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21 B, 2018: An Ugly Protocol

by

Iron prosthesis 1560-1600

I had a recent facetime call
with a friend who is in seminary.
She was exhilarated by the intellectual stimulation
of learning about the Hebrew Scripture
as well as New Testament literature,
discovering all kinds of things she never knew before.

Biblical scholarship and archeology
is alive and thriving these days,
offering us new and renewed perspectives.

She did not seem troubled
by the startling implications her new knowledge has
for doctrines and long-held beliefs.
But it did make her nervous to realize
she would eventually be a preacher
who would be called upon to share things
that might be troubling
to members of her future congregations.

I told her not to worry too much about that, I don’t.

It is possible I have become jaded
as a result of preaching too long.

You see, when I re-read Jesus
as he appears in today’s Gospel,
and think about all the biblical commentaries
and sermons over the years
that bend themselves into complicated yoga
positions in order to make Jesus
sound better,
I feel like a parent
peering into the kid’s room in total chaos
and thinking, “enough of this!”

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off;
if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off;
if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out.
Better to maim yourself than go to Hell.”
But kids, don’t try this at home.

Couple Jesus’ very bad therapy protocol
with the story from the Book of Numbers,
and it is a real horror show.
We have a scene in which thousands of people
are weeping with hunger
and in response to their pitiful vulnerability
and serious discomfort,
God gets “very angry.”
Not only is God without compassion here,
Moses is too!
He wants to know why he has been
saddled with these woeful people –
if I am supposed to change the diapers of these
whimpering, needy people,
just kill me right here, and right now, he says.
Nice.

Jesus’ diatribe from Mark,
and the grumpy Oz behind the curtain in Numbers,
are like an abstract painting we keep turning
to figure out which way is up and which way is down.
I want to use this moment to pick on “Hell.”
Hell is an idea used by bad religion
as a fear-mongering cudgel.
If Hell is anything, it is poetry
not a piece of supernatural real estate.

The word Hell comes from the word, Gehenna,
which actually was a piece of real estate.
Gehenna was the site of ancient Canaanite sacrifice –
ritual human sacrifice.
Children were sacrificed at Gehenna.
Not to be too gruesome about it,
they were cut open and bled like a lamb
in order to access the Canaanite gods.

Israelites were horrified by such a brutal custom
and as they became the dominant culture in Canaan,
human sacrifice was outlawed.

Remember the story in Genesis,
of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac
and then in the nick of time,
replacing Isaac with a sheep?
That was an anti-child sacrifice story.
It was told to explain why Israelites
did not sacrifice their children
the way some of their neighbors did.

Take a leap forward 700-1000 years,
and we have essentially the same story
told about Jesus being sacrificed for our sins –
this time God did not intervene
and Jesus replaced the sheep
only to became the lamb that saved us from Hell.

The idea of a ritual sacrifice to God or the gods
is not very compelling in the 21st century,
but it was an idea powerful enough to
change the world in the 1st century.
Mixed up in the midst of that idea about
human sacrifice, is also the idea about Hell.

Let’s go back to those ancient Israelites for a moment,
the ones who scorned the idea of child sacrifice
and rejected human sacrifice altogether.
They created a garbage dump at Gehenna.
They created a garbage dump
on the very spot where Canaanites
practiced child sacrifice.
That is a pretty dramatic denunciation
of the Canaanite practice.

In Jesus’ time,
Gehenna was still a garbage dump,
but at that point it was the municipal dump
for the city of Jericho.

So imagine if you can,
the image of an arid climate
in which dirt is baked by the sun
to a clay-fired hardness.
With no modern earth-movers,
imagine what that municipal dump looked like,
and maybe more disgusting,
what it smelled like.

In the ancient world,
that was the place where dead bodies
were abandoned by families too poor
or indigent to claim a space in a burial cave.
Human and animal carcasses
rotted and were burned with other refuse there.
Gehenna was an endlessly smoking pile of trash
baking in the sun
where charred and worm-eaten human remains
fueled a fire that was never quenched.

While Dante is still the primary source of images
used for the threat of Hell,
they are images rooted in actual real estate,
in a smoking pit of nastiness
outside of Jericho.
It is a bitter irony in today’s international politics
to realize the very idea of Hell,
of a place of eternal judgment,
actually comes from Persia, modern day Iran.
It was an idea that exiled Hebrews
brought back with them from Persia,
and to which images of Gehenna came to be applied.

Hell as a piece of real estate
somewhere in the supernatural,
where a vindictive and parsimonious God
condemns the misbehaving for all eternity,
really ought to be updated
if we are going to continue to wield it.
Images of Hell based on an ancient trash heap
should become those of Buchenwald, Auschwitz,
Cambodia, Rwanda, and Sudan.
We have too many graphic and terrifying images
from within our own generations
to remain content with Gehenna.

Personally though, I reject the idea of Hell.
It seems absurd to me
and I simply cannot make sense of it.
Pew Research indicates a majority of Americans
still believe in Hell, even as a majority also,
conveniently, believes they will not end up there.

Mostly I cannot get my head around a god
who balances the scales of justice
in ways we would insist on them being balanced.
A god sadistic and vindictive enough
to torture us for our moral failures,
including the mentally deranged
who were victims of their own physiology.
That is a god who stands in painful contrast
to the ancient prophetic notion
of the God of Israel who loves mercy more than justice.

