Cam Miller

Last Epiphany: “When we should be making whoopee instead of hay” (Dillard)

March 5, 2022 by Cam Miller

Many of us thought that war in Europe
was something relegated to history
but today it is in our headlines, on our minds,
and in our prayers.
The Bishop of The Episcopal Church in Europe,
Mark Eddington, reminded
those in his diocese that is spread across
the continent rather than in just one nation,
that the place where war lives
is in the human heart.

As we pray for peace
I encourage us to do the work
of eradicating war in our hearts.

And now, I invite your focus
to be present here
and in this moment.

I say that, but I was not
where I should have been
when writing this sermon.
Here is what I mean.
We have three readings today
but I got stuck in the verses of Exodus
that appear before the ones we actually read.

But honestly, that is only half true.
I was really enthralled and taken up
with the excerpt from Annie Dillard
and hovered over it
wondering if I could preach on it
instead of Luke.
But then, because of Annie Dillard,
I got curious about Moses.
Suddenly I wanted to re-read in Exodus
where God sticks Moses into the little crack.
It is at the end of chapter 33
right before the part of the story we read today.

But before I get into that one,
the readings from Exodus and Luke that are
actually appointed for today,
have Moses and Jesus with magically shinning faces.
That is weird and unusual right?
It can’t be an accident, can it, that the architects
of the Revised Common Lectionary
put these two readings as bookends on the same day?
So what’s with the shinning faces?

I have preached on these stories
so many dang times,
and you know by now
that Luke is telling this story
to proclaim that Jesus belongs in the pantheon
of spiritual superheroes with Moses and Elijah.
That is the headline:
”Jesus seen hanging out in the clouds
talking with Moses and Elijah!”

Christians have trouble playing well with others
so it wasn’t enough for the Church
to celebrate a Big Three event.
It had to make the transfiguration
all about Jesus
and how he is greater than anybody else.

But I dare say, that wasn’t the original intent.
So all of that is fine
if we want to remain in the clouds
talking about theology
and trading intellectual nuggets with each other.
But I don’t.
I want to bring it down from the mountaintop.
I want to talk about you and me
and where we live —
without the glow,
without the magic, without the light show.

Annie Dillard and my curiosity helped me do that.

Here is a piece of Exodus just before today’s reading:
(33:)18 Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

19 And (God) said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you (my) name…

20 But,” (God) said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”
21 And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock;

22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;

23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

So there we are,
right in the middle of Annie Dillard,
stalking the gaps.

Cleft in the rock.
”The gaps are the clefts in the rock,” she says,
where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells
the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery.”

It is such a weird little story in Exodus
about the relationship between God and Moses,
but we hardly ever get to talk about it.

Moses, being Moses, pesters God for more access.
To be honest, Moses agitates for control
in their relationship,
as if he is God’s manager or promoter.
Moses wants to see God’s face
because it is not until we look into someone’s eyes
that we really sense we know them.
To see God’s face would be
to know God’s essence,
and be with God
in the same place
at one and the same moment
would be to know God in a utterly new way.
This is like wanting to know what it is like
to swim in molten lava — you can do it
but then you’re dead.

God says, “’No,” but then throws Moses a bone.
”Because I like you,” God might have said,
here is what I will do.
I will squeeze you into a cleft in the rock, real tight, facing away from me.
Then I will cover your eyes as I pass by
and let you know I am passing.
Once I pass, and only then, you can look.
You will see where I have just been.”

Moses wants more, but because he is human,
that is the best he can hope for…and live.

So Moses was allowed
to see where God had just been
as God receded into the distance.
He could look
where God was
but not where God is
(because if he were with God
in the same time and place in real time,
he would die).

In fact, to be even as close as to where God was
just a minute ago,
was enough to alter Moses’ face forever.
From then on Moses’ face glowed.

The message is that we don’t get to be with God
in the same time and place either.
We don’t get to have God look us in the eyes
and tell us what we most want to hear.
We do not get anything like that
and we do not promise such rare delights either.
Remember, if we look upon God we die.

So message number one for you and me,
we do not get to see or know God. Period.
The part does not get to know the whole.
And as far as being a part of God,
we are but a speck — an infinitesimal
bacteria
riding on a cell
on top a dust mite
within the cosmos that is God.
Like Moses, we agitate for more
and want to be in control of the relationship
but we do not get what we want.

Even so, and point number two,
our smallness doesn’t mean we are stuck
hiding in the cleft.

