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9 Pentecost: A parasite that worms its way into our hearts and minds

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Texts for 9 Pentecost (2 Kings and John)
Youtube video follows text

Okay, it is the 21st century
and we have discovered planet 452b
that may be an earth-double.
How can we not
see stories about Elisha and Jesus
differently than earlier people did —
and how can we not
ask different questions of such stories,
even from when “we” first heard them?

But here is an open secret:
These stories were not even intended for us.
We are strangers to those ancient story-tellers,
living on another continent
2000 and more years away.

So let’s recognize these stories
were not even meant for us.

2 Kings reports four miracles
performed by Elisha
in order to demonstrate
that he is an appropriate successor
to the prophet Elijah.

Then, a thousand or more years later,
John attributes the same miracles to Jesus
in order to demonstrate
that JESUS is an appropriate successor
to the prophets Moses, Elijah, and Elisha.
In all of John’s miracles stories,
Jesus one-ups
his predecessors.
That is the point of the stories.
We just hear the miracle,
and in our 21st century seat,
ask if such things could really happen?
Or even reject the verasity of such stories.

But for the author of John’s gospel
the point of the stories is not for us,
rather, it is that Jesus’ wow-factor
is bigger and better than
Elijah’s and Elisha’s wow-factors.

Elsewhere in 2 Kings
Elijah and Elisha
are walking along
followed by a bevy of lesser prophets –
disciples so to speak –
when they come to the river.

Without skipping a beat,
Elijah smacks the water with his robe
and the two of them walk through the water
on dry land – echoing back
to Moses at the Red Sea.
Jesus doesn’t need no stinking magic robe
for him to actually walk ON water.

Likewise, Elisha does three food tricks
during a time of terrible famine,
the final one we heard this morning:
he feeds a hundred men
with only a single tithe of food
someone gave him.
In other words,
he had just enough to feed one prophet
and yet, after feeding 100,
there was stil food left.

Well, Jesus has just enough
to feed one family
but after he feeds 5000
there is plenty left over.

In a more innocent time
such a competition of miracle stories
was used by preachers
and evangelists
and ordinary folks sharing their faith,
to prove
that Jesus was God.

I can remember thinking that
as a kid.
In my Sunday School mind I thought,
”Wow, walking on water, that proves it!”

But I don’t remember any sermons
in which it was pointed out
that the other great prophets of Israel
did such miraculous things too.

And when I was a kid
no one ever told me about Milarepa,
the great Tibetan spiritual master,
who could fly.

We had Jesus who did such big stuff
but any other stories we heard
were dismissed as mytholog —
or cartoons.
At least that was my childhood,
I don’t know about yours.

But that was then
and this is now.

There are still churches
that speak of the Bible as proof of itself –
churches that try to hermetically seal
its members within a cocoon of thinking
so they are not troubled by obvious questions
raised by using the bible for proof of itself.

But in our tradition,
the authority of the Bible
is not that it is an unassailable,
or an eyewitness account,
nor the belief that the Bible
is a meticulously detailed
factual version of events
recorded verbatim
with the miraculous assistance of God.
It is none of those things,
at least from our tradition.

The authority of the Bible
is that we are the same community
in another time
and in another place
seeking, struggling with, and encountering
the presence of God in our midst.

We are the same community of the Bible
doing the same things
and seeking the same things
and struggling with the same things
as those people did thousands of years ago.

The problem with the Bible
is not the Bible itself;
the problem is what we have laid on top it.

As the early religious movement survived Jesus
it aged and developed and spread,
and then it became the religion of an empire.
When that happened,
Christianity sought to harmonize the Bible.
It felt the need to harmonize
all the conflicting stories
because they wanted it to also reinforce
the countless beliefs it brought to the Bible —
from far outside the Bible.

In other words, and for example,
five hundred years after Jesus,
Christians living in what is now Turkey
and who were citizens of Rome,
wanted to make Scripture
conform to their worldview
and religious assumptions.
They didn’t want the gospels, for example,
to contradict each other
or to be in tension with what they believed,
so they imposed upon them
an interpretive matrix
that mushed things together,
ignored internal contradictions,
and made things fit.

