Sermons – Page 2

3 Easter: A Season of Grief

May 1, 2022 by Cam Miller

“When he trawled so wide he should’ve trawled
deeper.”

~From “Fishermen” by Francis Harvey

Oh, heck yes!
Jesus trawled way too wide
and would have done better
with fewer, less
ambivalent and feckless disciples, like…
us.

Jesus is such a good dude
in this story from John.

Here he was, a dead man
who had just endure unimaginable
pain and suffering from torture and execution
by nasty Roman overlords.
Despite all of that,
he cooks breakfast for his friends.
Who does that?

The only other thing I want to note
about this odd little ghost story
is what a sweet thing Jesus also does for Peter.
He leads poor hapless Peter by the nose
through a three-peat, “I love you.”
This gave Peter the opportunity
to make up for his three-time repudiation of Jesus
on the eve of the execution.
Jesus is essentially
reconciling with and restoring Peter
with a fail-proof public process
that even Peter couldn’t screw up.
And the command, “Feed my Sheep”
then bestows leadership upon Peter
that no one can later deny.

This breakfast on the beach story
ties up an uncomfortable loose end
leftover from a bad night
that left Peter a coward and turncoat.

But after breakfast on the beach,
everything is okay
and all the parties are rejoined and renewed
in community
around a campfire and a fish fry.

“Ichthys,” the Greek word for fish,
quickly became the primary symbol
for early Christians.
As we know, they turned it into an acronym
because each letter was the first letter
of their proclamation:
i for Jesus
c for Christ
h for “of God”
y for Son
s for Savior
So ichthys was an acronym for:
”Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

I found this quote in Christianity Today,
from the second-century theologian, Tertullian:
“we, little fishes, after the image of our Ichthys,
Jesus Christ, are (also) born in the water.”

Today we have the chalice
and the cross
and the crucified Jesus
and the silhouette of a steeple
as familiar symbols of Christianity.
But in those first generations is was a fish.

Fish were part of the feeding of the 5000.
Fish were the livelihood of the disciples before Jesus
and afterwards as well.
Fish were the sign of a first simple, ordinary
miracle
when Jesus first encountered
Peter, James, and John.
Just like in today’s story,
in that first encounter they had been fishing all night
and gotten skunked.

Jesus tells them where and how
to fish
and their nets are so full
it causes the boats
to capsize from so much abundance.

Get it — capsized from abundance?
He was going to turn their lives upside down
with more abundance than they had ever known
or could stand.

Fishing is what Jesus promised to the disciples
they would be doing from now on,
only it was fishing for people.

So fish, not the cross,
began as the primary symbol for Christians.
As you know, it was both a secret symbol
to help one them avoid discovery
and persecution,
and a public one found on rings and seals
and other archaeological evidence.

It makes perfect sense
that it would take well over a century
for the cross to become distant enough
from the crucifixion
not to be a terrible trigger
of a severe historic wound.
Plus, they were evangelizing the Romans
for whom the cross
was a positive symbol of geographic their dominance.

But also, what was it that made someone
a Christian? Baptism — immersion in water.
“We, little fishes, after the image of our Ichthys…”

So that’s all I want to say about fish for now.
Aren’t you glad?

I want to talk about grief instead.
On some level,
whether subliminally or not,
the breakfast on the beach story
is a grief story.

It is the kind of story
that anyone who has ever lost
someone they love
has dreams about.

You know those dreams, right?
In the aftermath of a death
in which we see or speak to the dead
in a mixed up,
highly symbolic,
weird dream.

You wake up
and suddenly remember
you were having breakfast or something
with your mom
or your dad
or your spouse or friend
who is dead — and maybe has been for a long time.

You shake your head
and go on about your day,
and maybe never even tell anyone about it.
That kind of dream.

I dare say, these days we all
are carrying around a lot of grief —
extra grief even.
We’ve recently lost a good friend, Joanne.
But many of us have lost others
during this pandemic,
whether from the virus
or things related to the virus.

Other deaths too, that just came
like a thief in the night
when we were shut away from each other.
We haven’t even had a chance
to grieve together.

These past two years
are a very weird season indeed.
So much has been stacked up,
pancaked into a pile
we have kept in the shed.

Dreams have died,
things we had once hoped to do
but now seem unlikely.

Hopes have died,
beliefs and expectations
that have disappeared unexpectedly
and really, without warning.

The war in Ukraine
is not only grievous
for the bodies that lie spread out and akimbo
across hundreds of miles,
it is also a war in Europe
that is pulling countries around the world into it
in a way we thought would never happen again.

And also, whatever our politics are,
I am guessing they haven’t been satisfied lately,
and that whatever we think is ahead
doesn’t appear as a bright and shinning city on the hill.

