.

I wish I could tell you something more elegant
or spectacularly mystical
and spiritual,
but honestly,
our religion is dirty
just like our hands and feet
are supposed to be.

Christmas too,
is not all that elegant.
It has all the dirty, smelly, joyful things
that bodies do.

Thanks be to God for that!

 

 

3 Advent, Year A, 2019: Is this sermon about hope?

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If I can be personal for a moment,
I want to echo Wendell Berry’s poem about trees:
“They are the advent they await.”

Advent, an arrival or emergence, or
as we say in church-speak, a coming.
Trees are and do Advent –
they arrive without notice,
a seed in the soil
as anonymous as an infant
born into poverty at night
hidden from sight.
Trees are the thing they await,
both the recipient
and pure embodiment
of light.

Trees are that “light come down to earth”
consumed and processed
and transformed into more and greater tree.

Truly, we do not think of them as such,
but they are channels of sunlight
absorbed and changed into
bark and stem and leaf.

You likely think I am nuts now,
but truly, trees are perhaps
the most heavenly creatures on earth –
their very life a benediction (or blessing)
to the rest of us.
As Berry says, we “walk on (their) radiance
(and are) amazed.”
But they are also “a benediction said
over the living and the dead” –
literally granting comfort and shade
above our graves.

They bless us in life and death.

We pray for light and life
every dang time we open a prayer book,
and there they are –
trees all around us,
life and light blessing us while
we all but ignore them.

Trees are so god-like,
and our ignorance and negligence,
and at times downright belligerence toward them,
is just so darn human.

Jesus was hung on a tree,
one that itself had been tortured into wood.
We make that ragged wood of the cross
our symbol of holiness
instead of the tree from which it came –
also very human of us.

I don’t want to over-do this metaphor
but trees are potent symbols of life,
and the veritable incarnation of light
and its presence among us even on a cloud-filled day.

Why am I talking about trees?
Glad you asked.

I once read a quote in an interview
with the aging folk singer, Joni Mitchell.
The interviewer asked Joni if she ever got disillusioned.
“No,” she immediately replied,
“because I never have any illusions.”

You see, it is illusions that, in the end
cause us to become cynical and disillusioned.
What we need is VISION, not illusion
and many people – especially many idealistic people –
confuse those two.
Isaiah is all about vision
rather than illusion.

It is an easy and common mistake
to imagine that Isaiah
is creating a specific set of criteria
by which to discern
God’s presence in the world.
“When the desert gets to be like this,
then we will know God is with us.”
But that is what his poem says
only if we read it as a formula
or the directions for a how-to manual
instead of as poetry.

First of all, we are not wilderness people.
We do not live in a desert –
in fact, just the opposite.

We live along or near a lake,
a giant blue lake
fed by roaring tributaries
pouring off dramatic waterfalls
and adorned with vineyards,
forests, and orchards.
We are Hobbits
who live in the lush green Shire,
not denizens of Isaiah’s desert –
or John the Baptist’s wilderness,
or any of the Biblical dryness metaphors.
Using desert metaphors for us
is like referring to Jesus as the bread of lifein Japan,
where rice is the staple.

The VISION in Isaiah’s poetry
is not embedded in topography
or geological features of the land.

They are metaphors, like Wendell Berry’s trees.
They are metaphors
mouthing to us in whispers
about when we can be sure that God is
present and at work
in the world about us.

Here is how I translate his metaphors.

God is present and at work
where the hawks of war
fall in love with the doves of peace
and their progeny is hope.

God is present and at work
when power is used to raise up the powerless
and make vulnerable
those who are steadfastly arrogant.

God is present and at work
when our economy is driven by the invisible hand
of fairness and equity
instead of moved by the clutch of scarcity
pr the suction of gluttony.