Instead, we can storm the gaps.
Like Annie Dillard says, “’…There is always a temptation
to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues…’”
(But) “I won’t have it,” she says.
“The world is wilder than that in all directions,
more dangerous and bitter,
more extravagant and bright.
We are making hay when we should be making whoopee;
we are raising tomatoes
when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”

And so here is a fitting end to Epiphany
and this sermon.
Here is how we can storm the gaps.
We have a covenant,
the one we take hold of in baptism
and that we claim
is the shape of our spiritual practice.
There is nothing itsy-bitsy
or diddling about it.
If we are actively engaged in this covenant,
even if only one promise at a time,
it will get us rattled,
it will get us in trouble — good trouble —
and it will open the dangerous
dimensions of the world all around us.

We have been reminding ourselves of these promises
all Epiphany, so no one should be shocked
when we get pushed out of the itsy-bitsy
into the wind fiercely howling
between the gaps.

Here is what you and I say we will do.
Here are the promises of our spiritual practice.
You tell me if they are itsy-bitsy.
First, we promise to mine the wisdom
and stay within the community of worship
that will make us cry.

This wisdom, and this community,
will cause us to feel one another’s pain
and to voice our own,
and then to sing about it
as well as eat the bread and wine of affliction.
We promise to stay connected,
which is turbulence and trouble enough for anyone.
There is no itsy-bitsy about this promise.

We also say we will persevere
in confronting our demons —
that we will actually stalk the gaps
in our own shadow
and name the problem characters we find in there.
We say we will recognize and name
the things we do
and the tendencies we have
that we are not proud of
and that we know cause problems for others.
And then, having done all that,
we will turn around and be different.
We say that, and then we promise to do it.
That in itself is a wild promise!

Then we promise,
in our baptismal covenant,
that our lives will become — actually,
that we will become —
the wisdom, the love, and the hope
that Jesus promised.
Really, we say that.
It is in the promise we make
that by word and example
we will proclaim the divinity
that animated the human known as Jesus.
That is no diddling around in that promise.

After we have promised
that our lives will embody divinity,
we then promise that we will look for
and serve divinity in all people —
including the radical act
of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
I don’t think we have any ideas
how dangerous this promise is.

Finally, in our stalking the gaps
and putting ourselves in the hazardous situation
of trying to be where God has just been,
we promise to strive for justice
in a world and economy that bleeds injustice;
strive for peace in a world at war;
and most poignant of all,
respect the dignity of every human being.
We promise these things as if,
as if,
they were just one more thing
we will do today
along with grocery shopping
and emailing the kids.

Here is what I know.
I know that Moses couldn’t look on God’s face
and that we can’t either.

In fact, the best we can do
is see where God just was —
whether it was a thousand years ago
or twenty seconds.
We are always working with less information
than we want to know
and with a God that is less knowable
than we want or hope for.

But that does not handicap us
from stalking the gaps
and resisting the temptation
to live itsy-bitsy lives
that are measurable and safe.

We have promises to make
and promises to keep
and they are not itsy-bitsy at all.

7 Epiphany: You are the data point!

February 20, 2022 by Cam Miller

*Countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_in_2020*

THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP VIDEO FOLLOWS

I am going to be brutally honest with you.
This sermon I am about to share
feels to me
like yelling into a stiff wind
standing over the Grand Canyon.

It is not that I think you do not care
or that you will be belligerent,
it is more that I know myself
and I know how frequently I turn my back
on what I know
even though I know it to be true.

It is like Marie Howe’s poem about the earnest intention to pray
and be a good pray-er:
”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

We know what we need to know
and we have the capacity we need to have
in order to act.
And yet
and yet
an yet we know
we have not and
we do not and
we will not.

Arrh!

It is like Climate Change.
We know what we are doing
and that we should change
but we are not
and likely will not
…in time.

But, here I go
because, well because,
it is my job.
I also happen to believe it is true
even if I turn my back on it regularly.

This passage from Luke
leads us to the very heart of the Christian dilemma
because it tells us what we know
even though we know
we won’t do it.

Will we really spend the currency of our lives
in the Economy of God
when what we know and trust
is the Economy of Self-Preservation?

The Economy of God
and the Economy of Self-Preservation.

There is our dilemma.
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate,
dispossessed Holy Man –
insists that we reverse
our long nurtured impulse toward Natural Selection.

