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Palm Sunday 2020

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This sermon appears in video format on the trinitygeneva FaceBook page.

All I have to say,
is this is a really inconvenient time
for Palm Sunday and Holy Week.
I mean, who wants to hear about
betrayal,
torture,
and a gruesome execution
while isolated
and huddled at home
in a pandemic?

Honestly, I do not know how to preach
Palm Sunday in the midst of pandemic.
I have preached it in the context of war –
there is a natural affinity
between this story
and our wars of colonialism
and economic imperialism.
And I have preached it in the midst of economic crisis
in which the story reminds us
of more essential truths,
with all those niggling issues
of justice and class
so deeply embedded in it.

But pandemic, a virus without allegiance
to any nation, class, race, or ethnicity?
A world class virus that is invisible, odorless,
and apparently asymptomatic in 25% of us –
so that some of us are carriers of death
and never even know it?
How does Palm Sunday preach
in that kind of a story?

Somebody asked me the other day
if I thought the pandemic is punishment –
as in a Sodom and Gomora kind of thing.
I was so surprised by my internal reaction.

I wanted to slap the person.
I was incredulous
at the obscenity of the suggestion
that God is the master of punishment and death –
that God is the distributor
of indiscriminate capital punishment
like Nazis machine-gunning
the sick and lame into open graves.
In normal times
I would have fielded the question
without any emotional response
other than perhaps, impatience.
And hopefully, the person on this occasion
did not notice the outrage I felt on the inside.
But the cruelty of the pandemic
in all of its awful dimensions,
made that question more than intellectual.

The Palm Sunday story agitates and chaffs on its own,
because of how Jesus’ death was interpreted
and how the story was used
as a weapon of anti-Semitism.
Frankly, that awful, obscene question I was asked
pokes at the heart
of how Palm Sunday has been interpreted –
not the story itself
but how we have corrupted it
so obscenely.
I am talking about the idea of Atonement –
that God had Jesus tortured and sacrificed
as an offering for our sins.
That is exactly the same kind of thinking
behind a question like,
“Is the pandemic punishment?”

The problem of course,
is that we all know how the story ends
and that distorts how we hear and interpret it.

Our foot-of-the-cross perspective
from which we watch Jesus’ death
is like reading the last chapter
of The DiVinci Code
before reading the whole novel,
or the last chapter of the last Harry Potter story
before reading the first book.
In cheating ourselves
into the climax of a story,
without paying attention to how we got there,
we inevitably miss the larger story
and whatever goodness or truth
may be embedded in it.

An additional problem for us,
after all these years of preaching and teaching,
is that we read the betrayal,
arrest,
imprisonment,
torture,
mistrial,
and execution
through the filter of Christian doctrine
instead of just reading the story.

In other words, we have been given
all the official answers
before we have been allowed to actually
ask questions.
“Why did Jesus have to die?
“To save us from our sins?”
“How did Jesus save us from our sins?”
“By serving as a once and for all sacrifice.”

But let us take advantage
of our historical distance from the story
and ask about that traditional interpretation:
Why in the world
would anyone ever imagine
that one person’s life could be exchanged,
like foreign currency at the bank,
for all of humankind’s wrong-doing –
past, present and future?

That is a good question, doesn’t it?
It seems like something we should want to know
if we are going to take this story seriously.

Well, here is why early story-tellers
might have understood the death of Jesus
as an horric act of God.

In the world of that day,
in both Jewish religion and Roman culture,
sacrifice to the gods was an essential part of life.

They believed
the very balance of the universe,
the very future of every individual and family,
the very fate of cities and nations,
depended upon the right sacrifice to the right god.

But we have to go back to the very beginning
of our story – in the Book of Genesis
with the story of Abraham and Isaac.
God orders Abraham to take his only son,
the very son that it took an epic story
to give birth to,
and cut him open on an altar
as a blood sacrifice
to a blood-thirsty god.

Standing over his son
who was bound and gagged
upon the altar of sacrifice,
Abraham raises the knife over his head.
Just as he was about to thrust the knife
into the heart of his only son,
God yells, “STOP!”
“Just testing.”
God looks around the area
as Abraham is breathing hard,
heart pounding, and sweat
dripping down his face.
God says: “Hey, there is a ram over there in the bushes,
substitute the ram for Isaac
and we’ll call it even.”

That story of Abraham and Isaac
is the background behind God and Jesus.
Abraham demonstrated his total faith in God
by being willing to sacrifice his only son,
while God demonstrated
God’s total devotion to humankind
by going through with the sacrifice of Jesus.

We can see the symmetry and logic
between these two stories
told almost half a millennium apart.
It was a theological message to Jews
that what had taken place with Jesus
was even greater than the story of Abraham and Isaac.

To the Romans is was a political message
that God’s sacrifice of Jesus
was more powerful than any sacrifice
that could be offered to any of their gods.
I mean really, how could you top
God killing his only son
as a gift for you?

But you and I should have a problem with that interpretation of Jesus’ execution
because we do not perceive the universe
as balancing upon the magic of ritual sacrifices.