But on top of that, we live in the 21stcentury
when the idea that human beings occupy
the center of God’s attention
seems as odd and quaint as a flat Earth.
Knowing what we know about the Cosmos,
and knowing how much we do not know
about the Cosmos,
the image of God as a moralistic accountant
keeping score on our lives with a golden abacus,
seems, well, it seems utterly implausible.

But who knows? I could be wrong
and that is exactly how God manages things.
Still, I doubt it.

I could, and have in the past,
found ways to make these stories
from Numbers and Mark
rest easier with our 21stcentury domesticated religion,
but these days I find myself disinterested
in trying to perform such reconciliations.
The common theme between these two stories
is not a bad one,
even if surrounded by troubling imagery and ideas.
Clearly, the punchline that comes from
Eldad and Medad,
as well as the stranger casting out demons
in the name of Jesus,
is that we need not be from
the same tribe
or the same party
or the same group
in order to all be about the same mission.
Our socio-economic status,
our ethnicity, gender, and race,
all are neither here nor there
when it comes to serving as agents of God’s love.

Rather, we are who we are
and we need not attempt to be someone else
so long as we do not harden the membrane
of our community
to only welcome and include people like us.

I dare say there are agents of God’s love
in every army of every nation on the planet;
agents of God’s love
in every religion,
in every political party,
in every tribe;
there are agents of God’s love
living among the billionaire class
and among those poor as dirt;
agents of God’s love
living every life-style imaginable,
and those life-styles we can’t imagine.
They may not look like us,
or talk like we do,
or have the same ideology or theology,
but if they are doing the work of God’s love,
we are with them
and they are with us.

It would be a very simple truth to agree on
if only we were better at recognizing one another.

 

Proper 15B 2018: Eat My Bread

by

I am going to begin with a made-up story,
slide into ancient history,
and end with what it all has to do with us.

Once upon a time,
there was a little Episcopal congregation
located in a small town
in the rural part of the state.

That congregation had been there
for over two hundred years.
Like all congregations of any stripe,
this one had many traditions well practiced
and preserved for so long
that no one could remember
exactly where all of them came from.
And because it was an Episcopal Church,
it had certain ways of doing things in worship.
It followed the Book of Common Prayer
to the letter, following it down the page
and praying within its borders.
When the members came to church
they knew exactly when to stand,
when to kneel,
when to sit,
when to listen,
when to sing,
when to pray out loud
and when to be silent.
In fact, the red prayer books in the pews
nearly turned to page 355 all by themselves.

In addition to knowing the rituals of worship
so very well, and with such comfort,
they knew each othervery well too,
and in all these ways
they were not unlike thousands of other
small congregations
all over the country
that were held in place
by the stability of continuity over time
and a relative lack of people moving in and out.
But one day…
a stranger showed up at the door.
Not a visitor
nor a tourist
but someone who had moved into the community
and was also an Episcopalian.
She knew just what to do in the worship
and seemed utterly comfortable
from the moment she entered the door,
except…she did some things differently.

For one thing, she held her arms
up above her head when she prayed.
She closed her eyes
and raised her arms
and prayed the prayers
without looking at the book.

It was a little unsettling at first, but hey,
this was church,
so the “regulars” decided they could tolerate
such a personal preference as kooky as it seemed.
But soon the new woman started mumbling prayers during the silences.
And during some of the hymns
she raised her hands and sang without a hymnal!

But then the feathers really hit the fan.
One day she started speaking in tongues.

Yep, right in the middle of one of the silences
during the formal “Prayers of the People” –
when everyone else knew to be quiet –
this woman started speaking
in a loud, guttural, glossolalia
that of course, no one understood.

Mothers grabbed their children
and children grabbed their mothers.
Men looked down at their shoes
while one or two of the matriarchs and patriarchs
turned their heads to offer a stern
disapproving look.
But the woman didn’t notice
because she was praying.

Then the next week the woman actually
sang in tongues!
She had a nice voice but still
her nonsense could be heard
by all the people sitting around her.

Still, that was not the worst thing that happened.

One of the young mothers in the church,
and their weren’t many of them,
started sitting with the new woman and
soon was also speaking and singing
in that strange, unnerving gobbledygook.

As these things happen, eventually
there were six or seven people
who were not worshipping within the lines
and who started talking about Jesus
with a kind of passion
that makes traditional Episcopalians
red in the face…
from anger or embarrassment or both.

The priest, who was only part-time
and honestly kind of milquetoast anyway,
didn’t know what to do
and so he didn’t do anything.
That meant it was up to the movers and shakers
to do something before things got
too far out of hand.
They pulled the woman aside one Sunday
and said her antics were disrupting the worship for everyone else.

They suggested she could have her own worship,
maybe an Evening Prayer service
where those who wanted to speak and sing
in tongues could do it to their hearts content.

The new woman wasn’t obstreperous
and it wasn’t her intention to upset anyone
so she did what was suggested
and started a Sunday evening worship.

The small group continued to worship
on Sunday morning also,
but they restrained themselves
within the more narrow confines
of what the leaders called “traditional” worship.
Their little group grew to about a dozen or so
but eventually they all left that little
Episcopal Church when they found other people
that worshipped
and believed and spoke
as they did.

The End.

That is a parable rooted in the experience
of many a small Protestant congregation
that have experienced charismatic
or pentecostal renewal
within more sedate traditions.