But they were not alone.
Christians in Ethiopia did that
and Christians in Egypt did that
and Christians in Spain did that
and Christians in Britain did that
and Christians on the Minnesota prairie did that.
We have rung the Bible
through paintings,
stained glass images,
maudlin, triumphant, and sentimental hymns
and spirituals,
and every other kind of art
and cultural prism at our disposal
until the people,
events,
and ideas of the Bible
look and sound like we want them to.

We did all of that
to harmonize the wildly divergent,
utterly disorganized,
and truly eclectic stories of the Bible,
as if they formed a clear image
and delivered proof for our way of thinking.

Here is an interesting way to think about this.

Let’s say that everyone
who is a part of this congregation
has been keeping a spiritual journal
that describes our understanding
of what God is doing in our lives –
or in some cases,
complaining about what God
is not doing in our lives.

And let’s say that the people of Trinity Place
have been keeping their journals since 1806
when it was first formed.
And now let’s pretend that somehow,
all those scraps of paper
were brought together and typed into a computer.

What we would have
would be a wild mishmash of perspectives
flowing across a period of time
that witnessed the second Industrial Revolution;
two world wars;
a cold war;
the discovery of electricity,
flight, and
the splitting of atoms;
not to mention the rise and fall
of antibiotics,
terrorism and many more wars.

The quality of writing,
the breadth and narrowness of perspectives,
the quality of wisdom and insight,
the peculiarity and ordinariness of content
would be wildly different
from person to person
and generation to generation.

Just imagine the differences
we might find between
Bunny Bell,
Kathy Flick,
Beth Henderson,
Howard Sabin,
Cam Miller,
Sherry Gibbon, and
Kim Donselaar?
What kind of violence
would we have to do to all of that writing,
that all those people
over all those generations produced,
in order to make it offer a harmonious
point of view?

So one of the truly wonderful
and amazing things
that is happening these days,
is the effort to return to the Bible
without all of our harmonizing efforts.

But we will never be able to strip away
everything we have laid over the Bible
and there is no pure and pristine original
to get back to and uncover anyway.

For one thing,
the Bible was originally told not written.
When it did get written down
it was done in disconnected scraps
by a variety of editors
over a great many years
and cultures
and languages.
So there is no original Bible
for us to uncover
and say, “Ah ha! Here it is!”
as if it were a buried pirate treasure.

It came to us in pieces
over time
and from different voices
and cultures
and languages.

But what is exciting,
is that we can begin to see
what we have laid on top of the Bible
and recognize it as our effort to harmonize
what was not originally in harmony.
We can learn a lot about ourselves
by seeing what we have shellacked the Bible with,
and we can learn more and more
as we keep digging.

So one thing that means,
is you will not hear me say,
“Jesus walked on water
therefore Jesus is Lord of Nature.”

What I might say instead,
is that this story originates
in the Gospel of Mark
who uses it to proclaim Jesus as Lord
even over Nature,
and that John retells it,
a generation and a half later,
to proclaim Jesus is greater
than Elijah and Elisha.

You see, it even changed purpose and meaning
from Mark to John.

So I do not proclaim that something in the bible really, really happened.
Instead, I try to point out what the particular
editor or author hoped we would see.
And like Paul or Augustine or Dorothy Day,
I will converse and argue with the story
rather than simply believe
what Mark
or John
or the 2nd Council of Nicea
may have wanted us to believe.

But that still leaves the question
of whether or not
Elijah could part the waters of the Jordan;
and Elisha could feed a hundred men with a portion allotted to one man;
and whether or not
Jesus could walk on water
or feed five thousand
with an amount normally shared
by a single family;
or for that matter, whether or not
Milerapa could fly?

We all come to such a question
from a different place,
and I come to it from a place.

I am more inclined to focus on small details
like this one in John’s story.
“Jesus knew that the people planned to come
and take him by force
and make him their king,
so he left and went into the hills alone.”

I mean, listen to that!
There is so much more for us
in that one measily sentence
than wondering about miracles.

Jesus, “taken by force.”
The crowd, “wanting to make him their king.”
Jesus, stomping off to be alone in the hills…

I like to think of the bible as a holy parasite
that worms its way
through our thoughts
and into our hearts
causing us to see the world differently
and do things that risk our own self-interest.