That to me, is the substance of Isaiah’s vision.
But our vision generally does not come from Isaiah,
instead, we get our vision
from CNN…FOX…MSNBC…Brietbart…NPR
or any other electronic sieve
that filters the universe
into small enough particles
that they can be transmitted by electrons
into 15 second sound-bytes,
or 30 second streaming images,
or a “generous” two-minute expose.

Our news…our vision…our very perspective on the world,
is filtered into manageable sound bites
and polished into a lens
by businesses, organizations, and platforms
driven by profit,
rather than a prophet of God.

It is as if we are presented
with a daily paint-by-numbers world
with a few stray dots
we are directed to color in
and told which colors to use, and then,
we are told what the image is
we are supposed to see.

You and I do not actually know
what is going on in the world.
We only get briefings
from people who want us to see the world
in a particular way – theirway;
the way that is best for them
to have us see it.

But here is the laughable part.
They do not know
what is happening in the world either.

The idea that anyone has the right perch
and a good view
of what is actually taking place in world is an illusion.

The idea that there is a constellation of facts out there
that can be gathered,
and that once pulled together for us
can be added up like an equation…
to give us “Reality”
with a capital R – is an illusion.

We do not get to see “reality”
we only get to see very small snippets
of life as we experience it;
and then we get to salt it
with a conglomeration of information,
some of which is helpful
but a preponderance of which, is not.

So, let’s back up,
and back away from CNN and FOX
and that barrage of information,
whatever its source.
Let’s instead, go sit by the lake.

I imagine that all of us
have had the experience
of sitting by a lake or pond –
one small enough
to have an apron of trees around it.

Seated there at the water’s edge,
we see the surface of the of lake or pond
and the tangle of trees
stretching up and out toward the sun,
and in the midst of it all,
we see the chaos of textures and colors
and we can probably hear a cacophony of sounds.
If we sit there long enough,
and wait patiently enough,
our eyes will actually adjust to the abundance.

Think about that – our eyes
will adjust to the abundance
and we will see more of what is there.
In the same way as we wait for our vision
to adjust to the dark,
if we are patient at the water’s edge
we will see a stunning array of detail emerge.

We will see the dance of light upon the carpet of shadows.
We will see the complexity of grasses
and an almost wasteful variety flowers and plants –
especially if we are there in the growing season.
But even in winter,
we can see a reckless variety of once green bodies
poking out of the snow
or leaning in all different directions
like a bad haircut.

We will hear a symphony of natural music
played by the freakish vocal instruments
of chitterling birds,
fractious insects,
undulating amphibians,
chortling mammals,
and even the strings of the wind.

If we sat there long enough,
this intricate canvass of life will change by season
over and over and over and over again.
Autumn with its subdued colors and receding hairline;
Winter with its purity and milk of God;
Spring with its scent of life and squeal of green;
Summer in all of its full-bodied shapeliness.

Were we patient enough,
were we very good listeners,
were we to have the studied vision of a cat,
we would see this year-long scene
as one whole turn of the page.

If we had the vision,
instead of looking upon its minion of component parts
and seeing them as separate and discrete activities,
we would see it as a rolling and rippling whole.

But even if we had the patience and vision of a tree
to see the wonderful wholeness of lake and seasons,
we still would not actually see it.
That is because there is so much else going on within it.

We still would not have seen the microbiology;
not have witnessed the microbes at work
in the moist wet soil along its banks.

We would not have perceived
the interaction of worms and acid and decay
within the blankets of leaf-strewn mud on its icy bottom.

We would have
witnessed the trees changing color,
but hidden from our sight would be
the thickening liquid sucked up from their roots
and pumped like blood to the vessels in their leaves.

We would have enjoyed the sparkling surface of the water,
but never have guessed
the presence of a water table
resting beneath the green stubbled earth,
and that even that invisible body of water
ebbs and flows up and down by a connecting aquifer
that roars like a river
still deeper in the soul of the earth.

Standing by the exquisite elegance of the lake,
and having even an inkling
of how much life
and how many relationships
form the matrix of that exquisite web,
we understand CNN and FOX give us a 100-mph view
and call it the world.