The idea of Atonement –
the belief that God substituted Jesus
as a sacrifice for our sins
in the same way that the ram
was substituted for Isaac –
makes perfect sense
in a cosmos orbiting around the logic of sacrifice.
But the meaning of Atonement is problematic
in a world of indiscriminate pandemic
and Christian participation in the holocaust,
and any number of genocides and crimes
wreaked upon the powerless
by those with more power.
Has all the unspeakable savagery
been wiped clean
because Jesus was executed –
but only for Christians?

And if so, why haven’t our many other sacrifices
protected us from pandemics,
mass shootings,
wars and terrorism,
and just plain human ugliness?

The problem of course,
is the Atonement has been our only lens
through which to read this story
for many centuries.
But it is NOT the required Christians lens.
We are allowed to take off those glasses –
we can always put them back on later if we want.
But right now, it is time
to read the Palm Sunday story
as if from the beginning
without knowing how it ends.

I think that is how it relates to our social exile
in this time of pandemic:
we have the time, if we have the will,
to stop and read the story
as if we did not know the ending,
and to ask it questions
that we may not have asked before.
We also have the time to work on different answers
unrelated to Atonement and sacrifice.

If we come to this story
at the beginning
instead of from the end,

I can almost guarantee
we will walk away astounded
with new insights
and with flashes of the holy
we have never seen before.

First of all, the story of the last week in the life of Jesus
is an epic poem rather than history.

There are historic references in it
and historic details
that reflect actual events,
but it is not a factual or verbatim account
of what took place.

Even if it were,
there is a whole lot missing
from a week of 24 hour days,
and what is missing
would utterly change the way
we interpret what is told.

No, this is a poem.
It is every bit as much a poem
as the Suffering Servant poems
from the prophet Isaiah.
(Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-7; 52:13-53:12).
And poems,
like paintings or sculptures,
must be construed
and interpreted
and imagined
rather than dissected and squeezed
for exact, literal,
and once-and-for-all meanings.

So here are a few things we might want to know
that have the potential to free us
from the answers we have been given
before we were allowed to ask the questions.
Holy week is a great time
to open ourselves to see and hear
the Palm Sunday story all over again.

So first of all, it was not blasphemy
to be proclaimed or to proclaim oneself
as “Messiah” or “Christ”.
Lots of people did it.

In the gospel story as told
fifty years after Jesus’ death,
Jesus’ claiming to be the Messiah
is supposedly the big offense
that gets him killed.
But that doesn’t hold up.

Secondly, “the Jews” didn’t kill Jesus.
The gospels often blame the Jewish authorities
in particular, and the Jewish crowds in general,
for the execution of Jesus.

But ordinary Jews and Jewish authorities
had no power.
Pontus Pilate,
who the Gospels paint as a decent guy
put in a tough position,
was actually a cruel, viscous tyrant.

We know this because historical records
show he was later demoted
and sent into administrative oblivion
for being such a repressive governor.
Pontus Pilate and the colonial Roman Military system
ground Jesus into jackal meat,
not ordinary Jews and ruling clergy.

Jesus was executed by the Romans
as punishment for a crime.
The crime that fits that punishment is insurrection.

So if historical conjecture is our lens
instead of Atonement,
Jesus was found guilty of insurrection
against the authority of the Roman Empire.

He was executed as any political prisoner
proven to be guilty would be executed:
publicly and with maximum humiliation.

Now if that is true,
one of the questions we might ask the story
is why, as clever and wise as Jesus was,
did he find it necessary to risk such an outcome
by leaving Galilee and going to Jerusalem?
What opportunity did he imagine
was available in the city of Jerusalem
when he was most popular and safest in Galilee?

Knowing the dangers –
as clearly as he would have seen the dangers
since others had suffered his fate before him –
what opportunity made the risk worth it?
What dangerous opportunity did Jesus reach for
against such a risk?

I invite us to take this story home
and to come to it
from the beginning
not the end,
and read it anew.

If you have someone to read it with,
take turns reading it to each other out loud,
the way most people back then would have
encountered it – orally.

If you don’t have someone in the house,
make a phone or video conference date
with a friend or family member
to read the story.
Heck, convene a book club online
or via zoom or google
and read it again
and ask it questions
you have never asked it before.

Allow all the pre-conceived Christian notions surrounding the story to fall away.
Allow your questions to lead you
deeper and deeper into the story,
evoking and provoking
more questions and wonder.

None of that, I am sorry to say,
really helps us with the pandemic.
But here are a couple of great metaphors
connecting Palm Sunday and pandemic
that I received in an email this week
(Thank you, Shelley).
They are great puzzles to work with:

  • Rolling out the palm leaves and coats as Confusion rides into town.
  • Welcoming something we don’t understand and might even fear,
    because Hope rides into town in the middle of our needing a Savior.

So I invite you to read this story again:
work it
argue with it
move it around and wrestle it
ask it questions that have always bothered you about it
forget the answers you were given and challenge it
be open to it and allow it to speak to you
re-write it in a way that makes more sense to you

Treat it like a story that truly matters, because it does.

3 LENT A, 2020: The Fast of Social Distancing

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We have a great big, juicy gospel story in front of us
but the elephant in the room
is the bad-boy with slurping the corona.
I am going to give the elephant a drink and
then take a bath in the story.

So let’s just say it, this is a weird time.