A sentence like that one
is a parasite
and it will worm its way inside
if we drop our guard.

All miracles require is a “yes” or “no.”
It is all the other stuff that is more dangerous.

8 Pentecost B, 2021: No Place for a Story

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Texts for Preaching
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56; “The Place for No Story” by Robinson Jeffers

I do not usually talk about poets
in a sermon,
and to be honest,
though I am a student of poems
I am not a student of poets.
Mostly I could care less about poets.

But today I want to start
with a brief nod to Robinson Jeffers
because he was a Jeremiah.
I have talked about Jeremiah a lot,
and as Jeff Hodde might tease me,
I like to talk about Jeremiah and Isaiah
more than Jesus.

The readings for the past couple of weeks
and in the next few as well,
put an emphasis on prophets
and prophetic mission.

Jeffers is an example of a modern prophet
and worth noting.
He was the son of a Presbyterian minister
and biblical scholar, poor boy,
and he became a student of medicine,
anthropology, literature, classic languages,
and forestry.
Oh, and he graduated
with an undergraduate degree at 18.
That is not to say you have to be brilliant
to be a prophet.
That is just one of his gifts — if indeed it is a gift.

Anyway, to make a long story short,
Jeffers turned to writing poetry and plays full time
and developed what he called
the philosophy of “inhumanism.”

He thought that human beings
had been jilted by God
because of our obsession with ourselves
that had led to so many crimes against nature.
Think Jeremiah:
“‘How terrible it will be for the leaders of Judah,
who are scattering and destroying my people,’
says the Lord.”

“They are responsible for the people, so the Lord, the God of Israel, says to them:
‘You have scattered my people and forced them away and not taken care of them.
So I will punish you for the evil things you have done.’”

Well, Jeffers’ fame and poetry
reached a zenith before WWII
but in the extreme patriotism of wartime
and the Red Scare following it,
he was criticized as unpatriotic
and his strong denunciation of war
and its extreme destruction of nature
made him a target.

Like Jeremiah who was thrown down a well
and left to die,
Jeffers was shunned for his prophetic rage
against American imperialism
and his philosophical shift
from human
to not-human.

He is an example of a modern prophet.
The title of that poem,
“The Place for No Story”
is to say,
look at this spectacular natural scene —
it is a place that human presence
will only dilute
if not destroy.
Stay out, get away, leave it alone.
This place
is for its own sake
not for human consumption.

Well, whether or not you can go along
with his non-anthropomorphic philosophy,
and his God that has not one iota of humanity,
or his bitter critique of American imperialism,
he is an example of the voice
crying in the wilderness.

And by wilderness,
the bible does not mean nature’s emptiness
so much as the landscape of human power
and the carnage human power
leaves everywhere it goes.
Any voice that speaks in its midst,
against the interests of human power,
will be an endangered voice.
We see that playing out on the streets today
and just about anywhere
the clash of powers
exercises their implements of coercion.

So the prophetic tradition
gives us the image of walking upstrea
against the traditional exercise of human power —
whether that is in the halls of government,
banking, commerce, military,
or the church.
Jesus stands
and teaches
in that tradition.

The reading we have today from the lectionary
cuts out a big piece of a larger story
that demonstrates Jesus’ prophetic nature.
You can see that it skips from verse 34 to 53.

What we see in these missing verses
is that a prophet does not bath
in shallow companionship
nor seek fame and fortune.

In Mark, Jesus is always trying to get away
from the crowds
and escape to “lonely” places.
In other words,
where people are not.
Think Robinson Jeffers
and “The Place for No Story.”
Jesus wants to get to a place
and do something that will have no story
associated with it.
BUT, when the needs of people arrive
he always responds — no matter how tired
or how fierce his own longings.
The verses we read today
are followed by a feeding of 5000 story.
But the end of that story
is what always hits me.

“Immediately” it says,
as soon as the people were done eating,
Jesus sends his disciples
to the other side of the lake.”
What does he do then?
He stays there to say good bye
to each one of the 5000.
He stays there
to send them home one by one
before dark,
and makes sure
the very last person is addressed.

Only then,
after everyone has gone,
does he go get his needs met.
What it says literally, is:
“After sending them away, (his disciples
already gone), he went into the hills to pray.”