This is a basic conflict of interest
between how we choose to live life
and how Jesus urged us to live life.

Do to others
what you want them to do to you.
In other words, love them
by doing good toward them — especially the ones
who hate you.

Loving them
is not just refraining
from smacking them
or spreading gossip about them.
No, restraint is not the loving Jesus is talking about.
Jesus says to be pro-active — do good,
do good to them. Do something you wish
someone would do for you.
That kind of loving.

Oh, and by the way lend your money and stuff
without expecting anything in return.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Here is some more of the bitcoin
we are supposed to spend in the Economy of God.
God is kind
to both the ungrateful and the wicked,
so be merciful, just like God is merciful.
How?
Do not judge, and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Just to be really clear about Jesus
and the Economy of God,
he concludes with this:
The measure you give will be the measure you get back.
Wow.

I am sure I don’t have to tell you
that the Economy of God is a metaphor
for the Kingdom of God
that Jesus says we are to create on earth
as it is in heaven.
And that means, of course, its counter-part
is the Economy of Self-Preservation
which is the economic culture of consumerism
in which we live.

So the heart of Jesus’ wisdom
is in blaring dissonance
with what we believe is our self-interest.

Unlike our economy,
the benefits of spending our lives as currency
in the Economy of God
is not measurable in with a cost-benefit formula.

We measure benefit and reward
by productivity,
profit-margins,
and the bottom line.
God’s economy trades on risk,
generosity,
and abundance.

Now here is where I am going out on a limb.
While you and I
rarely exchange the currency of our lives
as if in the Economy of God,
I believe
that you and I know,
deep down in our bones,
that it is both better than ours
and doable.

Here is what I mean.

We know,
because we have experienced it, that love creates love.
We know it.
We have done it.
We have witnessed it and been healed by it.

The fact that love creates love
means there is no scarcity of love, only abundance.
Even more than that,
loving our enemy frees us
from the debilitating burden of hatred and resentment.
We know it
because we have experienced it.
It is a fact
and we are the data.

So the willful choice to love someone
who we could more easily hate
actually heals our woundedness
and generates greater capacity to love.
That is not pie-in-the-sky,
some nice sentiment.

It is a fact. Love creates more love
and loving an enemy liberates us.

Now in our economy of self-interest
a self-generating commodity
that had an ever-increasing capacity
to produce more —
a self-generating resource in other words —
would be more valuable than gold or bitcoin.

Then there is the fact
that forgiveness attracts forgiveness,
in the same way that cells attract other cells
in the process of forming new life.
Forgiving someone else
generates within the forgiver
a greater capacity to forgive him or herself.
So without any further self-improvement
the simple act of forgiving someone
improves how we feel about ourselves.
That is an amazing characteristic
and valuable beyond scale.
Like love, forgiveness is absolutely synergistic:
the willful choice to forgive someone
who it would seem more easy to resent,
conditions the spiritual muscles we need
to more deeply accept ourselves.

But it is kind of funny to think about this treasure
in our economy.
Such radical self-acceptance
would sound the death knell of whole industries
and marketing programs that prey upon and promote
self-doubt and self-hatred.

Again, looking down the denominations
of currency in the Economy of God,
we come upon mercy.
Jesus says mercy spawns mercy also.
The reason for this is that mercy melts away
our drive to be right
and it does so with the warmth of kindness.

By the willful choice to be merciful
when we could more easily demand fairness
or distributive justice,
we are freed to enjoy the sensation of kindness.

If we do not have to figure out
how the good guys and bad guys
are all going to get what’s coming to them,
then we get liberated from a ton of yucky gunk
that builds up on our heart and soul.

Lastly on our list, is generosity.

We know all about generosity
because we choose it sometimes.
We know that generosity ignites generosity
just like love creates more love
and forgiveness begets self-acceptance.

The risk to stop clutching what we own
empowers the dissolution of anxiety.

The willful choice to let go or give away
when we could more easily clutch and hoard,
actually increased our generosity
as it reduces our anxiety. Wow!

You have been there,
and you have experienced this, I know you have.
The impulse toward generosity — when we embrace it —
produces an almost miraculous affect
of igniting a sense of abundance
where only moments before there was scarcity.

In our economy, if unleashed,
the power of generosity would transform
the barren divide
between the have’s and have not’s
and turn it into a field of dreams.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

You see the dilemma as well as I do:
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate, dispossessed Holy Man –
talks as if you and I can
reverse the long nurtured impulse of Natural Selection.