Someone I know
who is a lot older than me
texted this week
to say she has never been through anything like this.
I didn’t say what I was thinking: 
“Well honey, if YOU haven’t,
I sure haven’t.”

But this pandemic does remind me a bit
of when HIV and AIDS arrived on the scene.

While the severity of AIDS and the coronavirus
is a pale comparison in relation to their effect on most people,
the social anxiety,
uncertain protocols,
and need, with sudden urgency
to change behaviors,
are similar.

With HIV/AIDS, it was several years before
we got a grip on what was happening,
how and why,
and then finally understood enough
to navigate through the crisis.

There was also, in those dark days,
the echo of grief from every direction.

There were some life-saving
and tremendous social transformations
that happened as a result of the AIDS epidemic
and I wonder what they will come from this one.

The whole concept of social distancing
is about as repugnant a practice as I can think of
for Christians and those sharing spiritual community.
It is anathema to Jesus’ open table.
But…
in our present situation
under the pall of a pandemic,
it is exactly the right thing to do.
It is a fast,
a severe Lenten fast
that we are all called to practice for now.

Fasting is unpleasant, and
as the Exodus story indicates,
something that can make us humans
downright angry and resentful.
The practice of fasting
puts us in touch with our hunger and thirst,
and holds the promise of teaching us something
we need to know about ourselves.

A FORCED fast,
whether it is from meat on Fridays
or that awful liquid diet and fast
before a colonoscopy,
makes us all the more resentful.

If I am not mistaken,
fasting is the most universal spiritual practice,
one that is primal in every major religion.
While Americans and Episcopalians
do not embrace fasting much any more,
it is one of those spiritual heirlooms
we might want to take out,
dust off, and put back in front of us.

Either way, we are now, like it or not,
in a time of fasting.
We need to remember that the practice
of social distancing
is a gift of social conscience.

We do it for others
if not for ourselves.
Personally, because I am not otherwise vulnerable,
I am not concerned about contracting the virus.
But I am now hyper aware
that I could unwittingly
be carrying it and spreading it,
and that could be a death sentence
to both those I know and don’t know.

I often say at funerals
we need to have a sense of reverence
about how much we do not know
about the person who has died –
how far and wide the gifts of their love
actually ripple out across time and space.
We can be certain though, their influence and impact
travel farther than we can possibly imagine.
Likewise, our germs.
We may be conscious and careful
about not spreading a cold to someone we love
whose health is compromised in some way,
but we rarely think about spreading it
to a stranger at the grocery
who then unknowingly gives it
to their 97 year old mother.
Or multiply that by three
and soon our influence, in this case dreadful,
travels well beyond our consciousness.

So, together with other Christians
and atheists alike,
we will be fasting for Lent
by social distancing.

There is much we can do
to enhance our fast
and today the vestry will be coming up
with some practices for the congregation to share.
So mostly, I just wanted to give us a frame
for the time we are in
and the practice we will be sharing.
We are fasting, together,
and when we come out on the other side,
we will know some things
about ourselves and each other,
we did not know before.

Okay, now the bath in this great old story.

That Gospel
is a story about the other side of good.
We’ve all been there,
some have lived there,
and all of us visit there
on a regular basis.

The woman at the well
wants to know why Jesus,
a righteous Judean,

would drink from a common cup.

Why, she wants to know,
would someone who thinks
he is from the ‘good side of good’
be willing to talk with her,
sit next to her,
and drink from her cup?

The ‘other side of good’
is where we live within ourselves sometimes,
and of course,
where we place a bunch of other people
all the time.

The ‘other side of good’
is a rotten, debilitating,
lonesome place to be.

I have sat there
and I have no doubt
you have sat there too –
maybe you are sitting there right now.

The ‘other side of good’
is just over the border
from what we believe to be right
and moral and good.

Because you and I are not perfect –
is anyone here perfect?
Because you and I are not perfect,
we have betrayed
our own notions of rightness,
morality
and goodness.

We haven’t just betrayed them,
we have flattened them –
left our footprints all over them
as just kept walking.
And unless we are psychopathic
we feel awful about it.
We don’t just feel awful,
we judge ourselves.
We may even hate ourselves
for what we have done, and left undone.

We know exactly
where the ‘other side of good’ is situated –
and I bet that right now,
you could even point to the place
where the ‘other side of good’ lives
in your body –
in your head, heart or stomach.

It is almost an actual place
where we feel it, when we feel it.
But we also banish other people,
and entire peoples,
to the ‘other side of good’ too.

Prejudice and bigotry,
as well as just plain old hatred
and resentment,
usher other people
right over the border
into the ‘other side of good.’

Most of us do not like to admit
that there are barren reservations
in our hearts
where we have re-located
a whole lot of folks – just banished them.

But every one of us here
has a place on the other side of good
where we keep
those herded up groups of somebodies.

Perhaps the worst thing we could do
is deny that we do it.

If we deny our prejudices
and our bigotries
then no one
and nothing
can help us subvert them.

If we deny our prejudices
and our bigotries
then there is almost no possibility
of ever healing from them.

Of course,
the minute we acknowledge them
then we will be on the ‘other side of good’ again –
which is why we deny them in the first place.
We do not like the way it feels
to be on the ‘other side of good.’