That scene is followed
by Jesus walking on water in the dark,
to catch up with the disciples
still rowing to the other side.

But then the cycle starts all over again:
A lonely place gets crowded
with people flocking to have their needs met
by Jesus,
Jesus addressing them the best he can,
Jesus teaching them, which
is what he had come to do,
and then finding another
lonely place.

Now…
do not get me wrong.
I am not saying we all have to be Jesus.
That is an awful notion
that traditional Christianity
has foisted upon us.
It is not our task to be Jesus.
We are not supposed to be little Jesuses.
Our task is to learn from him
and be ourselves.

Our task is to learn from him,
and the other prophets,
and become better version of ourselves.

We will not all be
Robinson Jeffers
or Mary Oliver
or Wendell Berry —
prophets able to voice the sacred
as it calls to us from out of the natural world.

We previously
or currently
have stood inside banks,
city councils,
military corridors,
engineering companies,
behind the bar or the register,
inside classrooms,
at desks
inside or outside the offices of power,
on assembly lines
of looking down at the machinery
from the air conditioned window of management.

Wherever we have stood
or currently stand,
the sacred calls out to us
and pleads
to be voiced.

It isn’t a plea so much as a word —
a word with our name on it.
It is left up to us to voice it or not.
But left unvoiced,
the sacred warns us
we will have contributed to
the banishment
or the exile…
or the destruction
or the end
or whatever it is
the sacred has tried to warn us about.

The voice that calls us by name,
from out of the past
or in this moment,
wants our voice to speak for it
and our lives to live for it
and to help make us a better version of ourselves.

That is what prophetic means,
and that is what,
these days,
the prophet does.

7 Pentecost B, 2021: If I were a Prophet

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

When we have stories that feature
John the Baptist like we do today,
I repeatedly feel the need to pay our respects
to the Mandaeans,
followers of John the Baptist
that continue on in the world today.

There are roughly seventy thousand Mandaeans
spread from Indonesia to Iraq to Sweden.
They have their own sacred text, the Ginza,
and they continue to baptize – every week
rather than once in a lifetime.

Whereas Christians turned baptism
into a once in a lifetime sacrament,
the Mandaeans use it in every celebration
from weddings to funerals.
Many Mandaeans still speak
a unique form of Aramaic —
the language we assume
was Jesus’ first tongue.

But that said, I feel uninspired
by Mark’s peculiar
and somewhat inaccurate review of events
from so long ago.

I must confess that sometimes
I suffer from B.F.S. – Bible Fatigue Syndrome.
It is not a great ailment for a preacher
but maybe a professional hazard.

Sometimes I get tired translating arcane stories
into contemporary meaning.
Sometimes, not too often,
but sometimes,
I just look at the readings and say to myself,
“Really? This again?”

Anyway, I know I’ve got Bible-fatigue
when I feel that way
even with one of my very favorite prophets — Amos.

Amos encountered fatigue himself.

You see, early in the short book of the prophet Amos,
Amos talks God out of an angry
and torturous punishment of Israel —
the threat was first a scourge of locusts
and then consumption by fire.
But seven chapters into
the little nine chapter book,
Amos has given up talking God
out of anything.

He silently shrugs in resignation
as he is compelled
to report to the king and false prophets of Israel,
yet another vision of destruction.
The plumb line
is dangled
and the nation doesn’t measure up…again.

So, Amos warns,
the wall of inequity, Israel, will fall.

Amos doesn’t even try to talk God out of it this time,
and in Biblical literature,
talking God out of smiting people
is a special talent of a prophet.

I forgot to mention that last week
when I was talking about prophets.
They have a special gift
for soothing divine indignation.
But Amos doesn’t use his super power
for calming God this time.
He just lets the bad news hang in the air
because he knows God is right.

He know the people are just going to fail again
to measure up to God’s requirements.

I feel a special relationship to that image
of the plumb line
because I am one of those people
who can’t draw a straight line —
even with a ruler or a square.
When I used to make things,
I couldn’t make a square corner
if my life depended upon it.
I think I just see crooked.

I used to watch my dad work on a project
and build beautiful things
that came out square, level, and smooth.