We know that what he says is true
because small moments in our own experience
serve as the data points.

Jesus’ list of tough love,
is tough because it is to be aimed at our enemy
and those we hate
as well as those we love.
Do good.
Do not judge.
Do not condemn.
Forgive.
If we do, it will generate more riches for us.

That is a fact
and we are the data
that proves it
in those few times and occasions
when we have chosen it.

So why do I feel like
I am shouting into the wind
over the Grand Canyon?

”Help us(God). Even as we contemplate these words
we are reaching for reasons they are not true,
rationalizing our other choices
and along with the preacher,
finding ways to walk away before
Cam finishes the sentence.”

The crazy thing of course,
is that what Jesus told us is in fact true,
are in fact, facts
about the nature of a life we could live
and a kingdom we could create.

We know every one of these
crazy ideas is true,
is a fact,
because we have done them before
at least once.

6 Epiphany: Commitments of the heart

February 13, 2022 by Cam Miller

This is a reflection on Luke 6:17-26

I confess: details matter.
As someone who sees the forest
more often than the trees,
the acknowledgment that details matter
is a bitter pill.

Of course, the opposite is true as well:
the big picture alerts us
to the “meaning” of the details.

This story from Luke
has amazing details
that can change how we see the big picture,
and if we look at this story
from the perspective of the bigger picture,
we suddenly see some things about Jesus —
and about who we are —
that we may have never seen before.

Now I know that not every one gets excited
about Jesus or Jesus stories.
I get that, but come with me on this one,
because it might actually be of interest to you.

I am going to zero in on the details
in a way I normally do not —
except, of course,
in stories like this one
which make me highly motivated to do so.

Luke’s story begins:
“Jesus came down with them…”

The immediate back story to this,
which comes just before
where we began today in the story,
is that Jesus was praying up on a mountain.
After doing so, it says he chose twelve people
out of a larger group of disciples
which he then named “apostles.”
After that, he came down from the mountain.

We understand then,
that this was the first time
the starting twelve were named and formed,
so the team was really new.

But beside the starting twelve
there were a lot of players that didn’t make the cut
and were going to have to play in the minor leagues.

So the “them” in “Jesus came down with them,”
is a group of disciples, the starting twelve.

Then it says that Jesus stood ”on a level place,
with a ‘great crowd’ of his disciples
and a ‘great multitude’ of people
from all Judea, Jerusalem,
and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.”

The translation we’re using today
has loser paraphrasing, but the better translation
is “great crowd” and “great multitude.”
So Jesus came down
and stood on a level place.
Now that is a big “tell,”
like a gambler’s facial twitch
that tells you he or she is holding Full House.

Why didn’t Jesus stand on a boulder
or outcropping where everyone could see
and hear him better?
That makes no sense
for something we have always called
the “Sermon on the Mount.”

Tellingly, he stood on a level place
with a great “crowd” of his disciples.
It says he stood with the twelve apostles
among a “great crowd” of his disciples.
So all those who didn’t make the starting twelve
were there too.
How many is a great crowd?
I am going to say seventy or eighty
because that is a number mentioned in other places.

So we have Jesus,
the starting twelve,
and four score more disciples.

The next little detail is of great significance
to the whole of this story,
and to you and me who form the bigger picture
in which this story is but a detail.

We are told three specific things:
one, there was a “great crowd” of disciples
in addition to the twelve;
two, there was a “great multitude” of others,
for which we have no clue how many;
and three, the multitude was composed
of people from all over Judea, Jerusalem,
and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.

We do not know much
about the great crowd of unnamed disciples
but we do have some information
about the multitude.
”Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast…”
is like saying people from Long Island to Buffalo,
and everywhere in between.
Urbanites, suburbanites, country folks,
and Geneva types.

Then Luke makes sure to tell us
the special interest groups involved:
“They had come to hear him
and to be healed of their diseases;
and those who were troubled by unclean spirits.”

All of that gives us a pretty good picture
so that now, having seen the trees,
we can see the forest.

Once upon a time a celebrity
spent the night
praying on a mountain
and came down
to where the people were waiting
with great expectation.
Some wanted to hear what he had to say.
Some wanted to have their wounds and illnesses
taken away.
And some wanted whatever anguish
and turmoil that troubled their minds
to be released.

And then it says,
in a little throw away line:
all of them wanted to “touch” him.

