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Easter 2019: Your Easter Wonton Soup

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So, let’s think about this.

Jesus’ women-friends
go to the tomb to take care of business
and come back and tell Jesus’ men-friends
the body is missing.
And the men friends think the women-friends
are telling an idle tale.
Now there is a story with the ring of truth to it.

Being a man,
I thought that perhaps Kim Rosen
was spinning a fanciful poem
when she writes that
the caterpillar liquifies
inside the cocoon.

But I have to tell you,
and maybe you already knew it,
that is exactly what happens.
With the release of enzymes,
the caterpillar digests itself.
Really, it does in fact liquify,
becoming caterpillar soup –
not puree but more like wonton soup
with groups of cells forming the wontons.

You might think my calling them wontons
is not very scientific,
but neither is what biologists call
those various groups of cells that eventually form
the eyes and wings and feet.
They call them, “imaginal discs.”
Really, imaginal discs.
That’s pretty poetic for science.
So, the caterpillar dissolves all of its tissues
except for the imaginal discs –
the wontons –
and uses the soupy mush to feed those multiplying cells.

If that’s not amazing enough, hold on.

It’s not just magnificent butterflies either.
A fruit fly even –
you know, those annoying little nothings
that hover around the bananas
and are so easy to smoosh –
begins with an imaginal disc of fifty cells
for each single wing.
Each of those imaginal wing-discs
will eventually be composed of fifty-thousand cells.
So, from little wontons
floating around in a disgusting soup,
black nits composed of fifty-thousand cells each
emerge into “the inevitability of wings.”
Don’t you find that amazing?
No?
Okay, try this.

One study of a particular moth,
suggests that it remembers,
IT REMEMBERS,
what it learned in the later stages
of being a caterpillar in that time before soup.

In other words, even though it melts
into the thick darkness of dissolved rot,
its memory swims through
and arrives on the other side
with those wings.

If you are not amazed by that
nothing I can say is going jump inside your skin.

Speaking of skin, did you know that our skin is an organ?
I didn’t, not really.
I may have heard that before,
but I was a humanities major
with a very poor science background.

Our skin is our largest organ.
It weighs about eight pounds altogether –

mine probably weighs more than Peg Kennedy’s.
We know the skin has several layers
but did you know our skin ages quickly?
Oh, I’m not talking about wrinkles here.
The cells on the outer layer of skin,
the dermis, is replaced every month or so –
which means we lose about thirty-thousand cells
every minute of our lives.
Hold that more a minute:
about thirty-thousand cells die
every minute of our lives…
and that is just the skin.

The entire surface layer of our skin
is replaced every year.

Now on some level I knew that
but when I look at a snake shedding its skin,
I never think of myself doing the same thing.

It turns out that we are more like a caterpillar
than we might imagine.
We just don’t see it
because, like the caterpillar melting
into wonton soup, we are living it.

Hardly anything in our body lasts more
than a few years.
We think we are this solid physical form
we have had since infancy
only a bigger, older incarnation of it.
Not true.
We have died one piece at a time
and been reborn
over and over and over and over again.

I am not lying.
Every tissue and organ in our body
dies and recreates itself.
The cells in the human body have an average age
of seven to ten years –
but looking around this room,
some of us have lived seven or eight times that,
at least one of us nine times that.
That means we are dissolving
and reforming and being transformed all the time.

Different parts of our body
die and are reborn at different rates,
so it is not a spectacular break-out-the-fireworks event.
The heart for example,
by age fifty, will have been replaced
by at least half, while, as I said,
the skin is replaced in total
every year or so.

Not amazed yet? Try this.
Stars…
are colossal nuclear reactors
that burn so hot they transform
hydrogen into helium,
and eventually helium in to other elements.
When a star reaches the end of its life
it explodes and we call that a supernova.
It was supernovas
exploding in abundance at the core of our galaxy
that scattered massive amounts of
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
phosphorus, sulfur outward.
In other words,
the basic elements
and building blocks of life,
of which our bodies are made,
came from stars exploding
millions of years ago, and millions of light years away.

Forty-thousand tons of cosmic dust
falls on earth every year.
That is what we are made of –
the dust of stars.
So when I say at someone’s funeral,
“earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,”
it describes where we came from
as much as where we are going;
and it would be more accurate to say,
“stars to stars, ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust…”

We are composed of stars.
That is not just some hippie song lyric
or moonlight poem,
it is factual.
Astronomers have mapped
that part of the galaxy
where our dust-ness is likely to have originated.
We think we know which supernovas we came from.
Okay, so, whether on a cellular scale
or a galactic one,
we really are like that caterpillar
that melts away only to be reformed
in the hidden darkness
before its return to flight.
If we cannot be amazed at that
I fear there is nothing to say about resurrection
that can make any sense whatsoever.