I don’t really need to tick down the list
of familial,
relational,
social,
institutional,
and environmental losses
that feel grievous to us.
All I need to do
is point in that direction
and it will likely evoke the shadow of loss.

Whether for a family member or friend,
or our confidence and pride in someone or something,
or hope for the future
or casualties from the past..
losses have stacked up like cord wood.

As you know, I was in Ohio last week
officiating a memorial service for friends
who died during the shutdown,
and this was the first best opportunity
to say good bye — at least in person and together.

As I said on Holy Thursday about Joanne,
grief and thanksgiving for a life
is something we simply have to do
with other people.
Doing it alone
simply heightens our sense of loss
and helps grief to burrow a wormhole inside of us.

I have some personal experience with this
that I may even have mentioned before.
In my fifties,
I hit a real tough grease slick of depression
and took a pretty good emotional fall.

While it was in the aftermath of my dad’s death,
I discovered it was about much more than him.
Like any priest or caring professional,
I had been pastoring
and caring for people
who were dying
or losing their loved ones,
for almost thirty years.

I came to realize, thanks to therapy
and a bunch of grieving,
that I had not been processing my own grief
along the way.

I don’t think it was an inflated sense
of my own strength
or that I didn’t think I needed to grieve.

My job was to care for other people
and I hadn’t learned to step aside when appropriate
and process my own grief.

Honestly, it was just a simple lack
of self-awareness
and a very ordinary proclivity
for denial.

Unprocessed grief
can distort reality
and turn the world inside out,
and ourselves inside out too.

When we do not get to share our grief with others,
for whatever reason
and for whatever loss,
it buries itself in us
and comes out later
in unhealthy
and even self-destructive ways.

Grieving together,
sharing the pain of our losses
and working toward recovery with others,
is just how we get better —
and how we keep from being injured
by our grief.

Because, you know,
grief is not the enemy —
isolation and undue privacy are.
Grieving our losses is good,
is natural,
is healing.
We just need to do it fully and out loud,
with others.

The Rev. David Heffling and I
re-interred four people from the Trinity columbarium
this pasat week, in the columbarium
at St. John’s, Canandagua.

I did not know them
so I wasn’t grieving for them.
But removing all those ashes
from our columbarium last summer and fall,
with the much appreciated help
from John Gibbon and Dan Pletcher,

was a kind of grievous experience.
It was a kind of grieving for the generations
of Trinity members
who rubbed their prayers
into the hard wood of the pews,
and whose prayers lifted up into the rafters
and are still there.
Some of you here now, here in Trinity Place,
are those people.

Interring those ashes
reminded me of all the what might have been,
what could have been,
what was hoped for but never happened…
all the regrets too,
the sorrows and songs — all of it,
a loss. A grief.
Not mine so much as yours,
some of you anyway.

There is no deep theological point
I am trying to make here.
No moral of John’s story,
at least not exactly.

What I am doing is inviting us
to be more mindful
of what we are going through
alone and together,
and that we need one another
and a sense of community
to work through it.
We have no idea
how the next few years will shake out,
economically,
politically,
institutionally —
in Geneva,
for Trinity Place,
the nation, internationally…we just don’t know.
But when facing that kind of uncertainty,
and trying to heal from the losses
we have already had,
holding hands
and touching hearts is awfully healing.

So let’s not downplay or forget about
our grief,
for all kinds of losses
these last many years.
And instead, let us touch our grief
as we hold hands in community,
and give thanks for the abundance we have had
and continue to share.

2 Easter: Practicing Resurrection

April 24, 2022 by Cam Miller

Here is what I know about this gospel story:
John was terrified of doubt.

And here is what I know about us:
We live in an era of doubt.
No, not an era, a miasma of doubt…a body bag of doubt.

Let’s start with us.
We are living through an extraordinary
tunnel of doubt
from which we cannot yet see
the light at the end.

It is a bit strange for us too,
because we have just been through
such a prolonged sense of abundance
and prosperity without a fearful external enemy
and very low interest rates to boot!

But since at least 2016
we just haven’t known what to expect
and when it will end —
the “it” being whatever existential threats
seem most threatening to us.

Of course, on one level
that is a real white, cis-male, liberal point of view
since there are a whole lot of people
who have been living on the margins
for a whole lot of time.
But there is this envelope we entered together
in 2016 and it got even grayer
and foggier
with COVID-19.
And now there is even a war in Europe again.

Our institutions seem to be crumbling
under the weight of it all.
School classrooms and administrations are imploding.
Banking, courts, governments, law enforcement,
publishing, health care, religion…

It is hard to think of an institution
that is not fraying at the edges
if not crumbling from the foundation.