When I hear this scene this way,
the picture in my mind
is of a great throng of people
pushing and straining to touch Jesus.

There is the feeling of a certain mayhem
or stirring chaos
animating the moment.
When we stand at the end of this story
and look back at it through the details,
it is this next part that proves pivotal.

At this most dramatic moment —
the crowd’s movement undulating
with restless energy,
the multitude pressing in to get a piece of Jesus —
the prophet does something startling.

It says that Jesus looked up at his disciples
and started talking to them.
Remember, he is on level ground.

That means Jesus had to turn his back
on the diverse multitude
and turn around
to look up at the great crowd of his disciples.
It is such a strange details
that it can’t have been a mistake.
Jesus is standing between
a great crowd of disciples above where he stands
and a diverse multitude on the other side
who are agitating to touch him.
It is at that very moment
he turns his back on the diverse multitude.

Jesus’ most famous teaching —
the so-called beatitudes —
are delivered to the disciples
not the multitude.

He tells those disciples: “Blessed are you…”

He is talking directly to the disciples here.
He is not talking to us —
you and I are the needy crowd in this story
just in case you thought we were the disciples.
It is the disciples who are blessed, not us.

On the other hand,
it is the disciples who
get woe hurled against them too, not us.

Don’t you just love the unexpected destination
the details of the story take us to?

Taking Luke at his word,
here is what we know from this story:
Jesus’ crowd of disciples
were made up of rich
and poor,
hungry
and full,
grieving
and happy,
hated
and popular.

That is what the text says.

We cannot romanticize
this most famous teaching of Jesus
as a polemic against the fat cats
while lionizing of the downtrodden.

Rather, we are listening
to a locker room pep-talk
to scores of followers
who Jesus clearly thinks
have very uneven abilities, needs,
and accomplishments.

Now we didn’t read the whole sermon today
but this is a story of a mentor
telling his students and close associates
how to navigate the ups and downs of life.
He is telling them
how to keep on being “Blessed.”

The Bless-ed, he tells them,
are those who continue
to remain faithful to the commitments
of their heart
even when they are not blessed
by the good things in life.

Let me repeat that
because it is a stunning piece of wisdom.

The Bless-ed
are those who continue
to remain faithful to the commitments
of their heart
even when not blessed
by the good things in life.

That is worth thinking about
when we are working through
the hard stuff we have to work through
in our lives.

There is something out there,
or in here (the heart)
that Jesus calls “a blessing”
that apparently has nothing to do
with being satiated,
secure,
successful,
powerful,
recognized,
affirmed,
or accomplished.

What the heck?

Is he trying to say
we do not live in a system
of reward and punishment?
There is something rewarding
that is unattached to the rewards?
If that is true,
it could be most subversive
to our way of life.

It would also undermine the gospel
that so many churches proclaim
that says if people would just do “this”
then God will reward them with “that.”

The Bless-ed
are those who continue
to remain faithful to the commitments
of their heart
even when not blessed
by the good things in life.

I’m going to have to think about that.
You?

The Bless-ed
are those who continue
to remain faithful to the commitments
of their heart
even when not blessed
by the good things in life?

5 Epiphany 2022: Crying into the mouth of heaven

February 6, 2022 by Cam Miller

Preface
The references to 2013 are when I began at Trinity Geneva to help an historically dwindling congregation decide if they had a future, what it might be, and how to address the overwhelming needs of expensive historic buildings. Long story short, the buildings are in the process of being sold for development into a 29 room boutique inn, and the congregation moved into a former wine bar in downtown Geneva where it has been happily gathering for four years. In between there were law suits and all kinds of drama but the congregation stayed focused and strong.

We don’t get no respect —
clergy that is.
I won’t argue that we should
but you might be surprised to know
that what was once a respected profession
has slipped quite a bit.

In the health care industry
clergy are more often than not
treated as a nuisance
if not a hazard.
In the business world,
we are naive and we wouldn’t know the difference
between a bottom line and a bottom.
In public life and politics
we are professional pray-ers,
window-dressing meant to be seen but not heard.

So this little story about Jesus
telling the professionals how to fish,
and watching them flail in despair
from their sudden success,
is a lovely story
about pulling one over on the smug specialists.

None of which has anything to do with the story…

It does have to do with feeling in inadequate
in the face of a serious challenge.
2013 for example.