Our problem
with going from science to theology
is really only an challenge of imagination.
The ability of memory
to traverse a dark soup of death
and come out the other side on a new pair of wings,
sounds like an idle tale
without the science to go with it.

But we do not have any science
to go with our primal narratives.
The wisdom laced into those ancient stories
that once seemed ridiculously fanciful,
can seem less farfetched given what we know from science.
All we need, is to allow ourselves
a grand enough perspective.

I am not here to make the case for the empty tomb
or Jesus eating fish on the shore of life
when he had sailed across the river of death.
But I am here to make the case
for your life and mine to be transformed.
No matter how old you are,
no matter how limited you may be,
no matter how solid you think your body is –
you are being remade right now,
in this moment,
one cell at a time.
You have already died –
over and over and over again;
and still you breathe.
You have been transformed,
remade,
resurrected,
one cell at a time
beginning with primal stardust
billions of years ago
and continuing right into this moment.

We have absolutely no room for cynicism.
Change and resurrection happens as naturally as,
well as naturally as
a fruit fly builds wings
from its own wontons.
Pessimism and skeptical negation
of hope and opportunity
are not born out by the facts.
Resistance to amazement
and openness
results from constricted perspective –
when our vision is hindered
and our perspective is too small

We are being remade daily
hourly even,
whether or not we believe it.
So when we get morose,
full of despair
that nothing good is possible any more,
we need to back up,
climb to higher ground,
and take a breath.
“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
…be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating…”

If we could somehow have told those ancients
they were re-growing new skin every year,
they would have thought we were nuts.

Just like we seriously doubt Isaiah’s claim
that God can and will do a new thing.

But if memory can survive
the death of its body
and reappear with wings,
and our skin and other organs
are in a constant state of death and reformation,
it takes little imagination
to envision a new heaven and a new earth
remade and reformed
hour by hour,
day by day,
life by life.

Once again
we are riding a whale while looking for minnows
as we struggle with questions about resurrection
even as we are living it
one cell at a time.

In a cosmos
and within a skin
in which death and rebirth
and transformation
is a story told hourly,
the fire of our hope should burn bright,
the power of our drive and resistance should be fierce,
and the tenacity of our love should be relentlessly resilient.
And if we find ourselves in a dark corner
questioning if new life is possible
and hope is reasonable,
we need to step back.

In fact, we need to do whatever it takes
to gain a larger,
wider, more engulfing perspective
so that we can see
the astounding rebirth and elegant transformation
going on around us every minute –
it is, so to speak, the soup we live in.

Happy Easter.

*Liturgical Poem for Easter was: “An Impossible Darkness” by Kim Rosen

Palm Sunday C, 2019: Palliative – to relieve without curing

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I’m just saying, Palm Sunday
is the hardest sermon to preach all year long.
Just remember that when you’re tempted
to throw your prayer stone.

When Easter arrives, we can dream again.
But for now, standing below the cross
on Palm Sunday,
we cannot dream.
Standing at anyone’s grave
we cannot dream.

In the shadow of death
the only dreaming is denial.
Instead of dreams, it is our memories
that areactivated in the aftermath of death.

Death pulls us into our memory.
By remembering
we stay close to the one who has died.

We stand around
and we remember the one who has died
and we laugh
and cry
and grow thoughtful
and reflective,
and we want to stay in that remembering zone
because it feels almost like a drug.
When the only other thing we feel
is the exhaustion of grief,
the “memory zone” is palliative.

If death has ever been a visitor in your life
then you know that channel of remembering
that feels so good
because it keeps us hanging
in the nether world
of the person who has died.
It is the remembering
that keeps the loved one from slipping away.
Remembering is not quite a palliative
but close enough
when we are standing in the shadow
of a loved one’s death.

Pal-li-a-tive.
“…to relieve without curing; to mitigate;
to alleviate.”

“Palliative care,” is medical care not intended to cure
but rather, to address the emotional, social, spiritual, and pain management needs of the terminal.

I am going to ask us to do a hard thing.
I am going to ask us to slip into the memory
of this Palm Sunday story
without the palliative
that was placed in it.

First, I will draw out the palliative
and then leave us at the heart of this story
so we can use it for contemplation during Holy Week.
Then, on to Easter, we can dream again.