It is also a metaphoric description
of what happened between
Judaism and Christianity between 50 and 200 CE.

A great deal of the early Christian history
I learned in seminary over thirty-five years ago
has been turned upside down
by modern scholarship –
aided by amazing advances
in archeology and anthropology.
What I was taught to imagine
as a fork in the rivers of Judaism and Christianity –
a definite, singular split
mostly instigated by the apostle Paul –
is now viewed much differently
and with much greater complexity.
Instead of a split it was a splintering.

Neither Judaism nor Christianity
was a single river in the 1stcentury
and instead, mostly unaffiliated
and often competing groups
scattered and set adrift in the Roman world.
Where there had been strong connecting threads,
nearly all local connections
to Jerusalem, Judah, and Galilee were lost.

We should not imagine that Christians
were a cohesive group or movement
that sprang from the resurrection
into a bonafide religion of its own
organized by the surviving disciples.
Rather, the beginning of Christianity
was more like a shotgun blast of buckshot
spreading out in groups
of varying size and velocity
and mutating into very different cells of beliefs and practices.

Two Jewish-Roman wars,
one in 66 C.E.
and one in 135 C.E.,
had scattered and mutilated,
and forever changed both
Judaism and Christianity.

It is generally agreed that the separation
of these two similar religions
did not fully take place until afterthat second war
though the fraying had long been in the making.

So, for a hundred years before 135 CE,
these two religions were rapidly
changing and splintering into scores
of free-floating cells.
Some of those Christian cells
were more different from,
and more competitive with,
other Christian cells
than they were from Jewish ones,
and vis versa.

For the first hundred years,
as Christianity was going through
the labor of its birth
and Judaism was becoming radically changed
after its first millennium,
and maybe for another hundred years after that,
very little theologically
would have separated Jews and Christians
other than the claim by Christians
that Jesus was the Messiah.

BUT for Jews in the first century
there was nothing wrong or unusual
about claiming someone as the Messiah.
Contrary to the Gospel accounts
described in the trial of Jesus,
it was not considered blasphemy
to claim someone as Messiah.

In fact, numerous Jewish sects,
before and after Jesus, claimed their leader
to be the long awaited Messiah.
Most Jews would not have believed
Jesus was the Messiah
simply because he failed in his mission
against Rome,
and because the Messiah was supposed
to be a victorious warrior king inthis world
or a supernatural force
bringing about the arrival of the nextworld.
Jesus did neither.

So Jesus’ execution
made it impossible for most Jews to believe
that Jesus had been the Messiah.
But the Messiah claim did not cause the split
between Jews and Christians.

Even the idea of resurrection
that most Christians today assume
was anathema to other Jews,
was not a deal-breaker.

There was a belief taught by many Jews
that there would be a day of resurrection
and it was a popular belief
that had a wide variety of manifestations.
Even at the end of the first century,
seventy years afterJesus’ execution,
many of the believers in Jesus
were probably still associated
with a synagogue.

Just like my made-up story
about the presence of charismatic Episcopalians
among traditional Episcopalians,
the actual differences were quite few.
But as time went on those particular differences
became glaringly noticeable
and the source of great agitation.

Then Jesus became God,
and that was the breaking point.

It may be controversial today
to say that the belief in Jesus-as-Messiah evolved,
but there is little disagreement about
this fact among historians and scholars.
Over decades and even centuries,
what it meant to claim Jesus as Messiah
changed from the idea of a human,
anointed by God to carry out a specific purpose,
to the notion that Jesus was God
from before time and for all time.

Just reading the Gospel of Mark
alongside the Gospel of John,
which we have been doing off and on all this year,
we can see how ideas about the Messiah
changed in the thirty or forty years between
these two Gospels.

In Mark, Jesus is baptized as an adult,
adopted if you will, by God, for a specific mission.
In John, (40 years later)
Jesus is with God in the very beginning –
before the creation of the universe.

THEN, two hundred and fifty years after
the last Gospel is written (John),
it still takes the Councils of Nicaea –
wrangling for sixty years –
to bring a forced harmony to Mark and John.
The Roman Empire, as it absorbed the religion
like a giant continental amoeba,
strong-armed unity between scores
of other beliefs about Jesus
that were part of the splintered constellation
of groups known as “Christian.”

So now the punch line.

John has Jesus say this:
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

That is in-your-face trash talk
from John to his fellow Jews.

We know that John
and his community of Jesus-following Jews,
had just been expelled from whatever synagogue
they were participating in.
So John, writing into his narrative
that Jesus told his followers to
“Eat my flesh and drink my blood,”
is an emphatic exclamation mark
at the end of his claim that Jesus is God.

Jesus, by these words in John’s Gospel,
claims to be the real manna from God,
not Moses, and not Torah.

“Eat my flesh and drink my blood”
was so repugnant that immediately
upon hearing it, it says in John,
many of Jesus’ disciples quit –
they left right then.

So, with this story John paints the break
between Israel and Jesus in stark
and certain terms.

They are words, however,
that more than a few Christians today
also find repugnant.
While most of Protestantism would choke
on these words from John,
even some Roman Catholics
would prefer a more nuanced description.
But there is no hiding them,
they are here with us all these centuries later
and will be with us for centuries in the future.

