Sermons

Thanksgiving Week 2021

November 21, 2021 by Cam Miller

Texts for Preaching this Week

Matthew 6:25-33, and:
“Messenger” by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Almost every year at this time, I cheat.

The lectionary counts this as Proper 29,
or Christ the King Sunday.
The Gospels selected for each year on this Sunday
all have to do with the juxtaposition
of Jesus’ torture and execution
with the reign of Christ
and in the variety of ways that is imagined.

But I cheat
and use the readings for Thanksgiving instead.
I do it because thanksgiving is so profoundly more…
more of everything
than Jesus as King.
Honestly, Jesus depicted as a king is blasphemy.

I will shift to thanksgiving in a minute
but I am going to climb up
on my theological soapbox
and tell the world how wrong our tradition is.

The blasphemy I am speaking of
is symbolized by those church crosses,
many of them altar crosses,
on which Jesus is crucified
clothed with the garments of a priest
and the crown of a king.

Christ the King.
The art I am talking about
is not a crucified Jesus —
no naked, sagging body gasping for air
or slumped in the posture of death.
This Jesus is a king,
his arm straight out in the shape of the cross.
He seems to be levitating
from inside a red chasuble, maybe even wears
a priest’s stole,
and always has a big fat crown.
It is blasphemous.

It is blasphemous because Jesus was not a king.
Jesus was anything but a king.
Jesus died as an insurrectionist, a guilty criminal.

He rejected coercive power.
He rejected religious authority and conformity.
He rejected images of royalty for the holy.
Everything about Jesus
was a denial of human power,
a refutation of political and cultural hierarchy,
and a prophetic embrace of the humble table
around which we eat,
as the metaphor for God’s presence.

And so the prosecution rests its case
against the Church
for its embrace of emperors
and empire
as any kind of metaphor for Jesus, God,
or the reign of God.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

Now, thanksgiving.
”My work is loving the world…” Mary Oliver
begins that sumptuous poem.
Then she goes on to write a poem
that seems to me
a re-phrasing of Jesus’ priceless
“lilies of the field” advice to his friends.

Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammad, Francis…they each
have famous words that come to this:
Our work is loving the world.

They each mean slightly different things
when they say it,
because they spoke from within
different cultures and points in human history,
but they echo one another.

Jesus says, “Seek first God’s kingdom
and what God wants.
Then all your other needs
will be met as well.”
He does not mean that as a result
of our work loving the world,
we will get the house or car we want.
He does not mean that as a result
of our loving the world
we will get the job or the fame or
even the love we want.
He means that if our first work
is loving the world,
the rest of that stuff — whether we get it or not —
will not matter so much.
That is what the rest of the spiritual superheroes
say about it, too.

But most if not all of us, live life backwards.
We get,
and then we are grateful.
Jesus and the others, are saying:
be grateful, then live.

Even though each of us
usually live life backward,
all of us have moments of genius
when we live it the right way around:
We are grateful,
and then we live.

When that happens we feel different inside.
We open up
and see the lilies of the field — as if for the first time.
We open up
and taste our food, smell it,
and are amazed how wonderful it is.
We open up
and the colors of the world all around
pop as if our cataracts have melted away.
We open up
and tears fill our eyes
because we love someone so darn much.

You know what I am talking about.
When we are grateful, then live
the goodness of even very small things
fills us with appreciation —
and then the things that seemed so big, so important,
suddenly seem less so.

Now look, there are a bunch of things
we are not grateful for — and shouldn’t be.
There can be people and things in our lives
that sometimes seems like they are killing us
and we do not need to pretend
to be grateful for them.

But when we are grateful-then-live,
instead of being grateful for getting what we wanted,
then even the stuff we are not grateful for
begins to feel different.
Not better.
Not good.
But a little smaller.
A little more surrounded
by the other stuff.
Not even all the time.

But when we are grateful-then-live
instead of the other way around,
both the good and the bad
shrink into perspective.

I dare say, each of us may know someone
who is grateful first, then lives.
He or she is so effective at loving the world
that their gratitude
is not rooted in the things they get
but in their loving the world.
If we know someone like that, we know
how much we love being around them.
Just being in their presence can feel healing;
just being with them helps us, in the moment,
to be grateful like that.