Here is the palliative of the Passion story,
it is nothing new if you have heard me preach
that last three years:
Pontius Pilate,
the Roman military governor of Judea,
stands before the blood-thirsty crowd
and complains about the innocence of Jesus.
“Please don’t make me do this,” he pleads.

We used an abbreviated and modified version
this morning,
but here is a verbatim of Luke’s version
of the Pilate Palliative:

“Then they all shouted out together, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!”

Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.” But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed.

So, Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.”

Luke has made it so clear and blatant
who is at fault, that unlike John’s version,
Pilate doesn’t even have to wash his hands.

In Luke’s version the crowd purifies Pilate of blame.

We can guess why it was palliative
for Luke to tell the story this way,
but since Pilate is whitewashed in all four gospels
with varying shades of emphasis,
why suspect the historicity of it?
Here is why:
We know that Pontius Pilate was ruthless.
He was a blood-thirsty, cruel,
and tyrannical manager.
He was so repressive and violent,
crucifying so many local peasants,
that the not-so-squeamish Caesar
yanked him from duty
just a couple of years after he crucified Jesus.
Pilate’s violent, repressive administration
fueled riots and rebellion by the locals.

That is not the picture the gospels painted of Pilate
when they were telling the tale
forty to eighty years after the crucifixion,
but Pilate’s recall, based upon his ruthlessness,
is in Rome’s historical record.
Pontus Pilate did not need a palliative,
no excuses were necessary for him.
He apparently just loved to kill peasants.
We also know that the ranking priests and elders
who formed the small establishment
around the Temple,
governed their little fiefdom
with a rigid, stingy hierarchy.

We know too, that they were greatly disliked
and disrespected by ordinary people
who were marginalized by these Temple clergy
and their privileged status.

At the same time, we also know this temple clergy,
beyond the temple courtyards and inner sanctuaries,
were impotent.

They were a powerless paper aristocracy
with no influence over Pilate.
In the scheme of things
they had even less power over the direction
of Roman governing authority
than immigrant laborers in Finger Lakes dairies
have over what the New York State legislator does.

That Temple hierarchy was hated to be sure,
bloated with self-importance
and perhaps even acting with malevolence
toward the peasants of their own religion,
but beyond the walls of the temple
they were also impotent –
and as history would show,
even in the Temple
they were powerless without Roman backing.
To tell the story with a nice-guy Pilate
put into a bad situation
by the bad-guy Jews,
was a palliative
for that second generation of Christians
who wrote down and disseminated the story.

So, who were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John comforting with this palliative story that blamed
‘the Jews’ for the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus?
And why should WE care?

They were protecting Rome.
It was Roman rule being whitewashed.
Pontius Pilate represents Rome
and the effort to conceal its guilt
by casting blame on the Jews
was done for a very good first century reason.
After that first generation of Jesus-followers,
Christians were no longer Judeans or Galileans,
they were mostly Roman –
in other words,
they were no longer Jews but Gentiles.

So, our passion story as it has come down to us,
like all remembering at the graveside,
was told partly as a palliative –
to relieve and alleviate the pain of loss.
That second generation of Evangelists
who we have to thank even for Trinity Place,
were telling the story in a way
that was more palatable to Romans and Gentiles,
and with little or no concern
about the Jews of Judea and Galilee.

The palliative in Luke’s Gospel
is that impotent clergy
and a violently repressed population
forced a ruthless, cruel tyrant
into executing a poor, undeserving Messiah.

There are two problems with this palliative for us.

The first and most awful one
is that it has been the source of Christian
anti-Semitism for more than a millennium.
With this palliative
Christians and the Church itself
have participated in inquisitions, pogroms,
and genocide against Jews and Judaism
for centuries and centuries.

That alone
means we cannot allow this ancient palliative
in our most sacred story,
to go unnoticed or unmentioned.
That is why I bother to address it each year.

But here is the other reason
this palliative may have shaped our story:
We do not know what really happened
between the Last Supper
when Jesus gathered his friends for Passover,
and his crucifixion on the cross.

We doknow
the Romans arrested him,
because that is who had the power and authority
to police locals.
We do know
Jesus was charged with insurrection
because crucifixion is the punishment
that fits that crime.

We do know
that Pontius Pilate was the one who condemned him
to be executed because he was the only one
with the authority to do so.

We do know
that Jesus was crucified
because it is corroborated by other,
even non-Christian
sources of the period.

But we do NOT know
how and why
he got from Passover with his friends,
to the cross with his enemies.
We do not know,
it is a blank, except for
what is written in the gospels.

When we stand at the grave
and cannot understand
why someone so young,
so vital, so close,
so beloved has died,
it makes us even crazier with grief
because we do not understand “WHY!”
We have no answers to death, and so
we reach for palliatives.
We reach for answers
whether we know they are true or not,
because they make us feel better in the moment.