After having moved to Geneva
imagining Katy and I might find a home
in which to retire some day,
I met with Charlie Bauder — Trinity’s then treasurer.

It was the week of our first Annual Meeting together
and it was the first chance I had
to go over the books with Charlie.
He had sent me some reports before I moved
but honestly, I couldn’t decipher them.
When we finished that session
Charlie said, “You’ve got five years.”
Actually, I don’t remember how many years
he said, but I do remember it was finite.

I won’t lie to you.
I hurriedly calculated how many years
I needed to work before retiring.
That was the hospice chaplain in me
accepting there was no hope for the patients survival.

Then the creative problem-solver in me went to work.
What could we do?
I can get rather obsessive
when confronted with a challenge.

Mostly though, I just felt inadequate.
I didn’t know you.
I didn’t know Geneva.
I didn’t know the building.
I had been hired at half-time.
I was a writer now, and wanted that part
of my life to flourish not wither.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw God!
Seraphs were all around – each one with six wings!
And they sang out to each other.
And the whole place shook at the sound of their voices,
and the temple was full of smoke.
And I said…
‘Woe is me!
I am a creature of unclean lips
standing here in the presence of GOD,
and I live among a people of unclean lips
and yet my eyes have just SEEN God!’

Then one of the Seraphs flew to me,
holding a live coal
that had been taken from the altar
with a pair of tongs.

The seraph touched my mouth with it
and cleansed my lips, so that,
when I heard the voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send?”

I felt my lips open
and my mouth form these words: ‘Here I am. Send me.’”

Now that is an amazing vision
or dream or hallucination,
but it boils down to the devastating knowledge
of just how puny
and imperfect
and pitiful
Isaiah felt in contrast
to the indescribable magnificence
of the Creator of the Universe.
And it was only then,
only in the presence of his own nothingness
before the astounding everythingess of God,
that he understood:
Even though we cannot,
God can
and sometimes does.
Suddenly he understood
God can,
and God will,
give us what it takes
to open our mouths and say “YES.”

Sometimes,
because of God,
not because of our own will or capacities,
the “Yes” comes out,
and things happen
that weren’t supposed to happen.

Sometimes, because of God,
and because of mystical seraph’s
unleashed in the world – not because of our own
highly sophisticated professional selves –
stuff happens
that wasn’t supposed to.

Stuff happens
that we have nothing to do with
and stuff that makes things
turns out to be okay…
at least for the moment.

Back in January 2013

Katy and I were living apart —
she was finishing up her job in Vermont
for six months while I set down roots here.
I tried to keep a positive spin on things
but the more she knew
the more skeptical she was.
And why not, deep down I was skeptical too.

You won’t be filled with confidence
when I tell you that my strategy was surrender.
When faced with the impossible,
like quitting drinking and drugs,
surrender isn’t a half-bad strategy.
I don’t do it very often
because I am lousy at it.
I like power and control a whole lot better.
But sometimes,
sometimes I recognize when to surrender.

Surrender is when we look up
and suddenly realize how enormously inadequate we are
before the task that is hovering before us.

It comes on suddenly,
almost in a flash,
and we see how monstrously enormous
God is.

Surrender
is when we cry “uncle”
into the mouth of heaven,
and then admit that we are powerless
before something that has defeated us.

Sometimes, and this is most terrifying,
we surrender to something that may even
have the capacity to kill us.

“Woe is me…Woe is me, we cannot succeed;
we cannot win;
we cannot even survive…without you, O God.”

That is surrender.

I suspect when we hear weird stuff
like that reading from Isaiah
it is hard not to dismiss it as a hallucination
or psychosis
or just plain fraud.
But truly, it is not all that weird.

In fact, there is not a doubt in my mind
that all of us have had such an experience –
a moment of utter and astounding powerlessness
before a task,
event,
or threat
and our response was some version
of “Woe is me.”

And I suspect that when we did surrender,
there appeared a seraph of some kind,
not as imaginative as Isaiah’s
but someone or something
put a hot coal on your lips —
a spark of light
that changed or turned it all around —
in some way
if only for a moment.

Come on, I know that has happened to you,
and I thank God
that it has happened for me.
You may never have thought about that experience
as an Isaiah moment,
but Isaiah is describing a moment
like you and I have had.

They are strange moments in our lives —
those moments of powerlessness
when a power greater than ourselves
reaches out to us
once we have surrendered.