We don’t know how it will end
or where our place in it is,
and what, if anything, we can do about it.

That is why I say it is an era of doubt,
existential doubt
about what is enduring
and what is passing away in the night.

I’ll give you a very graphic example
from my own current experience.

I am the part-time rector of a congregation
that I have helped transition
from a huge historic neo-gothic building
and campus of buildings,
to a storefront church
located in a former wine bar.

It is a great story,
and too long for this sermon.
But the part I am thinking about
has to do with the congregation’s columbarium.
You see, the congregation had built a wall in its chapel
as a place for people to intern the ashes
of their loved ones.
Well, I spent much of last summer
and early fall
contacting family members
from all parts of the country
to let them know we were closing
the columbarium.

Now whoever would expect
that a two-hundred year old church
and its columbarium
would close?
That is just not a thought
most of us would have had
before the last few years.
Big old churches were here forever,
and that was the way we treated them.
But as we know now,
those big old buildings are closing
all over the country.

That example is amplified and echoed
with other stories from schools
and offices
and hospitals
and businesses.
That is what I mean
about an era of doubt.

We just don’t know,
and when we just don’t know
it is hard to put our trust
in anything or anyone
that says they do.

Now back to John’s gospel for a moment.

John’s Jesus was not just a messiah.
John’s Jesus was in the beginning…the Word…
and the word that was with God.

John’s Jesus was cosmic
as well as enfleshed.
John’s Jesus was a really really big deal,
and I would say,
an even bigger deal
than Mark, Luke, and Mathew’s Jesus.

After all,
Mark’s gospel begins
with a full grown Jesus
who almost seems to stumble into
a radical new relationship with God,
and it ends with an empty tomb
and no ghost stories.

John has an awful lot riding on Jesus
and he is terrified of doubt.
He makes a point of saying
that everything he, John, says is absolutely true
and he knows, because he witnessed it.
Which, by the way,
inspires doubt in all kinds of New Testament scholars.

So John narrates this really weird and cool encounter
between Jesus and Thomas
in such a way as to alienate
an awful lot of 21^st century folks.
You might even be one of them.
I mean, he basically says,
those of us who cannot put our fingers
in the spear-hole in Jesus’ waist
or the nail holes in his hands,
have to believe what John tells us
or we’re spiritual chopped liver.
Now that ain’t right.

John sets up a terrible dichotomy
between those who believe
what the editors of those long ago stories
want us to believe
and those of us who believe our own experience.

Most of us, I am guessing,
have not had the kind of experience
John is describing.
So he is afraid that if we doubt the stories
we will doubt his Christology
and the whole thing will unravel.

He is not wrong,
at least not from my experience anyway.
Once we start de-mythologizing
and de-constructing
the Biblical narrative,
the way we have and are doing
with our own national history
around slavery,
we are left to then
re-mythologize
and re-construct
a NEW narrative
that is more consistent
with our own experiences.

Those who are deeply invested
in our believing them,
and believing the way they
want us to see Jesus — or slavery for that matter —
are fearful of that process.

But I say, faith has almost nothing
to do with theology —
certainly not an institutional theology.

You see, what we often think of as faith,
is actually belief.
Beliefs are things we “believe in” or not,
but faith, faith is an experience.

I am going to try to describe
the experience of faith
but like trying to describe being in love,
I will not be able
to meet the challenge.
But I am a preacher, so
I have to try anyway.

Think of an athlete
or dancer or musician,
who enters into the grace
of the thing she or he does best.
For me it is someone like NBA star Steph Curry
when he can’t miss a three-point shot
no matter where it is on the court
or how off balance he is.
He gets into that zone and
what happens is just amazing
and appears to be totally natural.

Well faith is likewise a kind of zone we enter
in which everything just clicks and fits —
and the love
and relationships
and work
and the commitments of our lives
all feel as if they’re floating together
in a single current.

It is not a sensation that lasts very long
but when we feel it we are deeply grateful.

And I don’t mean to say
that we are suddenly without pain
or challenge
or that somehow all of our difficulties
are removed. Not at all.

It is just that we know,
even for only a moment,
that we are part of something much bigger
and more magnificent,
and as small
and as insignificant
and as imperfect
as our own little life is,
we are part of this bigger flow, and wow…
all is well.

Do you know that experience?

It may be evoked by awe, as in the Natural world
or music
or love —
but whatever instigates or inspires it
we suddenly feel the current
within which our life flows
and for a just second
we know…we know the ordinary presence of the sacred.

That is the experience,
and trusting it when it has passed —
holding onto it
when we do not feel it any more — that is faith.