But that view is not the world.
It is a view. It is a profit-driven and power-hungry view.

We know instead,
and Isaiah is telling us so,
that the world is composed of billions,
perhaps trillions of lakes and ponds– and please,
that’s a metaphor –
each with their own ecosystem
and yet inter-connected
with every other ecosystem
and forming a magnificent, single wholeness.

We could sit and study for an entire year
just one pond,
just one amazing day
just one moment in our lives,
and still we would not have the vision to see it.
The idea that we see it or know it,
is an illusion.
The way to keep from being DISillusioned
is to abandon the arrogance of illusion.

Is God present and at work in the world about us?
It does not seem so
if CNN, Facebook, or FOX is our lens.
But those who take the time,
who have the patience,
whose curiosity will allow,
and who have the eyes to see,
will know that God is present
and at work even here…even now.

If we are looking in the newspaper
or on television
or in our favorite online sources
for where God is carpeting whole nations
with peace and cures and prosperity,
then our ability to see God is diminished.

If we are waiting for the power-mongers in Washington
or Albany or the county or city
to suddenly speak with honesty
and act with integrity,
then we will become cynical.

If we are following our own vision
and insisting that WE KNOW
what the world is supposed to be like,
as if it had a script that follows a plot
and arrives at a happy ending
penned to our own liking, then we will be crushed.
If we are holding God
to the exact words that appear in Isaiah
or Matthew,
or to some mystic poet we read somewhere,
then we will become rigid
and encrusted
like anything else that has been dead that long.

To see the movement of God
here and now,
present and at work in our own lives,
we must be prepared
to look without expectation,
to listen without talking,
to observe without planning,
to feel without protecting,
To study without proving.

As we approach the Big Day of Christmas
and tell the story of Jesus born in a barn,
consider how many years
Nelson Mandela was in prison
before the world ever heard of him!
Think about how many seasons that tree lived
before you ever noticed it.

As we approach Christmas
and assume it is about a baby being born
late at night under a star
instead of a poem about God’s presence
here and now in our midst,
consider how many acts of kindness,
how many small acts of love,
how many life-changing encounters,
how many transforming moments
will never get one bit of ink or airtime,
and how few of them you or I will ever know about.

Consider how knowing about them
might change our vision
or at the very least, subvert our illusions.

Coming up through the roots of the tree
and feeding its leaves;
deep in the soil where death is refashioned into life;
and under the surface of the water
where a universe thrives,
God is present and at work.

There are 16 days left in this worn-out old year
and instead of rushing to the end,
I invite us to slow down,
take a deep breath,
and observe the small, the ordinary
the neglected elements, moments
and people
in our busy lives.

If we do, I suspect we will be able to see that
God is present and at work.

But you don’t have to take my word for it,
go out and touch the bark of a tree
and feel the naked little stems on its branches,
and poke around to notice a hint of its roots.
Realize what you feel
and what you see
is light. Sunlight.
Present, right there with you.

 

2 ADVENT C 2019: Christmas Subversion

by


Alright folks, this is the Second Sunday of Advent
so it is time to get honest.
That’s a consumer warning.

Second Advent
is far enough away from Christmas Eve
that we can open the book on Christmas
and read the margin notes.
If you didn’t know it,
the Christmas narrative is a prophetic story.

By prophetic, I mean a story
that wants us to see something
that is right in front of our eyes
but that we need a different lens
in order to perceive.
Prophets offer that kind of a lens,
and Christmas is that kind of a story.

But we know the nativity story so well
that its very familiarity works against us.
So let’s work backwards,
from the United States in 2019
back to Matthew in the year 85 or so,
of the first century – who, remember,
is telling us a story that took place
fifty years before him.

Actually, before go back that far,
let’s take a stop around the turn of the 20th century.
JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie,
and John D. Rockefeller –
the Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos,
and Mark Zuckerberg of their day –
controlled oil,
railroads,
and banking monopolies.