But making the death of Jesus
seem more palatable
may relieve our anxiety and fear
but it will not cure them.

Making this sacred story go down easier
does not lead to dreaming again.
Only Easter leads to dreaming again. Only Easter.
At the heart of this sacred story
there are questions and mysteries we cannot answer,
and pretending that we can
is to engage in hospice spirituality
that presumes we will never get well
so let’s just make one another comfortable.

The story of Jesus,
the sacred story of the Passion,
is not supposed to make us comfortable.
It holds a truth not a palliative.

The sacred story of the Passion
is about the power of God’s love
coming face-to-face
with OUR use of coercive power,
and how we always try to kill the love of God.
Human coercion
always tries to kill the love of God.

That is what this story is about
if we take away the palliative myth about Pilate
being forced into killing Jesus
by the marginalize citizens of Judea.
Jesus was not the first
and he sure wasn’t the last,
but he shows us in excruciating detail
that our response to God’s love
is the use of coercive power
that seeks to kill.

Power in our hands can kill,
not only Jesus, but the love of God
as it makes itself known among us.
Or so it would seem until we can dream again.

On Palm Sunday 2019,
in the coming days of Holy Week,
we are challenged to confront
our participation in coercive power
and how we contribute to the death
of God’s ever-present love.

Not the Jews.
Not the Temple clergy.
Not even Pontius Pilate – because really,
he is only an agent of OUR bidding.

This story,
this sacred story told without a palliative,
asks how you and I
try to kill the love of God in our midst
with the misuse and neglect
of our power.

For some of us – like me, a large, straight male –
that will mean reflecting
on what our power actually is,
because we live in denial of it.

For others, whose power is more immediate
and obvious,
it will mean reflecting on
how we might use our power differently.

But either way,
this sacred story of ours,
without the palliative,
challenges us to consider our participation
in the attempted murder of God’s love
by the misuse and neglect of our power –
not just then…but now.

How do we participate
in trying to kill the love of God
with the misuse or neglect
of our power?

Next week we try to dream again.

 

5 Lent C, 2019: Learning to Disagree with Judas

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A hot stone massage

I spent my first fifteen to twenty years
of priesthood, making Judas’ case –
not so much against Jesus
as against those who came to church
to get a gentle massage for the mind and soul.

I have changed sides, sort of.
Actually, I haven’t just changed sides,
I now understand the argument much differently.

While Christian community
is not supposed to be a comfort station,
or any kind of association that doles out
complacency toward injustice,
unkindness,
or any kind of bigotry
and exclusion,
its core purpose and mission
is not social justice,
social work,
or social policy.

We have erred in The Episcopal Church.
Precisely because we are compassionate
and understand that the way of love
and the wisdom of Jesus
would have its consummation
in an equitable economic order,
we have long made Judas’ case
that our energy and mission
ought to be dedicated
to fixing housing problems,
feeding people who are hungry,
and taking on any
and every societal outrage.

That is not our primary mission or purpose.

That said, it would indeed be the outcome
if our communities of faith were successful
at fulfilling our purpose.
But still, it is not our mission.

Our mission
is formation and transformation
through community.
That’s it, although there are endless
incarnations of that mission.

The reason our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation
is because that is indeed how we
become agents of God’s love.

First and foremost,
we need to be thoughtful about
what and how
we make community
with one another.
In that community,
if we are doing it well,
we will discover healing
and growth,
and transformation.

Such a community will not be a mere comfort station
where we can get a gentle massage.
Oh no, it will work our muscles
with deep tissue pressure
and exertion on the heart and mind.
It will be a muscular, rugged,
sometimes even
fierce love
that rubs together people
who hold serious differences,
and says, “Find your reconciliation.”

It will call us out
of our introverted cocoons
and insist we get real
and get personal with one another.

It will push our extroverted flamboyance
inward, demanding
more and better reflection
and the ability to sit in stillness.
Our mission,
should we accept it,
is formation and transformation in community,
and if we are not making that happen
then we are not what we need to be
even if we are feeding
and clothing hundreds
or thousands.

Judas makes a good case
and one that all of us would prosecute
on one level or another.

But while we may be advocates
for a more just society
and a better, more equitable distribution of resources,
that is not the primary mission and purpose
of a spiritual community.

I just came back from Portland, Oregon and Seattle.