So you see, faith
is not about intellectual beliefs
or doctrinal formulas.
That is religion.
The institutions of religion
seek to get the rest of us
to go along with a prescribed
set of beliefs and ideas about God.
That is what religion does.

But faith is a flesh and blood,
real time
encounter
with the holy.
Whether it is a wee small voice
whispering to us in the dark of the night,
or a blistering dream
that shatters our previous plans,
or the warm depth of God in community
making itself known in the bread and the wine…
it is an experience
that we hold onto
and trust
even as it passes.

What I would say about faith
is that it is an actual encounter
with the presence of God in our midst —
an experience we engage in or not
rather than an idea or doctrine
we believe in or not.

If I had to boil down
this Christianity thing we do
to some manageable and digestible chew,
it would be that resurrection
is a thing we practice…or not.

I have no idea what resurrection is,
at least not in the way we talk about it in our songs
and theological pronouncements.
Really, I just don’t know about all of that.
But I do know how to practice resurrection
because Jesus told us.

“Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done…
on earth as it is in heaven.”
On earth, as it is in heaven.

To practice resurrection
is to bring forth the kingdom of God
on earth
as it is in heaven.

Now I come from Upstate New York
and I don’t mean to say
we have created heaven on earth up there.
We are as much in the body bag of doubt as you are,
and so I am not talking about utopia.

Again, let me use an ordinary personal experience.

I am happy to say it has happened more than once
but I am thinking about the recent privilege
of being trusted by a colleague
who came to see me to discuss a family matter.

But honestly, the conversation that ensued
was one in which we shared our experiences
of family and work and loss.

It was one of those moments
that I walked away from feeling
absolutely whole
and well
and refreshed.
Why?
Because it was the confluence
of my calling
and my life
and a friendship
that felt like grace.
In it a little bit of the kingdom
arrived on earth
as it is in heaven.

How do I know that?
Experience. I experienced such grace before.
The experience of faith
which I trust and hold onto.
It isn’t science —
it does not require measurement
or replication in the laboratory.

It is the experience of faith
that says “Yes!” in that moment
and is able to trust it
as it recedes in the rear view mirror.

While the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven
is also brought about with justice work
and peace work
and equity work,
it also happens interpersonally
and in community,
and wherever two or more of God’s creatures
find the currents of their lives intersecting
and moving within the love of God.

Those are faith experiences
and whenever and wherever we engage them
or allow them to happen,
we are practicing resurrection.

And by the way, we need not fear doubt
because doubt is part of faith, not the opposite of it.
Doubt is a tendon within the network
of spiritual bone and muscle
that empower us to see and feel and know
the experience of faith.

Doubt is perfectly natural
and a kind of resistance training
that helps us build spiritual muscle.

We doubt ourselves
and our experiences all of the time,
and there is a utility to doubt —
it causes us to pause and take stock of the moment.

But then we take a deep breath
and recollect the wisdom of our experience
and move on.
We need not fear doubt
or give it too much power to discomfort us.

So…that’s it.
Faith is an experience
of the ordinary presence of God in our midst,
and doubt is a normal and natural part of the flow.

Personally, I have no doubt
that we will get through this tunnel of doubt we are in
and find ourselves in the midst of some kind of renewal.
In the mean time,
we can keep practicing resurrection daily
and build the kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven.

Easter Day 2022: Hearing the music with touch, feeling the word with memory

April 17, 2022 by Cam Miller

Scroll down to below the text for a video version

Letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra
By Helen Keller, March 24, 1924

“Dear friends:

I have the joy of being able to tell you that, though deaf and blind, I spent a glorious hour last night listening over the radio to Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” I do not mean to say that I “heard” the music in the sense that other people heard it; and I do not know whether I can make you understand how it was possible for me to derive pleasure from the symphony. It was a great surprise to myself. I had been reading in my magazine for the blind of the happiness that the radio was bringing to the sightless everywhere. I was delighted to know that the blind had gained a new source of enjoyment; but I did not dream that I could have any part in their joy.

Last night, when the family was listening to your wonderful rendering of the immortal symphony someone suggested that I put my hand on the receiver and see if I could get any of the vibrations. He unscrewed the cap, and I lightly touched the sensitive diaphragm. What was my amazement to discover that I could feel, not only the vibration, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roil of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. How the lovely speech of the violins flowed and plowed over the deepest tones of the other instruments! When the human voices leaped up thrilling from the surge of harmony, i recognized them instantly as voices more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The women’s voices seemed an embodiment of all the angelic voices rushing in a harmonious flood of beautiful and inspiring sound. The great chorus throbbed against my fingers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instruments and voices together burst forth – an ocean of heavenly vibration – and died away like winds when the atom is spent, ending in a delicate shower of sweet notes…

As I listened, with darkness and melody, shadow and sound filling all the room, I could not help remembering that the great composer who poured forth such a flood of sweetness into the world was deaf like myself. I marveled at the power of his quenchless spirit by which out of his pain he wrought such joy for others – and there I sat, feeling with my hand the magnificent symphony which broke like a sea upon the silent shores of his soul and mine.”