I am sure that if Jesus actually does have a kingdom somewhere, then first,
he doesn’t call it a kingdom;
and second, it is permeated with gratitude.
It is a place where it is impossible to live backwards.

Well, in case you are not feeling grateful right now,
this is the end of the sermon.
If our work is loving the world, we are grateful
even before “we get.”

All Saints’ Day 2021

November 7, 2021 by Cam Miller

I am guessing everyone
has a favorite holiday — Christmas,
Thanksgiving, Groundhogs day…

Many such holidays link religious
and secular celebrations
like Easter and Spring Break,
Christmas and New Years,
All Saints’ and Halloween.

My two favorites are Thanksgiving
and All Saints’ Day.

Why these two?
Probably for the same reason:
the marriage of grief, nostalgia, and gratitude.

Now admittedly today’s liturgy
is a much subdued All Saints’
since our singing is pared back
and repressed by COVID protocols.

We’ve slowed down “For All the Saints”
and left off “The Saints Go Marching In” and
”Shall We Gather at the River.”
But still, it is All Saints’
and for me
that means ALL saints – with a lower case “s.”

I am grateful that The Episcopal Church
does not have big “S” saints — I said, “Big S” as in capital “S.”

Unlike the Roman and Orthodox traditions,
we have no way to declare
an historic figure as miraculous and spooky.
Thank goodness.
That is such a political process anyway,
and so absurd when history
begins scrutinizing folks the Church
long declared a special mediator and advocate
with God in heaven.
Look no further than St. Augustine
to embarrass that process.

Anyway, All Saints’ for us
is about ALL the saints with a small “s”
who have populated this earth over time,
and most of whom were never recognized
by history or institutions or anybody
beyond those whom they touched.

I was nurtured by a woman named, Pearl,
when my own mother — for whatever reasons of family,
psychology, or character — was unable to bond with me
the way that Katy and I bonded with our children
and you bonded with yours.
Pearl taught me how to love by loving me.

As I got older there were others who did the same,
taught me how to love by loving me:
Wanda, Stew, Jean (female),
Mary Helen, another Gene (male),
Leroy, Ken, Mike, Jon…

Without them, I would surely not be here
today — figuratively or literally.
Even with them, there were a couple of years
that were touch and go.

The Church itself, in my life,
taught me how to love by loving me.

Community, authentic community, does that —
forms a miasma of love
in which we feel held even though
we do not necessarily know those who are loving us
the way we know family and close friends.
There is something in the wine,
or bread I should say,
that over time creates a palpable sense
of being loved and cared for
by a bunch of people we might not otherwise know.
I feel it and see it here,
at Trinity Place.

There is no particularly rational explanation for it
but a spiritual community
becomes a kind of “sainted” place.

I could go on and on
about the people from whom I learned to love,
those outside the bond of family,
and without whom I would be a lesser person.
Most of them I knew through spiritual communities
but not all of them.
Yet all of them had a spiritual practice
I was able to witness in action,
a practice grounded in loving.

So All Saints’ Day, for me, is just filled with nostalgia
and mingled with grief and gratitude
for the people we love
but see no longer, as it says
in some Book of Common Prayer prayer, somewhere.

So the challenge, of course,
is to think about who and how
we can practice such love with those around us
more and more and more.
I think of it as the All Saints’ Day challenge:
How to grow our hearts at least one size bigger.

Honestly, I do not know how we can do that
without our heart and legs rooted
to a spiritual community.
But this notion of community as an essential ingredient
is so UnAmerican
because it defies the idea of an individual.

The whole is so much greater
than any one of its parts,
and an individual outside of community
begins to lose his or her or their
ability to love robustly.

Loving is a communal practice, it is how we learn.
It starts in the womb of family —
if our family is a loving womb —
and continues in the arms of spiritual community.
But we have to allow ourselves
to become entangled with others
who are seeking God, wisdom, and a practice
to love more and better.

It does not happen because of really good programs,
or really great worship,
or really fantastic preaching,
or really delicious coffee hours.

It happens when our lives touch one another
and we get entangled,
maybe even by accident.

Then we find ourselves caring deeply
about someone’s brother we don’t even know,
or someone’s cancer
that isn’t even talked about,
or someone’s struggle with addiction
that goes on behind public acknowledgment.