Anyway,
one of the truly amazing things
about the Bible,
both Hebrew and Christian testaments,
is that it is so unvarnished.

I mean really,
it does very little
to make its characters look good.
In fact, the best of the biblical heroes
have stories of moral failure told about them.

In the Gospel of Mark, for example,
Jesus has his own bigotry confronted
by a Syrophoenician woman,
and personally, I suspect this story in John
was written to make-up for Mark’s story.

But I really like the fact that the Bible
doesn’t sanitize its heroes.
They are fully human
and their humanity shines through,
and we learn from them –
in the same way
we are able to learn from our failures
when we don’t live in denial of them.

In the Exodus story we heard,
you would think that those recently escaped slaves –
a miserably vulnerable people
carried by God as if on eagle’s wings –
would be more grateful.
BUT NO…they are surly, grumpy,
mad as hell,
and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

Clearly, being ingrates and rebellious
against God and Moses,
they are on the ‘other side of good.’

But they are supposed to be the good guys in the story,
and so, this is a story about the good guys
being bad guys.
No hiding it.

The more we know the Bible
the wiser and more profound it is.
I know the Bible doesn’t have a lot of credibility
with sophisticated, 21st century folks like us,
so let it be our dirty little secret
that the Bible is wise,
profound,
and amazingly fresh
all these years later.

Now as soon as I say that,
there will be objections
about the many parts of the Bible
that belong on the other side of good too.

There is no denying those parts, to be sure.

For example, we know there are
two sentences in the Bible
that condemn homosexuality.
There is no hiding those two Bible verses
because those who want to place GLBTQ folks
on the ‘other side of good’
endlessly prosecute them with those two sentences.

Of course, those same people
also take the Bible literally,
as if it is an ancient digital recorder
that has captured every important thought
that God ever had about human beings.
But in order to do that,
they have to manipulate and mangle other sentences
about those things they care about,
so that the logic in their little Lincoln Log house
doesn’t come tumbling down.

Fortunately, we are not burdened with that dogma.
We understand
that the Bible, among other things,
was also the product of its culture –
its time and moment in history.
What is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman
if not a story about transcending culture?

Jesus is transcending his culture’s boundaries
about ‘good’ in this story from John,
whereas he failed to do so initially
in the story I referred to in Mark.
The Bible reveals both experiences –
times when we get trapped
within our own moment of history
and place others and ourselves
in a prison
on the ‘other side of good.’

But also, the Bible holds up
and points to
the many times
when we are able to transcend
our cultural prejudices and blinders
and, almost miraculously,
escape our prisons.
The Bible shows us both –
and sometimes we have to guess which is which.

In the Bible, there seems to be a scratch
that makes the CD skip.
It is a voice
that comes to us over and over and over again.
It begins in the Creation story
when day after day
the disembodied voice of God pronounces
that this cosmos is, “good,”

and sometimes, “very good.”

It continues even as Adam and Eve
are forced to leave the garden
when God continues to offer them help.
It both leads and follows Abraham and Sarah.
It both leads and follows the slaves out of Egypt.
It both leads and follows Israel in and out of Exile.
It both leads and follows the prophets.
It both leads and follows Jesus.
It both leads and follows Jesus’ friends
who survive his death.

It is a voice that reassures,
sometimes directly
and sometimes indirectly,
through story and metaphor.
And here is what that voice reassures:
God loves mercy more than justice.

God clearly desires justice –
a fair distribution of resources and
fidelity to our relationships – but God loves mercy.

Christian tradition has fixated on God’s judgment –
the divine unhappiness with injustice.
But God stutters over mercy.
Our fetish for everyone getting
the same number of green beans on their plate
keeps us from noticing God’s devotion to mercy.
And I think that is the punchline to today’s Exodus story,
and today’s Gospel story,
and to our practice of social distancing
until we can be altogether again.
When we can practice justice, do it.
When we can advocate for justice, do it.
When we can make justice roll down like a river, do it.
But always find a way to practice mercy –
indeed, to love mercy
and be merciful to one another and ourselves.

Last Epiphany 2020: Under our noses

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Text for Preaching: Matthew 17:1-9, “The Transfiguration”

I know people forever changed by battle,
both on the ground splattered by blood,
and in the air singed by fire
while beholding a face through the glass
of another cockpit.

I know people forever changed by childbirth,
those for whom it was inside out
and the ones for whom the experience
was outside in.

Accidents and catastrophe
have transfigured and disfigured and re-rendered
more humans than can be counted,
lives ripped open and
torn asunder without warning.

The angel of death tip-toeing near,
touching the spine or whispering in the ear,
has changed many lives
for both good and bad.

Millions are enraptured almost weekly –
a Pentecostal fever
shivering the brain and racking the body
until encased in a dead faint.
Whether such drama has ever changed a life
I cannot say.

Few of us can point to a single moment,
a pencil spot in time
upon which everything changed for us –
upon which nothing going forward
would ever be the same.
And yet…all of us – all of us – have turned on the dime
of such moments.

We probably did not recognize
the gravity of the moment
the geography of the spot
the singularity of the minute or second
the separation of before and after,
but it was there
when we were.

In fact, all of us
have more than one moment
that changed everything going forward
and rendered everything we left behind
as just so much history.