Not me.
I’d be the one listening to Amos’ image
of the wall leaning away
from the vertical plumb line, and say:
Yep, looks pretty straight to me.”

But Bible-fatigue has taken hold of my mind this week
and I looked at this personal favorite from Amos
and that terribly interesting beheading in Mark
and shrugged my shoulders.
So what?
What’s in it for us?

So I am grateful to Robert Francis
for his more immediately accessible poem.
The punch line of which, is: “Here I sit,
between the known and the unknown.”

“Nothing was far that once was near.
Nothing is hid that once was clear.
Nothing was God that is not here.”

If it does not get me into too much trouble with God,
I am going to play prophet for a moment,
and echo this poem
and leave Amos and Mark
to speak for themselves.
And that may be the kindest
and wisest thing

I ever did for Amos and Mark.

Anyway, here is the wisdom
I want to leave us with today,
because there is no deeper or greater wisdom
that I know of anyway,
about God and the life of the spirit.

God is not available to us
in the past
nor in the future,
but only here,
only now.

The past can show us tracks —
the footprint of the holy on human history —
but it is not God.

The future is total mystery
toward which we can only blow a kiss
and wish.

God exists only here,
only now,
only in the present.

Our struggle, as Francis points to,
is that we constantly wander
between the past and the future —
the known and the unknown,
a pinball bouncing off each.

We linger in memories,
savor sentiment,
pine for how it used to be.
We reach for what is next,
and anticipate with great desire or anxiety
what is yet to come.
But rarely do we sit alone
between the known and the unknown —
present to the moment,
present with God.

I am not wise enough to know
why we are so bad at this,
but I do know that to sit alone
in the present,
can be filled with anxiety,
ghosts,
pain,
and all manner of dread.

It is a place we do not go
because to be alone in the present
is to see and hear and feel things
that unsettle us.
And yet there in that place,
in the midst of those things —
both underneath
and among them —
is God.

It is the only place God is.
Sit with that for a moment.

 

We go looking in cathedrals
and Grand Canyons
and lakeside,
when God is present in a diner,
in the recliner,
in the shower for crying out loud.

When we get good
at turning off the noise around us
and listening to the noise within us
and allow it all to settle a little bit —
not trying to get rid of it
but listening through it —
then we begin to notice the presence
of something or someone else.

We cannot find God in scripture
or in nature —
we only find tracks there —
tracks that resonate God’s presence in the past.
But God is not there
in the grand beauty of the natural world
nor in the intricacies of Scripture.

God is here:
right now
right here
in each present moment.

If I were a prophet…
that is the message I would proclaim.
If we seek God in the present moment
we may not only discover God,
but we will discover more nearly
ourselves.

6 Pentecost: Prophetic Community

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Michael Jordan at Boston Garden: Steve Lipofsky at basketballphoto.com

Have you have ever considered
how difficult it might be to play basketball
as Michael Jordan’s or LeBron James’
teenage son or daughter?

Same with being Jesus’ brothers and sisters.
Or even his mother.

We can get to the discomfort of being Jesus
by coming through the back door of his family.

Jesus is known as “the son of Mary.”
No man in those days
was known as the son of his mother
unless his father was unknown.

To have Jesus referenced
as the son of Mary, as in,
“Isn’t this Mary’s son?”
is a reminder of a scandalous history
that just won’t die in a small town.
Likewise, to be Jesus’ brothers –
as in James, Joses, Judas, and Simon –
is to be associated with whatever your brother does
…guilt by association.

”Isn’t that your crazy brother, James?
Must run in the family!”

Just a few weeks ago
we heard the story in Mark
about the painful hemorrhage in family bonds
when Jesus was at his own house in Nazareth
and it was crowded with people
who had come to be healed of their woundedness.

If you remember that story,
from way in the back,
perhaps out in the alley because they can’t get through,
Mary and her other children appear.

The narrator tells us
they came to take Jesus home
because they thought he was possessed –
literally, beside himself or,
as we would say today, crazy.

Someone yells out, “Hey Jesus,
your mother and brothers and sisters are here.”
Knowing what’s up,
Jesus says – perhaps scowling in the direction
of his blood relatives –
“Who are my mother
and my brothers
and my sisters?
These here,” pointing to the scabbed
and puss-oozing,
“these are MY mother and brothers and sisters.”