“…and there I sat, feeling with my hand
the magnificent symphony
which broke like a sea upon the silent shores
of his soul and mine.”

If you are like me,
you got chills with that sentence
describing Helen Keller’s sense
that she was touching Beethoven’s finger across time like God and Adam
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Can’t you just close your eyes
and imagine it,
the music an invisible arch
from Beethoven to Keller,
the unspeakable beauty
of notes rendered so fortunately
that tongues and lips and breath
can travel through time and distance
and connect two deaf people?

Well what about Jesus…and us?

I know, there is no radio or vibration
or notes or symphony
to connect the first century and
the twenty-first century.

It’s only a story told so many times
it’s like the newspaper in the recycling bin
waiting to be taken out.
But if Beethoven and Keller
can connect like that,
and you and I can see it with our imaginations,
then it must be possible

for the sublime wisdom
and the painfully tender sacrifice
to reach like a long finger of love
to touch us,
you and me,
even here in a storefront worship space
in Geneva, New York.

I do not know what resurrection is. I just don’t.
I am not even sure the legions of Christians
and piles of Christian doctrines
know what resurrection is.

But we do know
that from out of the darkness of that grave,
and from underneath the pall of grief
and rattling of fear,
some light of love
named Jesus
pierced the emptiness
and jolted those who walked near his tomb.

We also know that light
has touched
enraptured
surged
and arched
through the deafness of history
and the blindness of geographical distance
and the closed door of science
to touch people in an ocean of different ways
ever since Jesus died.
Most of us here
are not Pentecostal
or Born Again
or raised to imagine we have
a personal relationship with Jesus Christ
as if Jimminy Cricket sitting on our shoulder.

Those are not core bits of our tradition.

But you know what we are?
We are a people of words.
We are word-people.
Words in a Prayer Book.
Words in the Bible.
Words in poems.
Words in song.
Words from mystics.
Words from teachers and prophets.
Words that blow our minds.
Words that touch our hearts.
Words that rattle us.
Words that shake us.
Words that relieve and comfort us.
Words that have changed our lives.
Words that inspire belief.
Words that provoke doubt.
Words that open our minds to possibility.
Words that turn us around.
Words that subvert us.
Words that heal us.
Words that wrap, inspire,
and call
and lead us.
Words DO that to us
just as surely as vibrations
brought the New York Symphony Orchestra
to a blind, deaf woman.

Words.
Words sung upon notes,
and words seeping between the silences
as we read them,
and words spoken in our ears.
We are a people of words
and I am here to tell you
that words
are every bit as spiritual
as any mystical vision
or ecstatic Pentecostal bollyhoo.
Words are as spiritual as any Zen Koan
or Hindu mantra.

Words connect us to Jesus.
Words connect us to that moment
when light pierced darkness
and transformed a brutal State-sponsored torture and execution
into the experience of resurrection.
And in that experience,
somehow and in some way,
Jesus lives.

In the same way that Ludwig van Beethoven
touched Helen Keller
in real time
through a radio she could not see
or hear,
Jesus can touch us
through words he left behind.
Words fly on the wings of time
and sing on the tongues of men and women
and are etched on the delicate leafs of paper
whether handwritten
or spit out with technology.

I am not dismissing other mediums
of connection, but raising up
the homely “Word” as OUR communal medium.
What I am inviting us into here
is an understanding.
It is about our mind
and how to open it
and allow words
to unleash their power.

Words that tell stories
and words that tell secrets.
Words that offer morals
and words that point to sublime truths.
Words of parables and sayings and poems.

Allow them to enter our minds
the way Helen Keller allowed vibrations
to enter her body and heart and imagination.
Allow Jesus to live even though he died.
Allow Jesus to come alive
like the ancient notes we sing,
and play, and listen to.

Think of all the other people
and ideas and places
we have allowed to come alive
on the wings of words.

Our hearts pound
when we hear certain notes strung together
on a score of music
passed down through centuries.

Our thoughts stutter
when we hear certain phrases of oratory
captured in writing or recording
that never seem to fade or turn brown.
Our memories bring to life again
feelings, images, colors, and textures
of particular moments in our lives.

The only thing stopping us
from experiencing the full power of words
is the difference in our attitude toward them.