Like I said, it defies rationality in some ways,
but over time,
without employing any grand strategy
or planning for it,
we find ourselves thinking about other people
who are not in our family,
and wanting to make sure they are well cared for.
In other words, we find ourselves loving them.

Then something weird happens.
When we are with these people,
somehow we begin to wonder
how we could do more collectively, for others;
we start asking how we could love better
even those outside our spiritual community?

Somehow, without really planning it,
when we are together,
these strange and unrelated people and us,
grow in understanding about things we had wondered secretly.
You know, stuff that before we were too uncomfortable
talking about out loud.

Somehow we start to feel safe
talking out loud
about uncomfortable topics
with these people who are not family
and who we have come to love
and who we are pretty sure, love us.

That is when we know we have become
a sainted community.
It is when we know
we may have been plunged into
a very long and deep river
that travels over time
and that is more consequential
than we can possibly imagine.

If somehow all those saints
who have loved
and loved together
over time
in community,
were to disappear from memory
and somehow be eliminated spiritually,
the world of humans being
would immediately fall apart
and become the chaos we fear.

All those saints
and all that sainted community
have done more to form humankind
and done more to protect humankind
and done more to sustain humankind
over time and history
than we can possibly imagine.

But now it has fallen upon us,
those who love
and allow ourselves to be loved
in community,
to keep it going.

It has fallen upon us
to grow our hearts a size bigger
and love a little wider
and love a little further
and love a little bolder
and love a little more generously
than we have loved so far.
Mmm. That is the All Saints’ Day challenge:
be a saint
in a sainted community
and keep it moving across time and history
into the future.

The future, according to visions
in Isaiah or the Book of Revelation,
has always been about a time without death.
A time without tears.
A time without the decay of the body
and a time without separation
from those we love and who loved us.

I don’t know that we will ever see such a time
but until we do,
we have All Saints’ Day
to remember the ones who loved us
and whom we love still.

And to more and more and more
be such people of love for one another
and for those who are beyond the bonds
of our spiritual communities.

Happy All Saints’ Day!

23 Pentecost B: Swallowing it Whole

October 31, 2021 by Cam Miller

“Ahava” – Hebrew version of Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture

In ancient Israel, and reportedly still today,
careful distinctions were made between people
who belonged and did not belong,
including between a “foreigner” and “sojourner.”
Both were aliens, most likely immigrants such as
Canaanites and Moabites.
But a sojourner referred
to someone from the outside
who settled down and made their home
among the Israelites.
Even though they were still not considered
an Israelite, sojourners
were treated as what we might call
“Green Card” holders or “DACA” kids.
“Foreigners” on the other hand,
were met with less graciousness.

It is amazing that Ruth became a book of the Bibl
because it is about a foreigner,
one held up as an icon of faithfulness, and who
became the great-grandmother of King David.
It is a story from a time after the Exodus
and before the monarchy,
but actually written centuries later.
It comes to us from after the Exile
and seems to have been written to argue with
the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
that opposed marriage to foreigners.

It is a great and fascinating story for sure,
with a woman as the hero — also uncharacteristic —
but it does nothing to hide how marginalized
and vulnerable
women were within a misogynistic
social caste system.
Nor does it advocate for something different.

The whole book
is like a page and a half or something,
so I suggest you go home and read it
and then tell people you just read
a whole book of the bible today.

Let’s turn the page to Mark and Mary —
Mary Oliver, that is.

Like you, I have many neighbors.
Some of them are people with whom
I share core political and economic values.

Some of them are people with whom
I share…some important values.

Some of them, I suspect, are people with whom
I hold little in common except cordialness
and shared geography.
Jesus wants me to love each of them.

Heck, I want to love each one of them…theoretically.
Actually, to the extent that I know them,
I do love them, at least intellectually.

But Jesus wants me to love each of them.

I want to begin with Mary Oliver
talking about Jesus and love:
“Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.”

This so-called “Great Commandment”
is one we like to argue and quibble about.
We like to smooth the corners
and see if we can make it fit reality —
to change its roundness
to fit into our squareness.
Unlike so much of Jesus —
which is often way too radical for us —
we can almost make it fit…almost.
But let’s not.

Let’s try treating this like Communion.
Let’s try not ‘thinking’ about
but experiencing it.
Let’s try swallowing it whole
and imagining how life would be different
were we able to do it —
or as Mary Oliver wrote,

“If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.”