It is surely a measure of grace
that we do not recognize those moments in real time
because we might never have chosen
what we did choose
and our lives would be lesser for it.
But that is how it is with us:
nearly every moment
transforming
and transfiguring,
and thanks be to God,
we do not even know it.
Moses,
Elijah,
Buddha,

Jesus, and Mohammad
were each taken up
and rendered differently –
changed in an instant
of enormous transformation.

Not only them,
but mystics in every religion
write poetry and songs
about being changed in a razor-thin trice –
a twinkling flash of power
beyond forethought
or control.

This is how we live,
you and me even,
but we just hate to see it
as it actually is.

Ironically, we would rather pretend
that our lives are routinely ordered
because in that kind of world,
we call the shots.
We try to see randomness, change,
and transformations as unusual,
unique,
the exception
to all those plans
and the likeliest of scenario
we imagine for our futures.
That child we gave birth to,
the only one
that could have only been created
at the very moment that his or her conception took place,
a moment we likely never noticed,
became the child we have grown accustomed to
and may even imagine we planned.

That spouse we chose
and probably do not associate with randomness,
took place as a result of endless choices
by so many other people,
known and unknown,
that to call it “our” choice
seriously underestimates the role
of other people
making other choices,
many of which were random and ridiculously
improbable.

The concept of the self-made man or woman
singularly carving out
his or her own destiny
is laughable.

The thin vision
of our lives as chosen and ordered
and the result of a good plan,
is dim vision at best,
and more truthfully, blind.

I have nothing to say about the so-called
“Transfiguration” story we hear twice a year
in the lectionary readings.
As far as I can tell,
it was told to one-up Moses and Elijah,
and later, among Gentiles,
as some kind of evidence
that Jesus was the biggest
and bestest of them all.
As a story it has very little,
if anything, to say to us
about the lives we lead.

But it does serve to remind us,
or at least it can,
that every next moment
is ripe with possibilities
we do not expect
and likely do not see
because of the assumptions we make.

The events
and people
and experiences we live
are braided with singular moments
and delivered to us
via people and events
we did not have control over
and receive often without input.

This is obvious to us
when something big comes along that we were not expecting
but it is equally true in every moment,
even though we are asleep to it.

We probably could not tolerate
hyper-sensitivity to this truth
but it would bolster our humility
and open our minds
if we were a tad more awake.

While we do get to make plans
and work toward goals
and anticipate rewards and accomplishments
for our efforts,
we should also be keenly aware
that nothing we have done, accomplished, or will do
is without the participation of countless other people
contributing to the trajectory of our lives
and the triumphs and defeats we have known.
In everything we do
and plan to do,
both randomness and serendipity
play a role.
And so we are changed,
transformed even,
by singular moments in time
we did not recognize
and often cannot trace back
or put our finger on.

I really do believe
that were we to ascend a mountaintop
from which we could see all the moments of our lives
spread out in detail before us,
we would be blown away by what we saw.
The crazy whacko-mystical story
about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses on a cloud
is nothing compared to the transformations in our lives.

If only we could see our lives
as they actually unfolded
and suddenly recognize the patterns
and interconnected events and people
we have always considered unrelated,
we would be speechless.

There is no real “so what?” to this sermon,
it is more like a sunset
or a dramatic spray of the milky way
on a perfectly clear night.

Just something to look at and say,
“Wow, we’re really small, aren’t we?”
And then bow our heads,
hold our hearts,
and say, “Thank you.”

 

 

 

5 Epiphany, A 2020: Cause & Effect, Not Crime & Punishment

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons

I don’t really know
where to go with Isaiah and Matthew today.
They are so anti-Christian,
or at least “anti”
Puritan-Capitalist-Civil Religion brand of Christianity
that passes for a Gospel faith these days.
(Not to put too fine a point on it).

Let me just to cut to the chase.
Isaiah, speaking for God, is basically saying,
“Look, if you want me to listen to you;
if you want me to DO anything for you…
THEN share your bread with the hungry;
THEN bring the homeless into your house;
THEN clothe those who need it;
THEN satisfy the needs of the afflicted.
You do that
THEN when you call me, I will be there.
You do that
THEN when you screw up, I will be there.
You do that
THEN your life,
and the very memory of your life,
will shine on and on and on and on.”

Notice the “If…then.”
God is conditional,
at least according to Isaiah and Matthew.

Mathew is even more direct about it than Isaiah:
“For I tell you,
unless your righteousness exceeds
that of the scribes and Pharisees –
(think lawyers and preachers) –
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Now how Neanderthal is that!
We don’t like that kind of talk.
We like the soft, cushy, therapeutic
American culture of empowerment language
that discourages conditional relationships.
“Come on,
Isaiah and Matthew,
you’re going to give us a complex.”

Don’t get me wrong,
I am as modernist as anyone here,
and I get the problem we have with conditionality;
but when it comes to our religion,
conditionality gets ignorantly labeled
as the “Old Testament God.”

There is no “Old Testament” God
in contrast to a kinder, gentler “New Testament God.”
That is a Sunday School falsehood.

In order to make such a contrast
we have to utterly ignore the deep compassion
and mercy-loving God of the Hebrew text,
and then close our ears
to the vengeful and threatening God
of the New Testament.