But if we free words
to become the vehicles
upon which Jesus comes alive,
we will suddenly understand
that Easter
is not an occasion that insists
the Bible is Fake News
or Literal Truth.
Easter is a moment in which we are invited —

invited free of charge
and without coercion —
to let the power of words
be the bridge we have needed
for a dead man
to come alive
like Ludwig touched Helen.

Helen said she could “hear” through
what she could “feel.”
Well we can feel
through the words we hear.

Listen to this.
Even close your eyes and feel what you hear:

“Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Mary the mother of James,
and the other women with them
who told this to the apostles.
But these words seemed to (the apostles)
an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

You feel that, right?
You feel the burn in that, right?
If you are a woman, and even some men,
you know that experience, don’t you,
of sharing the wisdom of your heart
and have it considered
an idle feeling or thought?

You have stood there yourself —
know that exact experience
of standing between those women
who have had a life-changing experience,
and a bunch of men who think they are
the arbiters of truth and wisdom
who deny that experience.

That is the arch of this story,
the one that offers to transport us
across time and distance and belief
to allow the word to connect us
with the Easter moment.

Standing in between those woman and men,
standing there in that hot tension —
a tense distance
among human beings who know and care
about one another…
yet is roiling with rejection,
belittlement,
arrogance,
fear,
grief,
anger,
confusion,
and hope.

Can you feel that with your memory?

Or this.
I bet you can feel
a time that your own personal darkness
was pierced by a light
that came from out of nowhere
with unexpected agency.
Let the words of this story
reconnect with that experience —
feel YOUR moment in those words.

We bring to these words
the wrong ideas.
When we ask if it is true
or did it really happen —
or did it really happen “that way” —
we are thinking ourselves into a dead end.

Can you imagine if Helen Keller
had put her hand on the radio diaphragm
and thought, “I bet this isn’t real?”
The vibrations would have delivered nothing.
She would not have allowed herself
the sensation of feeling Beethoven.

We are a people of words
when we allow the power of words
to touch us and connect us
to moments we haven’t experienced yet.

Easter Day, not just the words of Luke’s story
or Helen Keller’s story,
but ALL the words of this day —
the prayer words
and that flower,
being together to sing words,
and share Jesus’ on-going
open table words,
and all the “Alleluia” words —
those are the Words of Easter Day.
They have power if we allow them,
to connect us to something
strange and wonderful.
Something far more than an idle tale.

Happy Easter to you,
and may you feel the words. Amen.

Palm Sunday: Poetry & Historical Fiction

April 10, 2022 by Cam Miller

Easter is poetry
and Palm Sunday is historical fiction.

Don’t get mad yet, historical fiction
can be and is composed
of actual facts and real people
but told with a narrative
that is more interested
in story
than it is in accurate history.

I feel like I should issue some kind of warning
about this sermon, but not sure what I should say.

On the other hand, you already knew this was Palm Sunday
so it’s not like you walked in here
expecting Easter. Right?

This version of the Passion Story from Luke
makes it sound like a lynch mob took Jesus
from the feeble hands of Pilate and crucified him.
The mob is made up of “rulers,”
the “high priest,” and “others.”

Let’s be clear who Luke is talking about:
corresponding contemporary figures like the Pope,
College of Cardinals,
Archbishop of Canterbury,
Michael Curry, and
some underlings to add bulk.
A mob of men in high positions
turned petty, jealous, angry, and blood-thirsty.
Does that sound right?

Luke’s Pontus Pilate
is a hand-wringing, ambivalent,
worried about his image,
nice-guy-in-a-tough position.
This actual historic character
crucified participants in a messianic rebellion
along a twenty mile stretch of road
from Jerusalem to Jericho.

He was eventually recalled to Rome
because his administration
was even too ruthless for Rome.
Does Luke’s Pilate sound right?

The Passion Narrative taken from Luke’s Gospel
basically reports that impotent clergy
and a violently repressed population
forced a ruthless, cruel tyrant
into executing a poor undeserving Messiah.
Does that sound right?

I know I am a little ruthless, like Pilate,
when it comes to deconstructing this biblical narrative
we call The Passion.
I do it even though
it is such an integral focus of the tapestry
upon which the myth of Jesus is woven —
and by myth I don’t mean untrue
I mean the whole story of Jesus
and all the beliefs and doctrines that surround him.

Someone asked me recently
why I hate Scripture — by which she
meant it seems like I am always deconstructing it.
In fact I am as deeply devoted
and wrapped up in the Bible
as any fundamentalist preacher
who thumps the pulpit with it.
But I insist that Biblical wisdom
has to make sense through eyes
that view the world in 2022.
The reason I do, is that there is a war going on —
besides the one in Ukraine.