The story of Jesus inviting Peter to join him
also sprang from a moment of powerlessness.
Peter does not ask Jesus for help with fishing.
He doesn’t need help with fishing,
not from some stinking rabbi.
Fishing is his business – he’s a professional.
He’s been fishing all his life.
He’s making a living at it.
He knows what to do and when to do it.
He commands respect among his peers.
He’s got pride.
He knows all about his thing
because it is his thing.
He doesn’t need some itinerant preacher telling
him how to do his thing.
His thing
has nothing to do with God,
it’s his thing.

It’s his business.
It IS business.
It’s economics.
It’s worldly.
It’s professional.
It’s personal.
It’s real.
It’s nitty-gritty.
It’s his thing…
in other words,

it is our thing not God’s thing.
Let’s just get that straight, Jesus.

Of course, Peter was wrong
and he was about to have a painful moment
of powerlessness
to remind him that he was wrong.
It was not his thing
and it never is just your thing or my thing.

Jesus steps into Peter’s thing,
and claims dominion for God over ALL things:
business
economics
professional endeavors
education
health care
politics — all the real things.

In one terrible moment of awakening,
Peter stands in the astounding presence of God
and experiences his own powerlessness.
In one awful moment
he realizes the way things really are,
and he is utterly devastated
to discover
that God is literally present in all things…
and nothing we do
is divorced from God.

The shear enormity of God
slams Peter on his butt
and he begs Jesus to get away from him
because he is a man of unclean lips
among a people of unclean lips.

In other words,
Peter realizes the enormity of the distance
between himself and Jesus,
and he feels as if he doesn’t even belong
on the same planet with the guy.

“Get away from me Jesus,” Peter says,
“for I am a man of unclean lips!”
Jesus is a Seraph
flying toward him with hot coal in hand.

Well, 2013 turned into 2022.
The story we began together is still not done.
In the meantime we had to learn to surrender
to a pandemic.

This is not a fairy tale.

We all know there were many hard things about 2013
and subsequently leaving 520 S. Main Street.

Since the Inn project hasn’t taken ownership yet
and we are still in limbo,
we know what it is to wait…and wait…and wait.

But in my experience,
surrender creates possibility.

Surrender activates opportunity.

Surrender to our powerlessness,
makes room for a power greater than ourselves
to empower us.

I am going to go out on a limb right now
and predict
there is a Seraph
circling your life right now…right now.

There is a Seraph,
just waiting to place a burning coal
on your lips,
and when it does
it will consume the distance
between you and God
for just one moment.

For just one moment, one moment long enough
for you to say, “I surrender.”
Maybe it will even be an, “I-surrender-send-me” moment.

Well…
I realize these are just crazy old stories
and I may sound crazy talking about them.
Surely nothing like a Seraph could really happen.
Not in the real world,
because in the real world
we are in charge. Right?

4 Epiphany: Jeremiah & Jesus back to back 500 years apart

January 30, 2022 by Cam Miller

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You know I am in my happy place
when I get to talk about
both Jeremiah and Jesus
at one and the same time.

We actually have some biographical data
on each of these prophets
and it is interesting
to put them back to back
even though they lived more than
500 years apart.

Jeremiah and Jesus
lived the restless and perhaps
tortured lives
of those immersed in the anger
of their peers
and contemporaries.

I don’t have to tell you
what it is like to be the object
of anger, not only
from one person
but from many of the people
in your close circle of family and friends.

You want to talk about polarized,
try going back to Jeremiah or Jesus’ day.
It was an angry, violent, snarling,
dog-eat-dog world.

But Jeremiah and Jesus
could not have been more different.

Jeremiah came from money –
the small power elite class of his society.
Jesus came from dirt,
as in dirt-poor.

Jeremiah was educated,
and it shows in the exquisite images
and parallelism of his poetry.
Jesus was likely illiterate
and it shows in the pithy, earthy parables
so easily recite-able from memory.

Jeremiah was a priest
before he was a prophet,
and his father was a priest who taught him the trade.
Jesus was a peasant who made doors
and wheels, and tables and ploughs
just as his father taught him to do.

But both of them,
Jeremiah and Jesus,
separated by almost six hundred years,
knew from a very young age
they were in trouble.

Both of them knew
that WHAT they knew
would cause those who loved them
to become very angry.

WHAT they knew
was a word God had given them to speak.

If we want to get right down to it,
both of them were what we would call…preachers.