They also concluded
that the Women’s Movement
and religion
had become too mettlesome in politics.
They actually colluded with one another
and their peers,
to take both the Women’s Movement
and the Churches
out of the public square.
They were quite clever about how they did it,
and more to the point,
it is a strategy that was copied by titans
of the last decades
of the twentieth century as well.

What those earlier robber barons did
was to use their money and influence
to raise up leaders within Christianity
and the Women’s Movement,
who divided them, and eventually
redirected the energies of both
toward private morality
instead of public policy.

Today we don’t think of feminism and Christianity
as allies, which is a measure of how successful
the robber barons were.

But feminism and Christianity
were a powerful social force
focused with passion on issues of public policy:
the distribution of wealth,
addressing the ravages of poverty,
creating fair labor and child labor laws,
fighting to break up and limit
the power of monopolies,
and counter-acting the growing
nationalism and war-mindedness.

The robber baron’s strategy shifted that energy
so that the Women’s Movement and the Church
became obsessed with
alcohol and drug consumption,
sexual behavior,
and, what else, teenagers.

Christianity was diverted
from being a passionate advocate
for social justice
to a watchdog of private morality.

The obsession with private morality continued
from the Temperance Movement on,
until slowly the churches became enmeshed
in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties
and then the anti-Vietnam war Movement.

But then again in the late 20thcentury,
millions of dollars from very wealthy,
politically and economically minded patrons,
began funding
theologically conservative leadership
in all of the mainline Protestant churches,
including The Episcopal Church.

What we have witnessed as the moneyed invasion
of political parties
actually began in mainline Protestant Christianity
and to a lesser but significant extent
in Roman Catholicism.*

It was a guided effort
that succeeded in fracturing
and weakening Protestantism,
which was also just beginning to stumble
under the weight of pervasive secularism.
Long story short:
Just because you are paranoid
doesn’t mean someone is not out to get you.

The sweep of the Biblical narrative
and the Christmas story in particular,
are radically corrosive to the self-interests
of those who wield power and wealth
and seek to control culture.

I am not making this up –
it is not some political spin
I am putting on the gospel:
it has always been there
right in front of our eyes
if we had the lens to see it.

When Matthew tells us
the word of John appeared in the wilderness,
his narrative is obsessed with King Herod.
Likewise, when Luke begins his story
of Jesus’ birth
it is with telling us who the politicians were.
From the beginning of Matthew and Luke,
the two Christmas gospels,
we know it was in the reign of Tiberius,
under the local dictatorship of Pontus Pilate,
and within the tetrarchy of Herod.
Here is why the Christmas story
is enmeshed with the narrative of political power.

History is told
from the point of view of the winners –
more precisely, by the winner’s historians.
The chemists of culture
tell us how it happened and why,
and they tell us what they want us to know.

So if you are telling a story
in the midst of a culture hostile to you,
as Matthew and Luke were doing,
and you want your story to be remembered,
then you have to peg the events
to milestones that the winners care about.

We have been in this position for a very long time.
Almost all of Biblical theology
is told from within a hostile culture,
and told subversively against the winners.

From the very beginning,
when we were slaves in Egypt
we have understood that God’s people
are in a hostile environment
and that by banning together
we are creating a counter-cultural movement.

There have been times in our history,
from Mount Sinai in Egypt
to Mount St. Alban’s in Washington DC,
when Christians acted
more like Pharaoh than Moses
but it never takes very long to be dramatically
reminded about which one is our spiritual path.

From the very beginning
our spiritual tradition
has been composed of prophets
that warned the kings
and religious authorities in Israel
of truths they could not see in front of them.