So, long before Jesus was rejected
by his neighbors at the old home synagogue,
Jesus had to contend with the painful distance
between a prophet
and his or her own family and friends.

But we can also identify personally, I’m sure,
that it is painful to be Mary and to be his siblings too.

As my mother used to tell me,
my actions didn’t just reflect on me
but also on the whole family.
Jesus’ family
become suspect because Jesus was suspect.
Jesus’ notoriety served to keep the scandal of his birth
fresh and dogging his mother all those years later.
His shame is their shame.

But while his family is ashamed,
apparently Jesus is not.
Jesus had a vision they did not see;
he had a knowledge they do not know;
he had a purpose they did not share.
And so goes the prophet.

That reading from Buechner
dispels the myth
that a prophet is one who sees the future.
In the biblical tradition, a prophet
is not a fortune-teller
or even the predictor of future events.

A prophet is the voice of God.
The prophet is the very lips of God —
the mind of God
uttered upon the notes
of an ordinary human voice.

You may or may not believe in such a thing,
but just imagine that if it were true,
how terrible – how terrifying –
it would be to be a prophet?
No one in their right mind
who has even an inkling of what that would mean,
would want to be a prophet.

When I was younger,
and even more dense and ridiculous than I am now,
I wanted to be prophet.

Like many liberals in the church,
I liked to think of myself as prophetic
when I acted as a surly and angry critic
of the church and other institutions.

But what liberals often think of as prophetic
is no more than adolescent rebellion
or passive-aggressive bitterness.

Meanwhile, the prophets we do have
get romanticized beyond the point of recognition.
They get domesticated and easy to take
rather than what they were —
hard to swallow,
painful to listen to,
maybe even unpleasant to be around.

Take, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here was an ordinary minister
who actually wanted to be an academic not a prophet.
He is a mythic hero now of course,
but only in retrospect.
At the time of the Civil Rights Movement,
most whites and even millions of Blacks
took offense at him,
and felt threatened
by the activities to which he gave voice.

His popularity,
even among his own inner circle,
ebbed and flowed.
At one point,
Dr. King almost single-highhandedly
took on the entire leadership
of the Civil Rights Movement
by deciding to engage in public criticism
and advocacy against the Vietnam war,
because he could see it was a racist war.
He insisted that Vietnam was a platform
from which to confront racism
and that action got him in trouble with everyone.

Like all prophets,
he was out-of-step
with his own colleagues – as in,
a step or more ahead.

Prophets are rarely
wild-eyed zealots
marching off to glory like a moth
burning itself in the heat of a flame.

Rather, Moses, Jeremiah,
Amos, Micah, Ezekiel, Jesus…
were either well-ensconced members
of the establishment when they began
their prophetic ministry,
or they were innocent by-standers
who were abruptly selected for the job
and immediately retired into obscurity afterward –
if indeed they made it out alive.

Truly, being a prophet
is not a job anyone who understands it
would desire or seek.
The position has a fairly specific job description
in case any of us is interested in applying.

The prophet holds up the distance
between what we say we believe
and what we actually do.

I’ll repeat that in case you want the job:
The prophet holds up the distance
between what we say we believe
and what we actually do.

In deference to the Gospel story we just heard,
the prophet is actually more likely
to be an influential voice
among those with whom he or she lives
than among strangers.

Think about it.
Who has more influence on us
than our family and friends?
Certainly the home crowd
is more persuasive and powerful
than a ranting television preacher –
or even a ranting Trinity Place preacher.

Surly the opinions of family and friends,
over time,
have far more clout with us
than unknown social critics
who yak at us from social media and television.

It is parents, children, spouses,
partners, co-workers, and members
of the faith community
who can best hold up to us
the distance between what we say
and what we do.

Often it only takes one person
to stick their neck out
and refuse to confirm
an ignorant bigotry
and staunch the easy flow
of such things among a group
of family and friends.
Or if not stop the flow
raise a conversation
that can demonstrate that the bigoted
or ignorant remarks
are not universally held.

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m not Pollyanna.
When we stand up to be that first little voice,
like Ezekiel says,
we may feel as if we are surrounded
by briers and thorns and scorpions.