Now I realize being a preacher
isn’t an elevated position in our day,
nor something most people would aspire to.
But just like the Bible
is more sermon than text,
the main characters of the Bible
and its prophets,
are more preachers than magician or guru.

Whatever magic they had
came from their lips
more than their hands.

But pause on that for a moment.
Because the idea that God speaks on the lips
of an ordinary human being
is not something we believe today.
If someone were to walk into Trinity Place
on a Sunday morning that we were in-person,
and tell us that God had told him or her to come in here
and give us a message,
we would think they were bonkers.
And yet, that is the idea of a prophet or preacher.

In fact, last summer someone did
barge into our tent worship
and makes such a claim,
and we did think they were bonkers.

Figuring out the difference
between a prophet and someone who is bonkers
is more difficult than we might imagine.
But that is the topic for a different sermon.

Back to Jeremiah and Jesus.

A prophet had the unenviable task
of speaking God’s mind to humans,
and sometimes
speaking the mind of humans to God.

If you break that down,
who in their right mind would want that job?

The prophet was a mouthpiece:
not welcomed to speak his or her own mind
but to articulate GOD’s vision
or dream
or judgment.

In poor Jeremiah’s case,
he was given the words of ‘doom and gloom’
to speak to his peers in an affluent society
that was “partying like it was 1999.”
600 BCE in Judah
was like the 1920’s in the USA:
a big party
before the big bust.

So there at the party
was poor old Jeremiah
lobbing stink bombs at everyone’s good time.
Fortunately, at the end of Jeremiah’s life,
when Jerusalem had been torched
and ground down to rubble,
and his peers and contemporaries
brutally carted off into exile,
Jeremiah was given a vision of restoration
to spread among the survivors.

He was given a vision of good news
and how it would be
when God welcomed them back
with open arms.

Jesus was more like the prophet Amos
than he was Jeremiah.
He was peasant
sent into the halls of power
where he did not belong.
He was sent to deliver
both judgment against the status quo
and an alternative vision
for how God wanted us to live.
We all know that never goes well.

But again, let’s pause.

Does God really
touch the lips of some
and give them a vision or critique to articulate?

Well I do not have any incontestable proof
that God speaks
on the lips of prophets today,
at least not in any scientific sense.
But I do know this –
and so do you.

In 1776 there were numerous people
who spoke against slavery —
Southerners as well as Northerners.

And in 1876
there were citizens
who spoke out against
the genocide of Native peoples.

The vision of equal rights for women
was articulated long before women could vote.

Child labor laws had advocates
a hundred years before they were passed.

In 1924 the first public voices were heard
advocating for Gay Rights.

Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring”
and warned of Global Warming sixty years ago.

We know about
Ida B. Wells
Sojourner Truth
Emmeline Pankhurst
Dorothy Day
Martin Luther King, Jr.
John Lewis
Nelson Mandela
Thich Nhat Hahn,
Desmond Tutu
Alicia Garza
Malala Yousafzai…

All of them, and literally thousands
of others occupying the space with them
have given voice
to what would take years
or generations
or even centuries
for everyone else to accept.

We can make a case
that all those folks
saw another reality breaking through
the dense matter
that others around them
were stuck inside of.

We can make a case
that God was breaking through
the ordinary
and they heard it
and saw it
and spoke it.

Or how about this?
We could make a case
that you and I have seen and heard
God breaking through the ordinary
and delivering a word
to people we know…even to us.

“We will proclaim by word AND example the Good News of God in Christ.”
In other words, we will be the incarnation
of the Gospel.

That is prophetic.

Or how about this.
“We will seek and serve God in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.”

In other words, we know God is
in ALL persons
and we have been sent to discover it
and serve it
and even name it,
no matter who we discover it in.

That is prophetic.

Or this.

“We will strive for justice and peace among all people,
and respect the dignity of every human being.”
In other words,
our task is to bring about the kingdom
on Earth as it is in heaven.

That is prophetic.

So I do know for a fact
that there are people in this world
who make those promises
and in doing so,
sign up to be prophets of God.

And by the way,
that is how God does stuff
in the world.

Interesting, huh?
Peace be with you.

Last Epiphany: “When we should be making whoopee instead of hay” (Dillard)

7 Epiphany: You are the data point!

THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP VIDEO FOLLOWS

6 Epiphany: Commitments of the heart

5 Epiphany 2022: Crying into the mouth of heaven

4 Epiphany: Jeremiah & Jesus back to back 500 years apart

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