The fact is, we have a multi-dimensional God
that cannot be segregated into
Old Testament and New Testament
without amputation.
What we do have,
in both the so-called “Testaments,”
is the image of a deeply wise God
that understands human nature
with exquisite if painful, depth and clarity.

Well, I’ve gone this far –
I might as well go the distance
and be an apostate
by uttering this modern blasphemy:

There is no such thing as unconditional love
or unconditional relationships.
The notion of unconditional love
or an unconditional relationship
is pure fantasy –
or delusion, whichever you prefer.

Who in their right mind,and that is an important distinction,
would unconditionally accept any kind of abuse,
betrayal or deceit?
No one…not in their right mind.

I don’t think there is anything
that could ever cause me to stop caring for
and wanting the best for my children,
but there are roads they could journey down
on my relationship with them.
That is what “tough love” is all about,
and having been an addict myself
I know how self-centered
and abusive a person can be.

Relationships are based upon conditions,
and should be.
Love, among the saintliest of us,
may not meet a final condition
but behavior certainly can and should be conditional.
The prophets, among whom I include Jesus,
were quite perceptive
in their understanding of God.

They understood that God loves us,
probably unconditionally
as indeed we are the fruit of her womb.
But they also understood that God
set out conditions for our relationship:
“If you do this, I will do this…”.
They understood those conditions,
not as “crime and punishment”
but as “cause and effect.”

I want us to stop and think about the differences
in those two kinds of conditionality –
crime and punishment
verses cause and effect.

We hear godly conditions set down
and reject themas crime and punishment,
and label such talk as “primitive” and “Old Testament.”

But setting limits on God’s relationship with us
is not small-minded or punitive;
it is the law of natural consequences,
a law governing all of Nature…the entire Cosmos.
If we engage in this kind behavior,
God promises,
then these kinds of things will happen
and life will be good for us.

If we engage in those other behaviors
then those other things will happen
and it will not go so well for us.

There are consequences to our actions
and our inaction, and just because God loves us
does not mean we will be protected from the consequences of our choices.
What “the law and the prophets” do,
beginning in Exodus and continuing
right through to Matthew,
is NAME the conditions on our relationship with God
and the consequences of our actions and inaction.

It isn’t crime and punishment,
it isn’t tit-for-tat and small-minded,
it isn’t churlish and vindictive…
it is a matter-of-fact description
of the nature of things.

For example, we have known for centuries
that if we poison or over-use a particular ecosystem
then it will be destroyed.

We have known that when we destroy an ecosystem,
it can take centuries and centuries, if ever,
for the restoration of its balance to take place.

Yet here we are in 2020,
still resisting limitations
on our life-styles and consumption
even though we know – we KNOW –
that climate change is a fact.

That is a clear and simple example
of suffering the consequences of our actions
and inaction.
God will not miraculously save us
from our selfish gluttony.
God WILL continue to provide
prophets
and scripture
and communities
that offer us alternatives.

That is what God does – God keeps reaching out,
keeps hoping
keeps encouraging us to change
and return to live within the conditions
of our relationship with the planet
and one another

Even that old Adam and Eve myth of creation
has this element to it.
When God allows Adam and Eve to suffer
the consequences of their behavior, even then,
God continues to reach out to them
and offer help and support
in their new situation.

But our sad little Puritan, Capitalist, 21st century
incarnation of Christianity,
prefers to talk about God’s unconditional love
and the warm-fuzzies
of God’s healing and care.

Or, the most outrageous spiritual lie of them all,
the prosperity gospel that says God will bless us
with material success and good juju
if we do what the preacher says.

Okay, I said it.
It’s done now.

Truly, I do not know for sure
if enough people will come to a church like this one –
where Isaiah and Matthew
are allowed to speak for themselves.
It is an experiment to be sure.

But I do know
that being honest
and allowing the Bible,
both Old and New
to speak for itself…is liberating.

I do know,
that when Isaiah and Matthew are allowed
to speak for themselves,
something powerful can happen.

I don’t know
if there are enough people
who seek that kind of power?

But I do know,
that those that do
encounter something unexpected,
and that the encounter
can change lives.

I don’t know
if little communities like Trinity Place
coming to terms with the actual
conditionality of our lives
can make a difference
and turn the world around.

But I do know
that hoping we can
and having the courage and tenacity to try
makes the conditions we live within
seem more tolerable.

So, all of that brings us to baptismal ministry –
which, if you have forgotten or fallen asleep,
is our theme for Epiphany.

A “Covenant” is a relationship of promises –
it is unselfconsciously
a conditional relationship.
It is based upon promises:
“If we try, persevere, and act…
then God will…”

Please, then, let us hear the promises
of our Baptismal Covenant
and compare them
to the poem we heard from Isaiah,
and compare them
to the exclamations we heard in Matthew.
I think,
I am pretty doggone sure,
that you will hear them echoing one another
all the way through.

So, you see,
even though it is not what we want,
we don’t have an unconditional relationship with God.
If we are honest and wise,
we do not have an unconditional relationship
with anyone.
And that is a good thing.

Relationships contain promises
and they contain conditions,
and when those promises and conditions
are not met,
then there are consequences
whether we name them
or acknowledge them or not.