Each of those cities have thousands
and thousands
of homeless people.
The climate is more friendly
year round than here in upstate New York.
I heard estimates of tens of thousands of homeless
and you see them everywhere –
camped in tents on the sidewalk,
under bridges,
sleeping in front of stores and in every park.
Rich neighborhoods and the mission district,
they are scattered everywhere.
I was reminded of three weeks I once spent
in Guatemala,
in which my daily walk from place to place
brought me face to face
with men, women, and children
begging within an inch of their lives.
And on a couple of occasions,
having to navigate around motionless bodies.
No matter where I went
or what I did,
numerous, desperately impoverished people
would beg me for coins, food, drink –
anything I had to give.

Two things became clear to me.

The first was that I did not have enough
money or influence to change even a single
person begging me for help.
But if I was a little bit thoughtful
and organized
I could do something.
I got a bag
and filled it with coins.
I made sure I always had at least one coin to give
whenever I was asked.
It was no big deal,
but it was something I could do,
and I felt less powerless if nothing else.
But the second thing I could do,
changed me and perhaps had an impact
beyond the small coin I could offer.

I could look the person in the eyes,
and speak to him or her.
If they seemed open to it,
I could even try my pathetically poor Spanish
and whatever else I could think of
to meet and embrace
his or her humanity
while exposing my own.

It changed my behavior toward street people
in Buffalo when I returned to my home.
I often forgot to keep change
or a dollar bill in my pocket
but I was able to greet their humanity
and expose my humanity to them.

I did not, and never have
practiced it to perfection, but I still practice.
All of that is to say,
that as a spiritual community
we cannot let the tail wag the dog –
whether the tail is social ministry
or a massive stone building
or fundraising.

Our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation –
to become different people
as a result of being in relationship to one another
in community.

Forgive me for repeating it:
Our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation –
to become different people
as a result of being in relationship to one another
in community

We are to experience the opening of our wounds
and their healing;
we are to experience the vulnerability of love
and its sharing;
we are to struggle with and confront
the disjunction
between the values we spend our money on
and the values espoused by the Gospel of Jesus.

It is clearly not a relaxing massage of the soul,
but rather, the deep tissue kind
that stretches and hurts
and adjusts our feeble
and stiff old joints
so that we are formed and transformed
as agents of God’s love.

As a result of all that,
we will likely be more socially active
because we will be driven by our compassion.
But we may find that our charism –
our special gift,
has more to do with healing and growth
than feeding and clothing and advocating.
But whatever our gift
it will undoubtedly move us beyond ourselves
in a way that exposes our humanity to others
even as we embrace theirs.

It is through our work with formation
and transformation
in community
that God does a new thing with us –
whether we are ninety-three, seventy-nine,
fifty-one, or twenty.

If we do not believe – no,
if we have not experienced
that God can do a new thing
even with us – then we need a bigger, badder,
tougher,
massage therapist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 Lent C, 2019: Burning Bush Again

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Sebastien Bourdon, Burning Bush

All biblical texts are not equal:
if today’s readings from Exodus and Luke
were power-lifters,
Exodus would in the Heavyweight Class
and Luke in Featherweight.

The gospel for today
is nearly undecipherable in any meaningful way –
and even if it weren’t,
it is overwhelmed by a Hebrew Scripture
that demands its voice be heard.

As I sometimes do,
I am going to act like a radio preacher
and walk through this amazing,
incredible,
absolutely fantastic,
and astounding text
from Exodus.

These verses form the bedrock
of everything there is to say
about God.

Everything else,
everythingelse
we can say about God
rests upon this single moment of revelation.

Now, because we live in the 21stcentury,
the first silly thing we want to ask is,
Did it really happen?
It’s almost a knee-jerk question,
as if the ability to answer it
is the only thing that would make it credible.
Our minds have been molded to ask such questions
even though it is impossible
for Scripture to answer them.

Instead, because deep inside of us
is buried the ancient memories
of our pre-modern ancestors, we ask:

What is the wisdom embedded here? And,
what is the question
that the text is answering?
If we ask the text those questions,
then the first thing we notice
is that Moses is not among the Hebrews.
He is watching his father-in-law’s sheep,
a man who was the priest
of another religion.
Understand that in this story,
there is no Hebrew religion.
It doesn’t exist yet.
In fact, this is where it begins.
We imagine,
because it was placed as the first book of the Bible,
that all that stuff in Genesis came first.
Nope. It starts here, with Exodus.
Genesis is a later made prequel, like in Star Wars.
The history of the Hebrews
begins on Mount Horeb,
the mountain of a Midianite God.

So, from the very beginning,
our religion, even though we quickly forgot it,
was deeply pluralistic.
Clearly there is more
than one understanding of God
right from the beginning of the story.
That is the first thing to notice about this story:
it is a story about GOD,
not “our” God, because
this God does not belong to us.