So here we are again
at that little church in a small town –
which is actually every church everywhere.
For some, “eat my flesh and drink my blood”
is not a problem, and in fact, much beloved.
For others, the words and idea are repugnant –
a deal-breaker if asked to believe them literally.

I know that like many
traditional Episcopal congregations, Trinity
once operated as if orthodoxy was in place:
no divorce,
no women or girls on the altar,
homosexuality an anathema,
any overt sexuality a discomfort,
liturgy something that was surgical not artistic,
music prescribed by a blue book
and European names,
priests that wore and did things
as they have always been done,
creeds and beliefs prescribed and confirmed.

Here is a fact.

The veneer of Christian unity
and the coercion of orthodox conformity
has unraveled.

In 2018 being church and being Christian,
Episcopalian or otherwise,
is far more like the first three hundred years
than it is like the past one thousand years.
At one and the same time,
in every congregation,
we are Protestant and Catholic,
Evangelical and Traditionalist,
unbelieving, agnostic, and curious.
Even in our little group
we span the continuum.

In this town even, while once it may have been a scandal
that St. Peter’s and St. John’s and Trinity
were not the same and could not be melded,
it makes perfect sense now.
We serve different missions,
with different visions of what it means
to be a spiritual community,
and no need to pretend or force conformity.

Our task is not to make people members
of our place, but to help people be
where they need to be
in order to practice Christian spirituality
as they come to understand it,
and as God is plucking that song on their hearts.
If that is Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church,

First Presbyterian,
St. Peter’s Episcopal,
First Love-God’s Revealed,
or The Alliance Community Church…so be it.

We welcome the world,
respect the dignity of every human being,
and rejoice when it is this community
that holds them.

So, we need not push out one side or another
in order to pretend again
that we are all the same.
We need not politely ignore our clear
and definite differences?

We need only establish an atmosphere of safety,
in which we can talk about what we believe
and explore our questions
without fear or trepidation.
To look around and see other people
who embrace us rather than harshly judge
or begrudge us our peculiar notions.

We need, instead, to be able to look
into one another’s eyes around this table,
knowing that we do not all believe
the same things,
nor even all share the same values,
and still experience, and share,
the love of God.

3 Lent, Year B, 2018: Spiritual Maturity

by

Bernadino Mei, Christ Cleansing the Temple 1655

Today we have Jesus
making a whip to foment a riot at the Vatican,
or National Cathedral,
or Rotunda of the Capital building,
or Geneva Rotary.
Today we have many more sacred places
and commercial networks
than they did in his day.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall
when such stories were read
in the company of Queen Victoria
and the gathered House of Lords
and other British upper class society.
What in the world,
must they have thought about this Jesus?
Or any place and among any gathering
of people who value, above most things,
control, order, and rules?

And I wonder how this story
is being read and preached today
at the National Cathedral
or St. Patrick’s
or St. Peter’s Basilica
or Christ Cathedral, Lagos Nigeria –
or in the chapel at Langley (if the CIA has a chapel).
How in the world
do those in power and authority
hear this story
of Jesus-the-whipster and riotous agitator?

One of my takeaways is to confirm
there is a place for militancy,
outrage,
and agitation
every bit as much as
there is a place for
gentle, loving-kindness.
Spiritual maturity – which I guess
this sermon is really about – is capable
of holding more than one element
at one and the same time.

Young children do not
simultaneously hold multiple emotions –
one emotion inflates and obliterates the others.
Happy or sad,
excited or bored,
angry or hurt – it is either/or.
Slowly, though, hopefully,
children mature and gain the ability
to feel more than one thing,
at one and the same time.
Emotional maturity
greases the skids of intellectual maturity –
or the other way around,
or con-currently.
We learn to recognize that truth is not categorical
but rather, a gradation –
a continuum of possibilities.

Eventually, we learn to hold opposites:
keeping several contrasting ideas
all at the same time;
puzzling and appreciating the actual complexity
of many competing truths.

As we grow in wisdom and understanding,
right and wrong,
moral and immoral,
good and bad
become cloudier, grayer, fuzzier;
and softer around
the edges –
and they seem less and less
like hardened silos.
To be the presence of God in the world,
among those with whom we live and work and play,
as well as with total strangers,
we must activate both salt and sugar within us;
we must blend the butter with the flour inside.

We must be able to speak softly,
and, when called upon, we must be able to rant.
We must be able to act with compassion,
and still be fierce when necessary.

We must be able to nurture and strengthen,
just as we must be able to agitate and challenge.

At some point we learn it is rarely only
one way or the other, and more often, both/and – some of this and some of that;
comforting the afflicted
and afflicting the comfortable;
but also challenging the afflicted
and encouraging the comfortable.

It really is time that we cease drawing lines
as if we are one or the other.

It is not difficult to see where our political
and theological rhetoric has gotten us:
the balkanizing of States,
the grim alienation of cultures,
animosity among classes;
and hostility among races and ethnicities.

Think about all this dysfunction of alienation
as we would when trying to heal a family system.

When there is a child or adult acting out in a family, he or she is probably acting out a problem
the entire family-system shares.

In a family, the one doing the acting out
is the incarnation of a bigger problem,
some wound or difficulty in the family itself.
What we have learned over time,
is that treating only the individual child –
the problem child, so to speak –
while not addressing the larger family issues,
probably won’t make much progress.