One of the promises embedded
in the community of Trinity Place
is that we are open, inclusive and challenging.
What that means
is that we do not offer sugar-frosted gospel here.
We at least try to name
and acknowledge
the conditions and promises
we have heard
in such voices as Exodus, Isaiah, and Matthew.

We will not always fulfill the promise of
openness, inclusion, and challenge
but I am hopeful that when we fail
we will recognize it,
acknowledge it,
and try harder.

Like I said, I do not know if there are really enough people
living in and around Geneva
who want to be part of a spiritual community like this,
but I do know
that I am grateful for the people that do.
And I do know
that whenever people seek this place out
and then become part of it,
they honor all of us.

That’s my take on spiritual community
and I’m sticking to it.

 

Presentation of Jesus at the Temple: Encoded Language

by

TEXTS FOR SERMON:
Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 2:22-40
“Pondering These Things” by Gay Hadley

“Neighbors said it first.
Surely this child
belongs to someone else.
Mary, too, when she held him,
sang him to sleep,
watched his deep, brooding eyes,
wondered where he came from.

We ponder our children,
blessed or not, depending
on your point of view.
We are afraid for the ones
who talk early, speak
with a shivering wisdom.

We fear the world
will be afraid.
And we know we may lose
them, not understanding
why, except to think
they must belong
to someone else.”

SERMON

This sweet story of mom and dad
so pleased to present their new son at the temple,
has a shadow side
whispering in a language
only some listeners can recognize.

It is very phenomenon as American slaves
singing spirituals in the field
that spoke of their suffering and hope
in a language the task-masters could hear
but simply not understand.

Oppressed people everywhere
create metaphoric language
with a literal meaning heard by persecutors
and an actual meaning loud and clear to the tyrannized.

As 21st century readers,
we need to see the split-screen in which this story.
Luke is writing to his audience
fifteen or twenty years AFTER
the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.

To non-Romans,
and even to Romans of a certain class,
the backdrop is a poignant reminder
of the imperial massacre
of Jews in Judah and Galilee.
It seems like a normal story
about a normal activity
but it would immediately trigger
grief and anger
and a molten cocktail of emotions.

Secondly, to go to the historic context of Luke’s story,
the hearers would also
travel much farther back in time – to the Exodus.
In the Exodus liberation story
set in the Egypt of Ramses II,
every Hebrew first-born son
was to be dedicated to God –
even though they belonged to Pharaoh.
That’s one of those public metaphors
that speak one thing to the oppressor
and another to the oppressed.

So, zooming forward
to the time of Tiberius Caesar and Herod Antipas,
Joseph and Mary bring their new-born
to the one-and-only house on earth
where God lives.
Once there, they do what the Egyptian Hebrews did,
dedicate their child to God –
not to Tiberius who was claimed as a god,
but to Yahweh who they know to be God.

Suddenly Luke has transported
Joseph & Mary back to Egypt
with a literary collapse of generations,
painting them into solidarity
with centuries of ancestors.

But wait, this story as told by Luke,
is being told at a time when all semblance of the Temple
and Israel, were gone – as in,
no more.

The two primary actors in this story,
other than the parents who presented their baby,
are two old people
who are dead by the time Luke writes his tale.

The first is Simeon, a man who can’t die
until he recognizes the seed of deliverance and restoration
in a prophesized newborn.
Cleverly, Luke echoes the past
with oblique reference to the children of Israel
who were delivered from their oppression under Egypt,
and by doing so, references the future
which somehow is connected to the baby –
and he does all that without naming any names.

We might ask, what in the world is Simeon is talking about
when he says that God will reveal something to the Gentiles?

Well, it’s the same thing that God revealed to Pharaoh –
“You ain’t in charge, dogface.”

And what then, does it mean for God to bring about
“the glory of the people Israel?”

It means restoration of the land, rebuilding of the temple,
and there, the defeat of Roman domination.
All said of that is said without saying so.

Then there is Anna, a prophet.
She has been fasting for eighty-four years,
a ritual act of grieving.
Suddenly, she grieves no more –
because, why?
Because Jerusalem is about to be redeemed.
Well, what is involved with the redemption of Jerusalem?
Just this: the Roman scum are destroyed,
kicked out, and demolished.
The Temple is rebuilt on Zion.

All of that is proclaimed without ever saying so.

Joseph and Mary were just doing
what was required by law –
presenting their child at the Temple.
What could be more innocent.

To the oppressor hearing the tale,
it is about a couple miscreant peasants
performing their pathetic religion.
But Luke doing something here,
other than telling a sweet tale
about the holy family performing their duty
under the Law of Moses?

“…We are afraid for the ones
who talk early, speak
with a shivering wisdom.

We fear the world
will be afraid.
And we know we may lose
them, not understanding
why, except to think
they must belong
to someone else.”

Gay Hadley’s poem
utters eloquently
the hope and fear
of every parent, aunt, uncle, and
grandparent
who every loved a newborn
addition to the family.
It isn’t the fear of the emperor
or the hope of national independence,
but the recognition
that one so small is up against
enormous hazards
and random events
beyond anyone’s control.
It is the fraught recognition
of the world we are all born into
and the one we live through –
until eventually, don’t.