Think how different things would be
if that little piece of information had stuck!

The next something to notice
comes about with something weird happening.
The text describes a fire
that does not consume.

Now notice please,
the spookiness is assumed.
The text doesn’t ask how it happens.
It doesn’t ask why it happens.
The text doesn’t even register surprise
with such a bizarre thing taking place.

The text just says
the bush is burning without being consumed
and an angel’s voice issues from it.
No big deal.
Moses, even though he doesn’t know the God
he is about to meet,
and even though he has no experience
with any god other than Pharaoh –
whose household he grew up in –
somehow knows what to do
AND what not to do
when meeting a god.
DON’T LOOK and
TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES.

So, clearly, there were some generally known
rules of etiquette for meeting a god,
kind of like what to do when your hiking
and you encounter a bear.
Moses knows
that for humans to look upon God insures certain death.

That holds another piece of the story
we might want to notice, because
it also hints at some modern physics questions.
The finite cannot see the infinite.
The temporal cannot look upon the eternal.
The part cannot see the whole and survive.

This story does not exactly answer why,
but it does make a case for the physics in place
between the human and the holy:
the very nature of being human,
or being a small part instead of the whole,
is that if we are suddenly placed
in the presence of everything-that-is,
we will go out of existence.

If we want to think about such a big question,
it may be because, if we were to encounter God
in the same time and space and dimension,
we would lose our Self – our part-ness.

When the part is no longer a part
and becomes part of the whole, and it loses its Self.
It goes out of existence.
Which, by the way,
is also the Buddhist concept of Nirvana. Interesting…

So somehow Moses
not only knows what to do,
he also knows what to say:
“Here I am.”
And did you remember that, “Here I am”
is also what Noah said to God,
and what Abram said to God,
and what Samuel said to God,
and, by the way,
it is what Mohammad said to God?

“Here I am” is what the prophet says when God calls.
The text doesn’t tell us
how a prophet knows what to say, but there it is.

So, what we know up to this point,
is that Moses knows the protocol
for what to do and say when entering God’s air-space.

Now remember, there is no such thing as Judaism
at this point, and Christianity
is more than a millennium away.

What we need to notice from the text is that,
when it comes to an encounter with God,
there is no religion.

This is a big point in the text
that we seem to have missed somehow.
When the veil between the holy and the human
gets thin,
there is no religion.
Religion, brand name,
is utterly and totally irrelevant
at that moment.

Religion is about ideas
and rituals
and sacraments
and methodologies
and organizations,
and all those things we need
and we cherish
and we hate.

There is nothing wrong with all that human paraphernalia
but when it comes to an encounter with GOD,
it is utterly irrelevant.
At least one message of this story,
given that Moses is not any kind of religion
and he is on the mountain of a Midianite god
at the beginning of the ancient Hebrew story,
is that an encounter with God,
is beyond all religion
and available to anyone
of any religion.

But that is not the only message tucked in there.
Another message,
is that God is assumed – an encounter with God
is not out of the ordinary.
That may be something useful for us to note.
Ancient and modern poets and prophets
and many a musician and artist,
simply assume an encounter with God
is a natural part of living.

So if this story were an orchestral piece,
all of that is in the first movement.

Then the story shifts.
We leave the realm of human beings
filtered through Moses
and its implications for us,
and we move into the realm of the holy.

In other words,
the text is going to tell us something
about God.

We might imagine that,
because it is the Bible,
such information is normal.

But the Bible is far more about human beings
than it is about God.
God is stingy with information
and self-revelation,
which brings up another point.

Not all religions are alike –
that is a modern, liberal idea that is baloney.
Religions are very different,
and they reflect the very different cultures
within which they arose.

So generally, there are two categories of religion:
Revealed and Unrevealed.
The revealed religions are those that believe
God is the only source to provide information about God.
In other words, God unveils godself
only when and if God chooses to do so.
The word “revelation” means, literally, to unveil.
The UNrevealed religions,
like Buddhism and Hinduism,
believe that wisdom, or divine wisdom
if a god is involved,
can be uncovered by US.
Through our human methodologies
like meditation, yoga, tai chi, fasting,
and any number of disciplines,
humans can unlock the mysteries.
So revealed and unrevealed religions
begin from different assumptions.

As Christians,
rooted as we are in this Exodus text of ancient Israel,
we belong to the “revealed” category:
We know nothing
beyond what God wants us to know about God.
That means this text from Exodus
is God’s first and most elemental revelation
about who God is
and what God is like.
This is the first and core unveiling,
and here is what we learn about God.