Let’s receive the Great Commandment like the bread
and allow it to dissolve on our tongue
and not think about
whether it is the Body of Christ
or not.
Let’s just do it,
swallow it whole
and know we are better for it.

Okay, I know. I can’t do it either.

There is an interesting difference
between Matthew, Mark, and Luke
in how they frame this teaching.
In each of them,
it is generally surrounded by conflict —
the Pharisees and temple clergy
arguing with Jesus
or trying to trap him
into saying something that will get him arrested.
The lawyers nitpick
and push and prod.
The clergy sniff around
and act passive-aggressively.
The people wait to see what will happen.

But in Mark, with this particular teaching,
a scribe seems to ask about it sincerely,
and at the end,
is so authentic and open to it,
Jesus praises him.
”Yeah, you get it,” Jesus says with a smile.
”You are very close.”

But I am guessing,
you and I are not so close.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth
or thoughts in your brain,
but I think we get tripped up
on three things here.
We read them and hedge our bets
with a “Yes…But.”

First, we want “neighbor” defined
a little more narrowly.

Secondly, and ironically,
we want to keep the focus on loving our neighbor
rather than loving ourselves, because…
well, we don’t really want to go into that, because…
well, because our difficulty with loving ourselves
is personal.

And third, love God
with ALL our heart,
with ALL our soul,
with ALL our mind?
That seems a little extreme —
how will we love God like that and make money,
or more importantly, spend money?

I guess when we break it down like that
into its constituent parts,
we might have trouble with the whole thing.
We better go back to swallowing it whole
with mindless acceptance.

I know that there are people
you do not love.

I know that, because
I believe you and I are not too different
and for sure, there are
people I do not love.
There are some people
who do things
and espouse things
and contribute to things
I find repugnant.
I would have to cheat on the test
in order to say I love them.

Maybe you are different than me,
but I am guessing not many of you are.

What do we do with this hard core
of resistance to Jesus
that hides inside of us?

Here is what: we keep swallowing his teachings —
crazy and absurd as they are —
keep swallowing them whole
right along with the Communion bread.

Look, let’s be real.
What do we have inside
if our religion is political ideology?
What do we have inside
if our religion is patriotism and nationalism?
What do we have inside
if our religion is racial and ethnic identity?
What do we have inside
if our religion is fidelity to an economic system?

What do we have inside
if our religion is the Self?
In every one of those religions,
love has boundaries;
love is transactional;
love is a zero-sum game.

Jesus is talking about love —
real love, as in loving God.

Jesus doesn’t prescribe niceness.
Jesus does not tell us we have to like people
who act like jerks.
Jesus does not tell us we have to allow ourselves
to be victimized by people who do not love us.

Jesus does tell us
we need to be about loving our neighbor
as ourselves —
and by the way, for all practical purposes,
that is also how we love God with our whole heart.

Loving our neighbor
means resisting the urge to hate.
Loving ourselves
means extending ourselves mercy
when we feel ashamed.
Loving our neighbor
means sharing what we have in abundance
with those who are in need, and no matter how they got in that need.
Loving ourselves
means accepting what we wish was different
with a heart of generosity.
Loving our neighbor
means accepting our differences
and celebrating them where we can.

Because love is a verb
what Jesus is poking us to do
is act in particular kinds of ways
that may or may not be reflective of how we feel.

We may feel repulsed and angry and offended
by someone’s political viewpoint,
but we can act in such a way
that respects their dignity
and embraces their humanity.

When we swallow Jesus whole — in the bread
or in his teachings — then we have him inside
agitating us
guiding us
and poking us
to resist our resistance
and act in love.
When we have Jesus’ Great Commandment
as our religion inside,
our neighbors might not be better
but we will be.

It is about how we act not how we feel;
it’s about how we treat ourselves and one another
not what we believe.

19 B Pentecost: Change – want it

October 3, 2021 by Cam Miller

SERMON TEXTS
Psalm 8 and Mark 10:2-16

“Change” by Rainer Maria Rilke
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.”

Why indeed, do you (God) bother with us?

I have asked that so often at night
as I look into the umbilical channel
between me and God,
between us and it,
between known and unknown.

I’ve asked why bother with us
in the early light
shimmering on the lake
piercing the squint
protecting my eyes
from glistening jewels
dancing before dog and me.