But eventually truth has a way of leveling ugliness
and coming back around
to shine upon the holder of truth.

It is certainly not a pleasant task,
but how much more life-giving is it
to be the lips of God
than the brackish decay of silence
in the face of bigotry,
ignorance, or even lies?

Being prophetic
is not fun
or even that rewarding,
but the alternative is to rot
in the furrows of those whose intent
is not love
and whose seed is not truth.

Being prophetic does not require fame,
public histrionics,
or anything terribly heroic.

All it really requires
is for us to begin saying
what we already know to be true
and give voice to a vision
we already know to be possible.

In case you have a nagging
and irrational interest in being prophetic,
here is an even more specific job description
for the position of prophet.

First, the prophet identifies and names
the assumptions and idols
we have taken for granted
and live with daily.

Then the prophet evokes the vision
of an alternative possibility.

And finally, the prophet helps the community
to rehearse that alternative vision.

While you an I may not each be called
to a prophetic ministry,
the Church as the body of Christ,
IS a prophetic ministry.
That is what we are.

We cannot be the Church
unless we are a prophetic community.
It is our nature,
and if we refuse the task then we are not
who we were created to be.
It really is just that simple and just that important.

As the body of Christ
we are called upon to name out loud
in front of the city,
the neighborhood,
and anyone else who might listen,
the false idols we worship.

You know, like consumerism,
nationalism,
denominationalism,
the immoderate pursuit of happiness,
success, wealth, and power.
It is not a small or secret list.

After naming our idols
we are called upon to share our vision
of an alternative way to live.

For some of us, that means
learning a way to talk about our faith
with the people we know and love,
even the people we simply work with
or see on a regular basis.

We cannot be the lips of God
if we are unable to evoke the vision
of an alternative possibility.

Finally, as a prophetic community,
we are to rehearse that vision
of an alternative way to live –
rehearse it personally in our own homes
and neighborhoods and jobs,
and rehearse it as the Church
when we come together for worship or fun.

We are to be like a labor and delivery coach
or Douala who assists in the birthing process –
we can not make it happen
but we can attend God
who brings forth new life.

Here is the truth
we must know and remind each other often:
If we do not name the idols,
if we do not evoke the vision,
if we do not rehearse the alternative,
then we cannot be the body of Christ.

We are called to be a prophetic community
in the image of the prophet Jesus,
a prophet
who walked in the shoes of the prophets
before him,
and who blesses all the prophets – including us —
who follow in his footsteps.

This is our call – yours, mine, and Trinity’s:
to be a prophetic community in the image of Jesus.
And to those who get upset with us,
and call us unAmerican
or unChristian, or just rude and annoying,
let us remember what Fred Buechner told us:

“…a prophet’s quarrel with the world is deep down a lover’s quarrel. If they didn’t love the world, they probably wouldn’t bother to tell it that it is going to hell. They’d just let it go.”

In fact, we love the world,
we love the community,
we love the human family…so let’s not let it go.

3 Pentecost B, 2021: Our Inheritance

by

Texts for Preaching:
Mark 4:26-34
What to remember when waking by David Whyte
The YouTube version follows the text

Side-by-side in today’s reading from Mark,
are two parables.
I’m going down and dirty today —
taking a fillet knife
and slicing out the edible parts.

Both parables imagine
what the kingdom of God is like,
and that is the critical comparison for a parable.
Parables were the unique teaching tool
of early first century Judean and Galilean preachers.

They held one point
laced into a contrast.
Forget all the fluff the Gospel editors
added to them, especially Matthew.
They are not allegories
in which element symbolizes something.

They are parables
in which the single point
is framed by a contrast.

So, the kingdom of God,
in the first parable
is like a farmer who harvests the crop
immediately
when it is ripe.

This is truly an agricultural metaphor that
any farmer would understand.
When the corn or soybeans are ready to harvest
you can’t stand around savoring the view.
The harvest comes and immediately
the farmer is out there with his sickle.
Farmers know that the forces of Nature
are impetuous
and can quickly take back what has been given.