First, God tells Moses “who” god is:
The god of Moses’ ancestors.
God begins the introduction,
not with an autobiography of occupations or achievements,
but with a description of God’s relationships.

Again, we might take note
that “who”we are
has to do with who
we are in relationship with,
much more than what we do or did for money.

Next, the text describes how God behaves
and it is astounding.
God sees the misery of the Hebrews in Egypt.
God hears their cries when they are abused.
God feels their suffering.

Then, because God sees and hears and feels,
God acts,
in this case, bringing about their liberation.

Now, because we are modern and post-modern people,
we may need to disengage from the idea
that God actually acts in human history,
whether on behalf of those who are marginalized
or anybody else.
That in itself is a big question.

But first, I want us to ponder this amazing fact.
Prior to this story,
the gods of the ancient world
were not this kind of god.
Prior to this Exodus text,
if you needed something from a god,
like someone to fall in love with you
or to get pregnant,
or to have your crops yield an abundant harvest,
or for your enemy to get the runs and have a miserable day,
you went to the proper god
that had the power to act
in the sphere you needed action.
Then you made a sacrifice at the proper altar
through the appointed priest.

In other words, you had to purchase the desired benefit
with the required sacrifice
and that necessitated what we call money.
Rich people, of which there were a very few,
had greater and better access to those gods
and those benefits, than everyone else.
It seemed quite natural
that the universe operated as a divine hierarchy
since human society did too.

But with the Exodus story
there enters a new God,
or a God newly encountered.
It is not quite the one and only God yet, because
monotheism would take many more generations to form.
But this newly encountered God
is a god who hears the cries of slaves.
Suddenly there appears in the world
a god who sees what is going on
among the marginalized.

Suddenly there appears in the world
a god who actually listens
to the groans of people
who are the dregs of the society.

Suddenly there appears in the world
a god who actually feels – knows personally –
the suffering of the nobodies.

You see?
Whether we think Exodus is an actual historic moment
and mystical encounter with God,
or just the emergence of an historic idea,
this is an amazing turn of events.
Even though everything that human beings can see
would suggest the existence of a God
who only cares about the powerful
and the privileged,
there appeared an ancient text
with a very different narrative:

God sees and hears and knows
the suffering of those who are
beaten and abused and exploited.
And not only that,
what God does,
what God is all about,
is acting in history on their behalf.

What an incredible text.
You see why it is so amazing?

 

 

1 Lent C, 2019: Gratitude is Prime

by

I wish I could show you the photograph I took
of my dog, Rabia,
positioned like the Great Sphinx
in front of the fireplace
on a ten-degree morning.
Behind her the gas fire roasting
her backside, in front,
streaming through the windows,
bright, radiant sunshine
washing her face and shoulders.

The look on her face…
that is what I wish I could capture in words.
It was as pleased and satisfied an expression
as I have ever witnessed.
But she also had – unless I was merely projecting –
an air of gratitude about her.

If I had to put words
to what I witnessed, it would be:
“Thank you for this lovely warmth
and for being a dog capable of enjoying it.”

Shortly after that, she flopped down on her side,
closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
Now there is a lifestyle I could get grateful about.

This is a weird First Sunday of Lent.

We have Moses,
in what is actually one of my favorite scenes
in all the Bible,
directing a rehearsal
of the first Thanksgiving
in the Promise Land.
We have Mary Oliver,
our featured poet for Lent 2019,
declaring herself a messenger of love
for a world so impossibly splendid
it seems to her impossible
not to burst with gratitude.

And, bringing up the rear,
we have Jesus battling Satan in the desert
in a scene suitable for a violent video game.

On the face of it, Luke’s story is an outlier
to the theme of gratitude,
but scratch the surface
and that Devil-wears-Prada scene
has gratitude rivering through it also.

I want to briefly, point to what is happening
in each of these readings
and allow them then,
to shed their grace on us.

That piece from Deuteronomy
is the tail end of a twenty-one-chapter sermon
Moses preached to the masses of ex-slaves
as they are primed to cross over the Jordan River
into the Promised Land for the first time.
I have belabored the scene before
so I won’t do it this time.
Suffice it to say, the rag-tag thousands
are gathered on the floodplain of the river
waiting to enter the Land of Milk & Honey
after forty years of looking for it.
It must have been like children
on Christmas morning
waiting to descend the stairs,
but after a 21 chapter sermon
they were probably morose on their haunches
waiting for Moses to shut up.

But this is Moses’ last day on earth
and he is not going quietly into the night.

Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. last speech,
because he references Moses
about not going with his compatriots
into the Promised Land:
he can see it,
and he knows they will get there,
but he also knows
he is not going.

One of the last things Moses has to say
is what we heard this morning:
an outline of a Thanksgiving liturgy.
His whole speech in one way or another,
is Moses pleading with the ex-slaves
not to forget
who they are
and whose they are.
“Don’t forget where you came from,”
he urges them –
slaves from Egypt who had nothing
and suffered greatly.
“And don’t forget how you got here,”
he begs them –
by the hand of God
rather than from their own doing.

“Remember…
do not forget…because
if you forget, it will go badly for you.”
That is what he tells them
over and over and over again.
And he finally gives them a ritual practice,
a liturgy, to remind them,
so that if they rehearse it enough,
they will never forget.

Moses knows that gratitude
is both powerful medicine
and an elusive,
even vulnerable
state of heart.

Practice and rehearse your gratitude,
he tells them, and if you do,
the prosperity you are about to experience
will not ruin you.
But if you forget,
your prosperity will destroy you.

That is Moses’ message
and it is one we need to hear.
and one we can read the truth of
in our own lost horizons.
Remember whowe are
and whosewe are,
and open our hearts to gratitude.

Now Mary Oliver.

This is such a powerful, if humbling
and challenging story.
Mary Oliver had a horrendously painful
childhood.
Being a very private person
she did not speak at length publicly
about it, but it is clear
her father abused her
and her siblings.
She had no love for him
and even in old age
bore the scars of those terrible years
in rural Northern Ohio.
Even to the end
she did not like being indoors,
inside of walled rooms.
Her love of nature
was both a welcome embrace
of sublime beauty,
and also an escape
driven by the ghosts of memory.

And yet…
her poetry.

“My work is loving the world…
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling
them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.”
(From “Messenger” by Mary Oliver)

So, this is just one poem,
and we know there are so many more.
She was a modern-day Psalmist
that voiced the love of God
and God’s love of Creation
in as many different ways
as there are birds and trees and waterways
and skies.

Across her own kind of wilderness,
making an escape from her suffering,
like Moses and Israel,
the wings of her salvation
was gratitude.
Powerful,
healing,
mysterious and renewable,
gratitude.

Then comes the gospel story.

There is so much we could say,
so many directions to walk in
with this story.
There are so many things
I want to talk about,
but almost all of them
have nothing to do with this moment
stacked up alongside
Deuteronomy and Mary Oliver.

So, allow me to distill Luke.

Much is made by preachers and theologians
about the three temptations of Jesus
and they get allegorized into all kinds of desires,
lust, and allegiances.
But boil it down
and it is just our simple,
every day, human lament,
shriek, bellow,
blubber, yelp
or whine, that we want more.
There is never enough for us.
No matter how muchwe get
and no matter whatwe get
and no matter howwe get it –
it is just never enough.

We might be satiated for a moment,
for a while even,
but sooner or later
that worm starts to turn in our gut
and slither and slime its way up.
We always want more
of whatever it is we get.
And when we do not have something
we want, that little lust
or whimper
can become a rage
and a scream.

Discipline,
shame,
fear of punishment,
self-restraint
can set boundaries on our hunger for more
and our agitation that we never have enough,
but there is only one thing
that actually heals it.
Yep, you guessed it: gratitude.

Like a prime number,
gratitude doesn’t have any factors
other than being what it is – a form of joy –
and what it does – heal us.

That story in Luke,
if we dig around in it
from the wisdom of our own experience,
instead of being distracted by the glitter or
scratch of the supernatural,
is about gratitude.

What gave Jesus the capacity
to resist some pretty powerful temptations,
is gratitude for being “Beloved.”
Remember, that is the scene just
before the one we read in Luke today.
God tells Jesus he is “beloved.”

“You are loved,” God says to Jesus.
“You are my beloved.”

Like my dog in front of the fire,
Jesus was completely wrapped
in the arms of God’s love
and there was nothing to do or be
but just plain grateful.

Remember, gratitude is prime,
and has no factors
other than being what it is – a form of joy –
and what it does – heal us.

Moses knew it
and tried to arm his generation with it.
Mary Oliver became a servant of it,
and found healing on its wings.
Jesus was bathed in it
as the beloved of God,
and it gave him what he needed
when he needed it.

I am thinking that gratitude
and the practice of gratitude
is not exactly what we think of
when we think of Lent.
But it seems to me, that’s what
is right in front of us
that we ought to be gawking at today.
Gratitude,
a form of joy
that also heals.

Welcome to Lent.

 

Our Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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