I’ve asked why bother with us
in sermons,
though quietly,
shyly, between the lines.

Why would God bother with us —
dust mites of star dust
on some anonymous planet
in a small solar system
and an even smaller galaxy?

As a species
we are like, as Agent Smith says
in The Matrix,
more like a virus than
a mammal.
But hey, individually we’re kind of cut.
Look at us.

Sticking with that image for a moment,
I think what so much of the sacred text
is trying to tell us is, “You can change.
You need to change. Here is how you change.
Don’t be a virus upon the planet.
Don’t be a virus that destroys other species.
Don’t be a virus that infects other humans
with your dark matter
and your corrupting influence.”

Wow, put like that,
because we are in a pandemic
and we see how easily a virus spreads,
maybe it will cause us to take a second look at ourselves,
and our species,
and at what we are and how we act.

Psalm 8 and the Rilke musing
are much more compelling to me right now
than unpacking Jesus’ seemingly
retrograde teaching on divorce.
But those verses left to themselves
are nasty and unsettling
for anyone connected to a marriage breakup.
But I would remind us
we have left Jesus in the dust many times.
”Turn the other cheek.”
”Sell all you have and follow me.”
”If your eye offends, pluck it out.”
”Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Ha! ”Love yourself.”
I could go on and on and on
naming the simple teachings of Jesus
that are both ignored and refuted
by capitalism,
militarism,
consumerism,
tribalism…and us.

The fact is, we do not pay that much attention
to Jesus and in indeed,
it seems like those who preach about him the most
pay the least attention to him.

All of which is to say
that I don’t really want to spend a lot of time
unpacking this gospel
any more than I wanted to unpack
last week’s “if your hand offends, cut it off.”

But…I will do a drive-by unpacking.
You may remember my talking about this before,
how the question Jesus was really being asked,
was whose side is he on — Hillel or Shammai?

The two great Teachers of Israel
from the previous generation
dominated theological thinking in Jesus’ day.
They had argued about the proper justifications
for divorce.
It was not a matter of if,
by why.
At stake in this argument,
at least in part,
was how the wife was to be treated.
Though neither Hillel or Shammai
saw husbands and wives as equals.

Jesus, as usual, didn’t side with either one.
He cut his own path through the thicket.
He changed the nature of the conversation.
He basically said, by implication,
”Look, you may have a legal means for divorce,
but when two have become one,
then separate,
it is an amputation.”
He is recognizing the trauma of divorce.
Some say he is trying to protect women.
Some say he raising Genesis above Deuteronomy.
Who knows.
We don’t really know
any more than we know why God
would bother with us.
But now I want to go back to change.

”Want to change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.”

Oh my, Rilke is so brilliant.

Want to change.
Want it.
Not tolerate it
or come grudgingly into it.
Want to change, inspired by the fire.

Yes, change involves loss
which is why we hate it.
But resistance to change
involves decay — as in, we decay
as we actively resist the change
that is inviting us into the fire.
”What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.” Rilke warns.

“Every happiness is the child of separation
it did not think it could survive.”

Every happiness
is the child of separation
it did not think it could survive.

Every day
we have the opportunity to wake up
and change.

Every day.
Every day we can ask ourselves
if we are just trying to hang on
and keep what we have
or if we are letting go.
Our every instinct is to hold on
and clutch what we have
and what we know
and not let go of anything
we don’t have to.

But that is the posture a virus.
It is the holding on
and grabbing more
and making sure no one gets what’s ours
that turns our species from cute mammal
to death dealing virus.

I don’t have any special tricks
or magic
for how to let go
or more precisely, how
not to resist change.
I’m only a preacher —
I can only tell you what’s on the cue card
I was given.

But what I know
is that more than any other spiritual practice,
becoming open to the flame
that makes everything shine as it disappears,
is the most important.

I also know
that much if not most
of our religious tradition
has been geared toward holding on
and clutching what it had.
I believe that is why it is decaying
instead of leading the way forward.

It really does come down
to how we think,
and how we frame our lives
and the world we live in.
Will we wake up in the morning
and clutch what we have
and fret about what we might lose?

Or, will we wake up
and decide
to be open
and trust-fall into the change
in and around and among us?