So the kernel of wisdom
embedded in this first parable
is that the kingdom of God strikes
while the iron is hot!
It doesn’t hem and haw,
wonder if the market will be better tomorrow,
or fret about success and failure.
The kingdom of God scatters seeds,
waits for them to ripen,
and then acts immediately.

To put it even more succinctly:
the kingdom of God
acts instantly
when the moment is ripe.
When the moment is ripe, God acts.

The problem for us, of course,
is that we mostly do not believe God acts.
Many of us are functional agnostics
who would be hard pressed
to publicly attest to a single act of God
in the world,
in our lives,
in our lifetimes.

So this can be a disconcerting parable
since it may not align with our experience
or beliefs about how the universe operates.

More about that and David Whyte in a moment.

The next parable proclaims that
the kingdom of God,
upon whose branches
are nestled countless living things,
begins from the tiniest of seeds.

I like to super-size the metaphor this way:
Upon the kingdom of God
is nestled countless spinning orbs
and far-flung fiery asteroids
and clusters of life in the cosmos,
all of which had its origins
in the teeniest, tiniest speck…or bang.

That’s pretty straightforward.

So if we put these two parables together,
as Mark did,
they tell us that when the moment is ripe
God acts immediately;
and the ripening of that moment
will take place inconspicuously.

Let me repeat that…

Teeny, tiny, and inconspicuous
is what it is all about
in the Kingdom of God.

It is the opposite of our perspective on the world.
It is NOT about being the biggest,
baddest,
richest,
most powerful
or fantastically successful person.

In fact, it is not about us at all.
It is about God’s action.

In the Economy of God
the currency is all small change
rather than amassed wealth.
God acts when the moment is ripe;
and God acts through supremely insignificant
little minnows like us.

These parables put us in our place
even as they liberate us.
We are not the authors of the moment.

We are not the creators of the seed.
It is not our field.
We don’t make life grow.
We cannot hurry it.
We cannot ripen it.

The kingdom of God
lives and moves and has its being
in the immense drama unfolding all around us
and we can’t even see it.
Once we get over being insulted
because it is not about us,
and that we have no bragging rights
when it comes to the kingdom of God,
this hard news is liberating.

It really isn’t about us
and that is great.

We are only dust mites
on an extremely small planet
in a particularly tiny galaxy
in a cosmos
that goes on and on and on and on
in every direction
farther than we can see —
farther than we can imagine.

So if we think we know how to judge the world
and what takes place around us,
we might want to broaden our perspective
by looking through the Hubble telescope.

And at the same time, while it is not about us
it is also true that even through creatures
as insignificant
and limited as we are,

God can bring about amazing things
when God acts.

We will never see it
or get know it while it is taking place,
but living as if we might possibly be agents
in the kingdom of God
is empowering.

Or think of it this way.
If you are a single cell
with little or no relationship
or significance
to the billions of other single cells
floating around in the warm waters of creation,
it can be a lonely,
vulnerable,
and enervating life.

But if you are a single cell
that is part of a body,
that is an actor in a larger ecosystem
with other bodies
and other forms of life
all interacting and growing
and being held in the branches
of the creator-of-all-that-is,
then it will feel like an amazing, miraculous life.

In either case, we are the same single cell
but how we experience
and live that life
will be vastly different.

That is what I hear
in these two parables.
It is God’s action
and God’s garden
and while we are not even be a speck
in God’s eye,
we are part of it.

Now here is where all this
connects to that great David Whyte poem.

“In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance…  (What to Remember when Waking)

First, we will never, ever see
the kingdom of God
looking at the world through the lens
of pure reason
and mechanical thinking.
We see it in the miasma in between
thought and imagination,
in between reason and intuition,
in between art and science.

The exact moment we start pointing to it
and trying to describe it,
we lose it.

Whyte’s description of that in between
wakefulness and sleep
is a perfect metaphor
for the consciousness within which
we become aware of the presence of God’s reign
and the tree in whose branches we nest.

And then there is this:

“To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance…”

Knowledge of this realm
in whose branches we nest,
or in whose cosmos we spin,
is a hidden gift we carry for others —
knowing it
and living within it
and sharing it
is our inheritance.
It is not something we need to prove.

It is a gift we live, an inheritance we enjoy.

Trinity in Time of Pandemic

Our vision…to be 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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