The war I am talking about
is a protracted one
waged against Christianity
and all religion —
a death served up by a thousand cuts.

Call it secularism
or scientific atheism
or capitalism
or all of the above and more,
but it is a war Christians have participated in
with amazing self-destructive resistance
to the facts on the ground
in the twenty-first century.

The Gospel narrative contains
many elements that are reasonable to assume
are historical in some way.
But like all of the bible,
it also contains elements that are clearly not factual
as well as meant to be metaphorical
or even strategic and instructive
in the battles of its own day.
Insisting that we swallow it whole
as if it is either all factual or all false
is part of what is killing us.

Let me explain.

I attended “real” church this week.
It had been a long time.
By real church, I mean
not the Trinity Place brand
of highly modified,
inclusive language church.
This liturgy was for an audience of clergy
and it had everything in it
that you might remember from former days.
Things you may even miss
like the Nicene Creed,
four or five readings,
lots of singing
and singing every verse.

In the back row was a young woman,
a layperson who I only know slightly.
She was sitting there
through the whole thing,
not saying the words in unison
as far as I could tell.

Thinking about her
and wondering what she saw and heard,
I all of a sudden had a vision of sorts.
It was AS IF

I was seeing and hearing the liturgy
for the first time ever
without any knowledge of Christianity.
What would an educated,
secular,
science-respecting,
capitalist nurtured consumer
who had never been in church before
think about what she was hearing?
Whoa!

Those of us who have grown up in church
host so many words and ideas and stories
that just wash over us
or pass through us
when we hear or say them.

Think about these words
and what they could mean to people
who do not know anything about church.
”Lord”
”Trinity”
“Cross”
”Hosanna in the highest”
”Sanctify this body and blood, the holy food and drink
of new and unending life…”
“Lamb of God”
”Angels and archangels”
”Blood of the new Covenant”

Those are mostly from our worship
not even the more formal and unadulterated liturgy
most Episcopal churches still use.

So I get a little crazy
about the stories we still tell
and how we tell them.

Because I know that Luke and the others
were telling their Jesus-story
generations later
to an audience made up of mostly Romans,
and I understand that those stories
were told to put the blame for how things turned out
on people other than the Romans.

Think of it this way.
Imagine if the Jesus-story took place
in modern day Afghanistan
and he had been tortured for information
by American CIA agents
and left for dead in a ditch,
only to be killed by a landmine.
Then, fifty or sixty years later,
the agents of a fledgling religion
with that long dead Afghan Jesus as Messiah,
brought their story to the United States.
How might they modify their story
to make it more palatable to us?

Maybe the landmine was an old Soviet one
left over for generations.
Maybe their Jesus had been turned into the CIA
by bad guys who wanted him dead.
Modifications like that,
that don’t really matter
because they aren’t about Jesus.

Rather, they are about other people in the story.
But those things have a way of mattering
in unpredictable ways —
like a millennium of antisemitism
that culminates with a Holocaust.

So why do we keep telling the story
of Jews killing Jesus
when we know
it could not have happened that way?

Why don’t we unwrap the story
and talk about what it is really about,
and talk about it in terms
that make sense in 2022?

So I am a ruthless de-mythologizer
because I think we are losing the war.
I think we are losing the war
because we cling to the wrong things,
and because some of the things we cling to
have caused horrendous violence and hatred
throughout history.

An unreconstructed Passion Narrative
is one of the worst things
we cling to
and yet it is smack dab
in the middle of the tapestry
we have woven.

So this is a great opportunity we have in 2022.
We do not know what happened
between the moment
Jesus gathered his friends for a last meal together,
and him hanging nailed on a cross.

We DO know
the Romans arrested him
because that is who had the power and authority
to police the locals.

We DO know
Jesus was charged with insurrection
because crucifixion is the punishment
that fits the crime —

besides, that is also what
Pilate supposedly posted on the cross,
that he claimed to be King.

We DO know
that Jesus was crucified
because it is corroborated by other,
even non-Christian sources
that mention it in passing
decades later.

So we do NOT know
how and why
he got from the Last Supper with friends
to the cross by enemies.
It is a blank.
We know what the gospel-editors
filled in, and that it was from their own perspective
and editorial bias.
Remember, none of the four gospel authors
knew Jesus or were there in Jerusalem.

When you and I stand at a grave
and cannot understand
why someone so young, so vital,
so beloved
has died,
the grief makes us even crazier.
We have no answers for death
any time,
but when death comes
and rips our heart out
we reach for explanations.
We reach for anything
that will staunch the bleeding
of our hearts.