Mammal or virus?
I truly do not know why God would bother with us
but I do know God does,
and I do know that God cares which we are
and which we become.

18 B Pentecost: Admitting to Iconoclasm

September 26, 2021 by Cam Miller

Reflection on the readings for 18 Pentecost (Revised Common Lectionary)

I apologize
but you are going to have to pay attention
if you want to follow this sermon.
It is a sneaky, snaky,
winding road of switchbacks
before landing at the end.

But it isn’t that long either,
if you want to start making your shopping list.

I say my own version of “Let the words of my mouth,
and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you…”
every week before I preach.
I do it as an act of reverence.
Not because God needs my preparation or openness
to do what God is going to do.
But because I need the reminder.
I need the humility.
I need the willingness to step-aside.

That psalm
strikes me as the Psalmist
desperately trying to convince himself
that what he has been taught,
and what he has been taught to teach others,
and how he has been taught to see reality…
is absolute true.

It is a shield against doubt.
It is a shield against arrogance.
It is a shield against the brain worm
let loose in his thoughts
by an experience that he is pretty sure
goes against
what he was taught.

Now I raise a doubt on behalf of the Psalmist
with the voice of biblical scholars scowling at me
in my own head.
The thunderous wisdom
of Walter Brueggemann
delivering the Psalmist’s context
and point of view,
and reminding us that is our job
as preachers is likewise to open the text.

But instead
I am psychoanalyzing the long dead poet
unable now to speak for him or herself.
Standing over the open casket
I am pontificating on what the Psalmist thought.
In seminaries,
at least the academic ones,
we are taught to enter Scripture
with certain tools in hand:
Form criticism
to identify the period and source of a text;
Literary criticism
to analyze the voices and purposes of a text;
and Historical criticism
to raise up awareness of the world behind the text.

I am no scholar.
I have always leaned on the critical work
of other people.
But I have developed my own tool
with which I come to the text.
I call it NOW criticism:
how does our current worldview —
our Sitz im Leben (situation in life)
as academics would call it —
read the text?

How does ”who we are”
shape what we receive from the text?
I reverse the telescope
to listen to the text through our ears
and through the filters of our context.

Clearly the Psalmist today
was affirming the statutes of God.
Torah is “perfect
sure
right
clear
pure
true…gold.”

Now I should just stop and say
that this is considered a big-deal-psalm.
According the commentary I referenced*:
C. S. Lewis thought Psalm 19
was the greatest hit of them all.
And while those famous German biblical scholars
of the mid-20th century
decided it was really three separate psalms
written in three different periods
and stitched together over time,
NOW it is seen to be one psalm
with three movements,
the middle movement we read today.
*Working Preacher, 9/20/12

You see, I am a little out of my depth here.

I do not know much about the psalms
even though I took a whole semester course
on the psalms, taught by the very popular dean
of my seminary.
Everyone swooned over getting into that course.
I was bored to tears.
All I can remember about it
was how hard it was to keep my eyes open.

That could have been a hint to me
way back then,
about NOW criticism.
Beautiful metaphors
and rhythmic strophes
can’t make up for post-modern
”iconoclasm.”

I am an iconoclast. I own it.
It is what my experience,
living life in our world, has made me.

Literally, iconoclast means “image destroyer.”
But more deeply
it means someone who challenges
settled beliefs,
and who opposes the veneration
of religious images and icons.
That sounds like me, right?

Iconoclasm gets a bad wrap
because of figures like Oliver Cromwell
(whose wife, by the way, may be in my family tree)
but my take is that reality —
our experience — is the great iconoclast.

It is our experience, reality itself,
that contradicts the theoretical notions
we have about how the world,
life,
families,
society,
and God work.
Whatever image we have
of the nation
the law
the bible
love…it will be broken
because not much in life
conforms to what we believe about life.
So the Psalmist in Psalm 19,
wonderful poet that he was,
was prescribing a formula
into which he declares all of life fits.
No, there is not one crack
in this form, he declares.
Not one porous glitch
through which doubt can leach.

Oh, but wait.
He does ask, “Who can detect errors?”
To ask may be to acknowledge
that some doubt exists.
But immediately he pleads to be forgiven
from this hidden crevasse in which the smallest doubt
may be wedged.