Edwin Friedman, one of the first people to articulate Family Systems Theory, applied his understanding
to institutions beyond the family – like churches.
I once heard him say that anxiety is usually located
in a particular part of a system,
whether a family or institution or government.
The anxiety of the whole system
gets acted out in especially vigorous ways
among the people or groups holding it.
In other words, the anxiety of the entire system
gets associated with whichever particular part
is holding onto it or exhibiting it,
but any individual or group
is only holding the anxiety for the whole system.

The example I heard him give,
is that in a synagogue, often it is the Hebrew School
where the anxiety of the whole system resides.
In a law firm, he said, the system’s anxiety frequently is held in the litigation department.
In churches? The choir. (He said it, not me).

His point is something we probably recognize
from within our own experience.
While the acting out is done by one child,
or one part of the system,
the acting out is symptomatic of an anxiety
running through the entire system.

We cannot resolve the issues
by treating one person
or one part of the system.

A global example is helpful here.

We cannot treat climate change
as if it is only an issue of oil and coal.
Instead, it has to do with the entire economic system
from top to bottom.
Climate change involves every political
and business institution in the world;
not to mention, nearly every element of culture
that we cherish.

To address climate change,
we will have to engage all of them
and not treat one as the enemy
and one as the hero.

So let’s think systematically about spiritually,
even our own personal, spirituality.

If we are only comfortable ranting
about God’s justice
and judgment,
then what tender, little voice
are we neglecting
that is left to fester within us?
Even tender voices can create chaos
when neglected.

On the other hand, if we are only capable
of pretending uniform niceness,
our anger will become a hardened cist within us.
Hidden, it will grow and gnaw
until it damages our other capacities.

If we only hold one element of God’s presence
and deny or neglect the rest,
then a dysfunction will be created within us.
The lover,
the judge,
and the agitator;
the teacher,
the activist,
and the pacifist;
the fighter,
the wise,
and the innocent –
they must all be in conversation within us
and among us,
or the whole loaf will crumble.
This is as true for us as individuals
as it is for us as a society,
or a city,
or a congregation.

We need to think of ourselves,
and those with whom we share the world,
as a whole loaf with many ingredients;
and each ingredient is incomplete,
and perhaps even undesirable,
when out of relationship to the whole.

I would make the same observation about Jesus.

What we have in the gospels is a prism,
the many parts of Jesus casting light
in all directions.
If or when we try to homogenize
all those many parts of Jesus,
making them fit together smoothly
and without agitation, we lose the light.

We cannot force Jesus into a uniform theology.
We cannot turn Jesus into a doctrine.
We try, but whenever it is done,
it ends up doing violence to Jesus,
or to those who do not fit with the doctrine.

In our rational, age of reason little brains,
we keep trying to make everything fit into a science
or a theory
or a description of reality
with which we can feel comfortable.

Jesus will not fit,
any more than you or I will fit.
When we try to reconcile Jesus with a whip
causing a riot in the temple,
with Jesus encouraging victims
to turn the other cheek,
they are pieces of a puzzle that do not fit together.

We cannot force them,
because they do not really fit together –
they are ingredients
that act and react to one another
to create a whole.
Jesus the lover,
the judge,
and the agitator;

Jesus the healer,
divider,
and peace-maker;
and Jesus the harbinger of catastrophic change,
do not all fit together to create a smoothie
that goes down easily.
Instead, like you and me,
he is many ingredients
that together,
work on
and react to one another.
Together, it all makes up
an edible and nutritious whole.
So, we need to stop trying to round off
the sharp edges and instead,
feel the sting.

We need to stop trying to sharpen the softness
and instead, feel the love.

We need to let be what is truly present:
feel it,
learn from it,
know it,
and hear its unique voice.

We need to stop trying to get rid
of the parts of Jesus we do not like,
just like we need to stop trying to get rid
of the indigenous and inevitable parts of ourselves
we do not like.

We need to embrace them all
as ingredients
that somehow will become whole
if we allow the presence of God to be our yeast.

It is not about exorcising sin, evil,
and darkness from within ourselves,
it is about embracing them
and understanding that those are parts of us –
ingredients, that with God as yeast,
actually make us whole.

If we think of the things we
do not like about Jesus,
or the things we do not like about ourselves,
as parts that need to be removed or eliminated,
it will cause us severe damage.
We will be doing violence to Jesus,
and violence to ourselves.

We cannot remove the elements we do not like
without doing violence to the whole.
But with God as yeast, all those ingredients –
the good and bad and the ugly,
the ones we like and do not like –
work together, to create wholeness.

Holding it all,
all the ingredients,
and allowing the presence of God
to act upon us
and within us
and among us
is the fruit of spiritual maturity.

1 Christmas 2017: Straddling the In-Between

by

Text (sort of): Luke 2:22-40

We are straddling the in-between.
Christmas has not ended
but only the liturgical churches are still observing it.
It is not the new year yet,
but everyone is about to celebrate it.
Trinity is moving its offices and program space,
but the Sunday morning worship will stay here.

Straddling the in-between
is awkward and can also be stressful.

In such moments,
going back to the fundamentals
and remembering the rock upon which we landed,
is an important practice for wellness.

So, I am going back to Jesus,
who is the rock upon which our foundation is hewn.
I am going back to a sermon I preach regularly
in one way or another,
maybe even weekly to some extent.
But today I will be explicit.

Jesus bar Joseph
is the name of the historical figure
gleaming at the core of our religion,
as does the sun from the center of our solar system.