They warned that royal policies and culture
dedicated to self-interest,
maintenance of power for the elite,
and consumerism
would come to insure national ruin.
We have long understood
that such prophetic witness
is required of spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were healers
for people who had been marginalized
because of illness and woundedness;
and then when we too had become marginalized
because we dared to embrace them;
we understood that subversiveness
is required of spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were messiahs and disciples
who sought to reform our own religion
because it had become fat and corrupt,
and a rigid hierarchy of men who were enmeshed
in economic and military power,
we understood
that rubbing salt into the wounds
of those powerful elites
is what it means to be spiritual people.

From the very beginning
even though our religious leaders
and our religious institutions
often became the prostitutes and pimps
of economic culture,
strong currents in Christianity
have always remembered
that being the yeast of justice,
advocates of mercy,
and lovers of peace
is the ordinary work
of spiritual people.

It is the Christmas story,
perhaps even more graphically than all others,
that holds these reminders
of what spiritual people do.
And this is why we need to take the story back
from the chemists of culture
who have neutered it.

Week by week in Advent,
until that moment on Christmas Eve,
we tell a story from the margins of society
that holds a profound and poignant reminder
that being spiritual people
requires us
to always be swimming against the current.

Then, on Christmas eve –
like American slaves
worshipping under the watchful eye
of their masters –
we tell the more polite and socially acceptable
version of the story,
which also has a kind of truth
and so we can still tell it with integrity.

Being spiritual people,
it should excite our anger and indignation
that our story,
the Biblical one about Christmas,
is never authentically told in the public square.
All that Christmas stuff we hear on the radio,
see in those manger scenes,
read about in the newspaper,
images on Facebook or watch on television,
are sentimentalized and stripped
of any true spiritual content.

That Christmas
has been appropriated by the chemists of culture
in order to reinforce the story
they want us
to spend our money on.

Being spiritual people,
we understand that the Biblical story of Christmas
is counter-cultural,
and we share in the joy of surprise
when those who never knew it
stumble into its subversive wisdom.

So here it is,
a little whisper of truth for spiritual people
in the midst of a culture hostile to it:

“In the reign of Donald Trump,
when Cuomo was Governor;
Francis was pope;
and Michael, Presiding Bishop;
the Word of the Lord
came to a strange and motley group
huddled around a Wayfair altar
on the northern shore of Seneca Lake
located in the upstate region
known as FLX, or the Finger Lakes.

‘Prepare the way of the Lord:
God is coming into the world
incarnate in the vulnerable flesh
of a human infant,
surrounded by the brutality and violence
of poverty inflicted upon it
by those who hold the reins of power
and those who look the other way.
God is coming to speak truth to power.
So get ready.
Be that truth.
Subvert that power.’”

Now in case you never heard it put quite that way,
this is the Christmas story – the Biblical one.

But please, let us also take care.
This is a tough season for spiritual people.
We see things
and we know things
that weigh heavy on our hearts and minds.

We understand what is going on
and we recognize the motives of people
that are led by profit more than justice.
It is a weary season for spiritual people
because we are by nature
and by desire
healers.

We see and we feel
the woundedness of others,
even as we experience most acutely
our own wounds.
So take care.
Spiritual people need to be nurtured
especially in such a difficult season.

Allow yourself
to be held in the arms of community.

Allow yourself
to find the arms of those
who love you most closely.

Allow yourself
to stop and breathe and remember
there is a bigger picture,
a deeper hope,
a greater love
than any we see named or evoked
in the culture around us.

Allow yourself
to rest and be touched
by the peace of God
that surpasses all understanding –
that strange whimsical and mysterious movement
of the Spirit
that winnows through
our ordinary days.

Allow yourself
to stop and look around
and see the marvelous people
in the world around you –
even right here
even right now –
and reckon them as a gift.

Who would have thought,
given what we have been told
by all those who are hostile to Christianity,
that a religion could be so spiritual
and that being spiritual
we could be so counter-cultural and subversive –
even to our own self-interest?

Welcome to the season
and take good care.

 

Trinity Place

 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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