That is the nexus
of where people like us –
Roman’s after all –
truly share the perspective
of those we oppress,
even if we do not intend to be oppressors.
WE and THEY are US
when it comes to our vulnerability
before the vastness of the cosmos,
and the limitless array of dangers
that surround us in every moment.

The Romans had temples and gods
to which they prayed and sacrificed
for the safety of their newborns,
just like Joseph and Mary.

Oppressed and oppressor are connected by our love,
by our vulnerability, by our hope,
and by our fears.

There is a criticism pious people make
about those
who reach out for God
only when they are in need.
But I totally get that.
Why would we even think about God
when we feel in control,
content and satiated,
and as if death and deprivation
were nowhere to be found?

When we feel like that, we are on top of the world
and we do not NEED God.
Sometimes we imagine we are
the masters of our own destiny,
and we can get taken up in the goodness of life
and not even think about how we got there –
or who we have to thank for an assist.
We’re just happy to be there.
This is the bind
that we post-moderns are in.
I am guessing that most of us here
are not in Malachi’s camp
that sees the world through the bi-focal
of purity and evil.
I could be wrong,
but I am guessing that most of us here
do not think that misfortune is punishment
for our sins
and good fortune
a recompense for our purity.

We know all too well
there are jerks, and ogres, and
grotesquely self-interested hedonists
who have all the power and money
and it will never be shared
with the great majority
who suffer, are disrespected, and wrongly arrested.
There are enormous fortunes out there
that the millions and billions of just plain good folks
will never see or benefit from.
Surely that is not an arrangement
instigated and authorized by God.

So purity and evil
are probably not the cause and effect
of happiness and good fortune
in the way that much of ancient religion
had imagined or hoped.
And, without that scheme,
we are left more vulnerable than ever –
naked before the universe
and praying
that that any huge comet careening through space
will miss the earth.

As 21st century moderns,
we know too much
and yet, so much less
than we need to know.

What are we to do?

I hope you didn’t think I had an answer to that question.
On the other hand, I have been working on it
since I was about eight or ten years old,
and here is where it’s led me.

The difference between spiritual and religious
in my mind,
is that being spiritual
accepts the truth of the situation we are in
and frames it in a way
that empowers us to live well anyway.

Religiosity on the other hand,
begins with a denial of our situation
and claims truths
that have no basis in our experience.

Let’s take baptism as an easy example,
since it is vaguely or thematically related
to what Mary and Joseph
were up to in Luke’s story.

Religiosity would see baptism
as protection from Hell,
a kind of ritual magic rooted in the idea of purity –
that our soul is stained
and this is how we get the stain removed.

A more spiritual understanding of baptism
is that we welcome the newborn
into a communal practice.

That practice is one in which
we share some common values
and commend some common ways of treating
one another, and even
those we do not know.
Rather than an act of purification,
baptism seen spiritually
is a recognition that we have the potential
to live badly – in ways that are both self-destructive
and hurtful to others.
At the same time, baptism offers a vision
for how to live well in community
and resist
our more destructive propensities.

In the “Episcopal Baptismal Covenant,”
it is an explicit understanding
that God doesn’t do anything FOR us
BUT we can do amazing things
with God’s help.

How God helps
is another one of those mysteries
we do not get to know the answer to,
and it is better to acknowledged it
than deny it or fantasized about it.
Proclaiming what God does
or doesn’t do, seems to me
to be foolhardy and arrogant.

So, in a few moments,
when we reaffirm our own baptismal covenant,
I invite us to think about it as a description (not a prescription) of our spiritual practice.

It is not prescriptive
because it can be practiced in an infinite
number of ways,
and depends mightily on our context
and our capacity.
It is DESCRIPTIVE
because spirituality is evocative,
intuitive,
and highly contextual
rather than fixed and precise.
Spiritual practice
is not like flying a plane or driving a car,
because it is not that precise.
In short, the baptismal covenant
is a way of framing the life we live
in this ocean of randomness,
fraught with hazards
and opportunities,
and framing it all
in a way that empowers us.

When we read the Baptismal Covenant,
there is no sense of fear and anxiety,
no denial of our baser proclivities,
and no wishful thinking of divine quid pro quo.

It is instead,
an empowerment
that invites us to build a community
that more nearly reflects
what we imagine
is God’s best dream for us –
the kingdom of God on earth
as it is in heaven.

So I hope we will see how baptism
frames and re-frames life in the world
as we actually experience it,
when we reaffirm that covenant in a moment.
Oh, and one more thing,
even though it doesn’t say so explicitly:
It is always…
just one step at a time.

The Episcopal Baptismal Covenant

“With God’s help, we will continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship,
in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers.

With God’s help, we will persevere in resisting evil, and,
when we fall into sin, repent, and return to the Lord.

With God’s help, we will proclaim by word and example
the Good News of Christ.

With God’s help, we will seek and serve Christ in all persons,
loving our neighbor as ourselves.

With God’s help, we will strive for justice and peace among all people,
and respect the dignity of every human being.”

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).

Trinity’s historic building and our adaptive reuse plan has been named and embraced by The Landmark Society of Western New York. Among thousands of worthy historic sites and projects, Trinity’s was selected. Follow this link to read more: https://landmarksociety.org/2019-five-to-revive-announced/

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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