Jesus is Latin for the Greek, Iesous
(pronounced “Yay-soos”).
“Jesus” instead of Iesous,
became the norm of Christianity
because Christianity became Romanized, and Latin,
was the language of the empire.
But the Greek, Iesous, nor the Latin, Jesus,
was his name.
Jesus had a Hebrew name,
not a Greek or Latin name.
That name was Joshua.

But since there was no “J” sound
in ancient Hebrew,
it was Yeshua (Y’shua).

Like all names, and especially all ancient names,
Yeshua had a meaning.
It meant, “God saves,”
or more precisely: “Jehovah is salvation.”

But we probably know all of that
and do not give it much thought, because,
well because that is what is normative for us.

It is impossible for us to know what the name
Yeshua meant to Jesus.
A lot of people in his generation
had that name.
A lot of people,
before and alongside him, were named, “God saves.”
A lot of people before, with, and after him,
believed that, in fact, God does saves.

So we do not know
what his name meant to him,
but we do know that the meaning of his name
came to define how people would remember him.

Now, because we are a highly secular culture,
there are a lot of people who think
that Jesus’ last name was, “Christ.”

But Jesus did not have a last name,
any more than millions of people
in some cultures around the world today
have last names.
Yeshua bar Joseph, was his name.
Or more accurately, Yeshua bar Yosef;
that is, Yeshua “son of” Yosef.
But Yeshua, long after his death on the cross,
began to receive a title alongside his actual name:
Yeshua Messias,
or Hebrew for Messiah.

But we also know that the title, Messias,
got changed like the name Yeshua did.
It became the Greek form, Christos or Christ.

Messias means, in Hebrew, literally,
“anointed one.”
When we say Yeshua Messias,
or Jesus Christ,
we mean them as synonymous.
In our world,
To say Jesus is to say Christ
and to say Christ is to mean Jesus.

That is because the Roman Empire
spread, inspired, converted or coerced that version
of Christianity across the globe
until you and I,
and most of the modern world,
took it for granted
that Jesus means Christ
and vis versa.
Even those who do not believe
Jesus means Christ,
know that those two words
are synonymous to Christians.

Those words, Jesus and Christ,
are laden with heavy baggage.
But that is why it can be refreshing
to go back, way back,
before the words carried all that baggage.

It is good to go way, way back,
when the words, Yeshua and Messias,
were just a name and a title
that more than one person bore
at more than one time.

You see, all the kings of Israel were
“anointed” – that is, messias.
Approximately forty-three kings,
over something like four-hundred
and thirty-three years,
were anointed when assuming power.
As I am fond of telling children and families
at baptisms, Messiah means “Oily Head.”
All those ancient kings were anointed with oil
as the symbol of sacred selection –
or divine favor.

But they are not the only ones.

In fact, six months before I was born,
Queen Elizabeth II of England,
was anointed with oil in a private ceremony
by none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The reason she was?
Because the British monarch is believed
to have divine favor also.

I know, it sounds absolutely primitive in our world,
but there it is – a very long tradition
of anointing royalty with oil.

So Yeshua Messias means, literally,
“Jehovah saves, anointed one.”

Which begs the question, I’m sure you’re asking,
why should we care about any of these
peculiar and arcane names and notions?

Why not just go on with the old familiar names,
without knowing any of this messy,
possibly confusing, and somewhat troubling
dissertation on names?

This is where we are getting down to the rock.

When we say Jesus and Christ;
we are talking about two different historical figures:
one is a clear theological construction
and the other is an historical figure
obscured by the dust of time.
We need to understand the difference.

Marcus Borg liked to distinguish them
as the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith,
or the pre-resurrection and post-resurrection Jesus.

Yeshua bar Yosef
is the man who was born, named,
circumcised, and consecrated at the temple,
and who grew up to form the sacred spiritual wisdom
that has been filtered through the Gospels.
That is Jesus.

Jesus Christ
is the god formed from creedal belief,
doctrines, and the politics of the historic Church,
and which evolved centuries
after Yeshua bar Yosef
was dead and buried.

One offers us wisdom about God
and about God’s best dream for us;
and the other IS God,
and the object of faith.

Here is the bedrock.
It is possible to be a Christian
and acknowledge the difference
and believe in both;
and it is also possible to be a Christian
and believe in one but not the other.

For the sake of intellectual honesty
and spiritual integrity, if nothing else,
we need to acknowledge the difference
between Jesus and Jesus Christ,
and not pretend that they are the same.

But I think it is also important
because in the twenty-first century,
our culture unbraids these two from each other
even if we do not.

Jesus-the-man, and Jesus-Christ-the-theology,
are fairly easily untangled, and
we do it without stress all the time.
For example, Yeshua bar Joseph,
the historical human being we call “Jesus,”
took a saying made famous by Rabbi Hillel,
and turned it into his core principle:
Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.
And then he connected it to a teaching
on non-violence:

If someone strikes you on one cheek, offer him the other.

But we know without any stress or shock,
that these two connected and primary principles
of the man Jesus,
were not preached or practiced
by the Christ that the Church emphasized
when it went on Crusades
to enforce belief at the end of a sword,
or later, to replace culture by force of empire.