He pleads to be healed
and not given over
to the dark, questioning voice deep inside.
The Psalmist, and much of religion,
offer a hardened sarcophagus
of the Lord’s laws and decrees
into which we all fit
and will be protected
from the unreality of doubts
and counter-narratives.

But you see, I think the world
has been turned
inside out
since the Psalmist lived.
It is now the voice of faith,
if that is what we wish to call it,
that is hidden deep inside
like a piece of gold tooth
broken off
and lodged into a fold of tissue.

All around us,
everywhere,
reality is now defined by cynicism,
materialism,
and grief practiced as a kind of vicious nostalgia.
Petty beauty,
grandiose humanism,
fame,
celebrity,
unconscionable wealth,
previously unheard of gluttony,
holy worship of science and technology,
and militarism as if from a nightmare —
all now describe the world
in which the Psalmist once lived.

To doubt our reality —
prescribed by social media
news media
political rhetoric
and commercialism — is to be an iconoclast.
To doubt reality
as it is prescribe today,
is to be that niggling voice
buried deep inside the gut
that has a counter-narrative
written in the heart.

I say, “whoever is not against us is for us.”

Now I could make sense
out of Jesus’ barnstorming diatribe
about cutting off hands
and plucking out eyes,
but only if I stand on my head
while balancing two trays of tea and crumpets.
In other words,
it is not worth it.

To make sense of that snippet
in a gospel given over to a God of mercy
more than a God of justice,
requires all kinds of rationalizations
and biblical criticism
that I just do not think is worth it.
At least not today.

Instead, I want to address it
through NOW criticism.
NOW criticism would remind us
that the gospel is not a verbatim court recording
of Jesus’ words and actions.
Some of what is in it
does not make sense
and some of it simply does not
match up with our experience of the world.
Not only that, it is not our job to make sense of it all.

Instead, looking at those readings today,
I will remind us of “who we are.”
We are people who have not just one lens,
not only two lenses,
but three lenses.

We have the ancient texts
we explore for the wisdom
that can be mined within it.
It isn’t all gold,
but it has gold in it.
Ancient sacred texts are our first lens.

We have a second lens,
which is tradition.
It is what have we learned together as a community
over time — over millennia in fact.
It is a reflective lens
through which we also mine wisdom
via the text of historic community.

Finally, we have a third lens,
which is reason and experience.
What does our ability to think
and imagine
and wonder
and learn
tell us about our experience?

These three lenses —
scripture, tradition, and reason or experience —
offer us a vision of reality
given by our theological tradition
in The Episcopal Church.
The Psalmist had his lens
and Mark, the first gospel editor, had his.
We have ours,
and it allows us to be an iconoclastic community
with a counter-narrative
to the one prescribed —
whether by ancient poets and preachers
or by the world all around us

We are not stuck
with what we hear from social media
and news media
and political and ideological rhetoric
and scientific or technological over-reach.
We have lenses through which to process all of that
and break it down.
Break it down,
strip it away,
dig beneath the assumptions
and find the gold.

But we do not swallow any of it whole —
not the Psalmist, not the gospel,
and certainly not
the cultural and political miasma.
We are not limited to what we are told
by the loudest voices around us.
We are not limited to scripture alone.
We are not limited to prescribed ancient traditions.
We are not limited to what we see and hear
in any given moment.
Instead, we have a generous spectrum
through which to see and view
the vast landscape of life all around us.
We need to use it all.

And then, once we do,
and we have exhausted ourselves
at any given moment
with the search for gold,
we step back.
We take a slow deep breath.
We ask God to bless the words of our mouths
and the meditations of our hearts,
so that some little gold nugget of truth
may be known
in us
and through us.

Well, I warned you it was a winding road.

Thanksgiving Week 2021

Texts for Preaching this Week

Matthew 6:25-33, and:
“Messenger” by Mary Oliver

All Saints’ Day 2021

23 Pentecost B: Swallowing it Whole

19 B Pentecost: Change – want it

18 B Pentecost: Admitting to Iconoclasm

Reflection on the readings for 18 Pentecost (Revised Common Lectionary)

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Texts for Preaching this Week

Matthew 6:25-33, and: “Messenger” by Mary Oliver

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Reflection on the readings for 18 Pentecost (Revised Common Lectionary)

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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.

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Matthew 6:25-33, and:
“Messenger” by Mary Oliver