The same is true with the doctrines
surrounding Jesus Christ,
who the Church defined as a man without sin,
who then died to save us from our sins.
The historical man, Yeshua,
sought out baptism by John the Baptist,
which was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
Plus, the man Jesus never
actually talked about himself
the way the Church has described
Jesus-Christ-the-theology.
Even so, the two became woven together
into one monolithic tapestry.

Now, I am not advocating for one or the other,
or for one over the other;
and in truth,
anyone who cares about Jesus
can’t help but blend the two together.
All of us are the products of a greater history
and the culture we were raised in.

But whichever one you believe in,
or even if you are a full-blown advocate of both,
I am pleading for us to acknowledge
and make the distinction
between the man of history
and the Christ of faith.

Most people in Geneva, New York
and the United States of America,
do not know either one very well,
and when they are wrapped up together,
do not think Jesus is credible –
merely a myth or legend.
Yeshua bar Joseph,
Wisdom teacher and prophet
who dared to speak truth to power,
is someone that needs to be heard today.

That Jesus does not require belief,
only sharing what he taught.

We are in an even bigger in-between time
than any of the little ones
I mentioned at the beginning.
We are in-between the time
when Christianity was the dominant
non-governmental cultural institution of our lives,
and the future Christianity
that is now in flux.

Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry,
likes to talk about the “Jesus Movement.”
I do not have any personal knowledge about
what he means by that phrase,
but here is what I think.

The big monolithic institutions of Christianity
are dying.

Macro-religion,
the big, conglomerates
we have imagined were universal,
are giving way to micro-religion:
more localized,
smaller units that must be entrepreneurial
and much more authentic to their core
in order to flourish.

Whether a congregation numbers in the thousands,
or is a house church made up of a dozen members,
Christianity will find its vibrancy
in this century,
as a movement rather than an institution.
Denominational identity like Episcopalian,
Roman Catholic, and Lutheran
may survive, but
they will become looser affiliations
than what has been known in the past.

It is all about Jesus, the man.
It is all about the spiritual wisdom
of a first century teacher, prophet, and sage
whose abiding wisdom
bubbles up through the ocean of time
and still offers us air to breathe.
Our mission is to share that wisdom,
to fathom it and practice it,
and offer it as the life-giving force that it is.

Whatever else we do,
if we do that with energy and passion,
we will find ourselves smack dab in the middle
of a reformation and movement toward the future.

We are in the in-between,
but the future is calling to us now.

Proper 29A, 2017: A chance to clothe the naked

by

Nu féminin, craie et charbon 1800

Link to Liturgical Poem – The Star Market, by Marie Howe:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/01/14/the-star-market

Link to Matthew 25:31-46: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:31-46

SERMON

Picture if you will, a magnificent autumn day.

The sky is a deep blue,
the sun unusually intense, even hot
for that time of year.
The leaves were still turning
and so the world was cast in the golden and red glory of fall.
Summer warmth, pleasing colors,
the hum of pleasantness all around.

The church I served was on a Big Ten university campus –
fifty-thousand students, and
twenty-five thousand faculty and staff.
The university was surrounded by dense urban neighborhoods
but still leafy under the canopy of streets lined with
sycamore, maple, beech, and oak.

It was mid-afternoon on a Sunday
and the bishop had visited that morning
for a full complement of youth and adult confirmations,
the pews brimming with people and vitality.
It was just the kind of experience a thirty-six year old priest
wants to show off to his bishop,
especially when only a few years before
the church had been a bit threadbare and dog-eared.

After services, we had taken the bishop and his wife to lunch,
and the conversation was unusually interesting and pleasant.
All felt right with the world, at least my world.
After taking a few minutes to reflect on the morning
in my office, all alone, the voices
and events echoing in my thoughts, I left for home.
Stopped at a red light on the main street,
a north-south urban corridor that ran like a carpet
through the university district,
I did a double-take.
Through the open passenger window
I starred at a twenty-something young man
striding up the street buck-naked.
He walked with purpose,
his strides focused on going somewhere
but in no particular hurry.
Naked as a jaybird,
his partially bald head a tangled mess
of hair exploding akimbo in all directions.

I was speechless – not just because I was alone,
since that never stops me from talking.
But because there was a naked guy
walking up the busy street
as if it was an everyday kind of thing.
The car behind me honked
as the light had turned green.
I felt as though there was something I should do
but I didn’t know what.
The only thing I could think to do at that moment,
was to honk and wave.
So I did.
He did not acknowledge me.

Three blocks later,
stopped at another red light,
looking down at my trench coat
folded over the passenger seat, I suddenly remembered:
“When was I naked and you clothed me?
When you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.”
It had been the gospel reading that day!
And the bishop had preached on it!
No joke.
I kid you not.

How many times in my life
will I have the opportunity to offer my coat
to someone naked in public?
Surely, I had blown my one and only chance,
and clearly, I was a goat.

Caught up in my own urgent business,
I have missed the opportunity
and failed miserably, more than once,
to embody this gospel in real-time when given the chance.
Like you, I have also been able to meet the challenge
many times in my life, but
there are a number of spectacular failures
that haunt me.

Fortunately, such failure is not the last word. Ever.

The contrast between sheep and goats
in this once parable,
now allegoric saying from Matthew,
is not a coincidence.
Granted, it is a contrast lost
on most of us 21st century urbanites,
but for Matthew’s audience,
it would have been a vivid metaphor.
You see, while it is true
that during the day the sheep and goats were mixed together,
at night the shepherd had to separate them.
It turns out, goats need better shelter than sheep –
sheep are hardier than goats,
so they need less protection at night.

That is an interesting twist
if the goats are supposed to represent the bad guys
and the sheep the good guys.
But that is just an interesting side point.
The real kicker in this story is its focus.
Remember, an ancient parable has only a single focus –
a contrast between two elements.
It is easy to take our eyes off the simple contrast
and wander into the cattails of characters
inhabiting the sidelines.
But the contrast in this story,
the one holding the original parable,
is probably between the kingdom of God
and the act of separation.

The focus is not on the shepherd (Jesus).
The focus is not on the sheep (the least of these).
The focus is not on the goats (those who neglect the least of these).
Sad to say, but this teaching
is not really about that good old liberal social action agenda
to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Sorry.
Rather, it is about separating,
and whether or not to separate,
sheep and goats.

Matthew has likely taken a parable spoken by Jesus,
that was a simple contrast between the kingdom of God
and the act of separation,
and written it into a complex metaphor
about the end of time
and the last judgment.

Matthew wants us to see our situation in life
as a single, either-or decision –
a zero-sum game in which a success for the good guys
is a loss for the bad guys,
and vice versa.
Matthew, in an urgent plea to his generation,
a full fifty years after Jesus had been executed,
paints the existential question as one about
whether we follow Jesus or not:
The sheep are in, they follow Jesus;
the goats are out, they do not.

I do not think that such bifurcated alienation
is what Jesus had in mind, rather,
I think it is a product of Matthew’s moment in time…
and ours.
You and I are in an alienated kind of moment –
sheep or goat,
right or wrong,
in or out;

Trump or not-Trump;

Republican or Democrat;
white or black;
English or bi-lingual;
born here or immigrated;
gun control or none;
choice or never;
fluid gender or as-assigned;
Christian or not,
even Trinity or St. Peter’s…

The molten issues between hardened lines
leaves little room for relationship.

We are separated.
It is enough to make a person sick, literally.

We can see with our own eyes,
it is enough to make a society diseased and ill.

It eats away at our humanity,
dissolving the veneer of grace and hospitality
that protects us from tribal warfare.

I do not believe Jesus was a champion
of vivisecting humanity
with a sword of judgment, dividing people
between those loved by God
and those unloved and abandoned by God.

It is true that the later followers of Jesus,
Paul and the gospel editors,
did see the world in such terms,
and that later the institution of the church
practiced a scorched-earth policy
of us verses them.
But if we pull the blanket back
on the teachings of Jesus,
I think we hear something else.

Jesus did not speak in one-size-fits-all terms,
that is a piece of his genius.
If we listen carefully to the parables and stories
handed down to us, even
through the distortion of later editor’s filters,
we can still hear the graduated tones of nuance.

When Jesus speaks, there is a message
for those who follow him closely,
but also a word to those who are in the crowd listening;
and there is a little something for the hostile too;
and even a message for those who are indifferent.

There is no way to know this for certain,
but it seems to me, Jesus spoke to each audience differently
and with different expectations – or perhaps
different invitations.
In other words, following Jesus is not for everyone.
In fact, I doubt that Jesus invited everyone to follow him,
or would even have recommended it to everyone.
And it is for certain, that the love of God
does not hang upon a condition
that we follow Jesus or be severed, then cast
into the outer darkness where the pitiful unloved shrivel.

Even the decision to follow Jesus
is not an all-at-once, or once-and-for-all, kind of action.
It is a decision, once made,
that we come to again and again and again,
as we fail to clothe the naked in front of us
and then remember or realize how to do it another time.

Instead of a straight line from us to Jesus,
as if a dart on its way to a bullseye,
following Jesus looks much more like a meandering river
snaking its way through mountains.
There are, and will be,
times when we are more like the experience
Marie Howe describes at the Star Market –
when we are freaked out or repulsed
by the needs of those around us.
Other times, compassion will well up within us
and empower our action, as if on a massive dose of steroids.
Each time is a new time,
and each time a discrete opportunity
to move from hostile voice in the crowd
to loyal follower,
or from a voyeur watching Jesus from a distance
to someone a little further up in the crowd,
nearly able to touch him.

But either way, sheep or goat,
close or distant,
disciple or agnostic,
God holds us in the arms of love
and we are inseparably connected to the Holy One
who created us from dust,
and imbued us with life – the actual breath of God within us.
We are not standing on the precipice
of light and outer darkness,
rather, we are held within the light at all times
whether or not we feel lost in the dark.
The ones we consider the enemy
have no true separation from us;
they are not either, nor are they or.

The enemy, those who are utterly wrong,
them that oppose us
and those that reject us,
are only goats because we see ourselves as sheep.
The truth is, we are both one and the same.

Following Jesus, it seems to me, looks a lot more like
knitting together alienated sides
and stitching up the open wounds of rancor,
than it does choosing sides
between them and us
or sheep and goats.
And we get to do it over and over and over again
instead of once and for all.

I hope that naked fella found his clothes
or got somewhere he didn’t need any.
But I am also grateful to him,
because of him, I became a bit less alienated that day.

Thanks be to God.

 

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).

Visit “savetrinity.org” which tells the exciting story of historic re-use striving to be born. You can help us save this magnificent building by visiting savetrinity.org and signing a letter of support! Thank you.

https://www.savetrinity.org

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