2022 gives us an opportunity
to back up a few paces
and wonder again
or for the first time,
what this story is really about.
Without filling in the gaps
of what we do not know,
what is this story really about?

IF we do not fill the gap
with things we do not know
what does the story tell us?

Jesus was executed by the state
for insurrection.
We have no idea if he was guilty or not
but whatever he did
he got on the wrong side of Roman authority.
The only evidence we have
is what he taught,
and what it said he did.
Let’s look at it.

He didn’t teach people
not to pay taxes…not exactly.
He offered an ambiguous proverb:
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
and to God what is God’s.

If you’re a Roman hearing that,
you know that the taxes belong to Caesar. No issue.
But if your a zealous Jew hearing it,
you know that everything belongs to God. Big issue.

Jesus taught his followers
to turn the other cheek when a soldier strikes you,
and to carry the soldiers stuff an extra mile
when impressed into duty.

There was subtlety here too, that I won’t go into
but suffice it to say,
he was being subversive
right under Roman noses.

When we get to Jesus causing a riot in the temple
is when we see actions that might have
immediate and violent consequences for Jesus.

Something Jesus could not have controlled
is what his followers claimed.
If they went around chanting that Jesus was Messiah
then Pilate would not have liked that too much.
It wasn’t against Jewish law
to claim messianic authority, in fact
there were quite a few who did.
But that claim would have included being King
who would return Israel to the Promise Land
of national independence, so well Pilate
would have been more than uncomfortable there…

We know that Jesus lived in a time of heightened
expectations for a messiah to appear
and kick the Roman legions
back across the Mediterranean.
We know there had been a long series of rebellions
in Judah and Galilee and
it was a bitter, hostile, angry, and violent
atmosphere the Romans were trying to control.
If Jesus was seen
as another one of those crazy messiahs
then it would not have gone well.

So I do not think we need to fill the gap
between the Last Supper
and Jesus hanging on a cross
with all the stuff that
Luke,
John,
Matthew, and
Mark
filled it in with.

I think we know why Jesus was arrested,
tortured, and executed.
It is the same reason
it would happen today.

What is not clear
is where you and I would stand.

5 Lent: Jesus Gets a Massage

April 3, 2022 by Cam Miller

This story about Jesus
getting a therapeutic massage
is one of the few stories about Jesus
that is actually included in all four Gospels.
Isn’t that amazing?

I mean, the idea that his mother, Mary, was a virgin
is not in all four Gospels.

The idea that Jesus was born in a manger
is not in all four Gospels.

Even Jesus appearing to someone else
after the resurrection
is not in all four of the Gospels.

So when a story like this one
appears in all four Gospels
we have to imagine
it is part of the bedrock of Jesus stories
that was told from the very beginning.
BUT…Mark’s version of this story is different
from the one we heard today from John.
Mark’s version is earlier than John’s
by twenty-five years to forty years.
That is a lot of time
for a story to travel and change.

It is instructive to compare the two stories
and ask ourselves some questions
about the differences.

First, in Mark, the massage takes place
in the home of a leper
whereas in John, it is the
relatively well-off domicile
of Lazarus and his sisters.

Secondly, in Mark, the woman remains nameless.
She was not part of the inner circle,
and she does not even get the respect of a name.
That may mean that nobody knew her name.
Ironically though, Mark ends the story by saying
that wherever the gospel is preached
in the whole world,
it will be in memory of HER — the nameless woman.

Third, in Mark,
the authenticity of the outrage expressed
over the cost of pure nard
and how it could have fed many,
is never questioned.
Whoever expressed the outrage
is not named in Mark,
and it is more than one person.

Mark accepts at face value
that there is a legitimate value conflict going on.
It is not explained, as in John,
by a character defect on Judas’ part.

To recap then, in Mark, this story is told
to highlight what the nameless woman
did for Jesus at a moment of despair,
while in John, the story is told
to disparage Judas
and set up an explanation
for his motivation to betray Jesus.

But in both stories
Jesus receives a massage at a low moment
in preparation for the torture and agony
that awaits him.

To which I say:
“In the event of a decompression,
an oxygen mask will automatically appear
in front of you. To start the flow of oxygen,
pull the mask towards you.
Place it firmly over your nose and mouth,
secure the elastic band behind your head,
and breathe normally.
…If you are traveling with a child
or someone who requires assistance,
secure your mask on first,
and then assist the other person.”

Now obviously there is more than one moral
to the massage story,
it greatly depends upon who tells it
and why it is told.
But my take away is this:
sometimes self-care comes first.

I put it in the category of the Great Commandment
to love our neighbor AS ourselves.
For many of us,
that may not be very good loving
because we are often better at loving our neighbors
than we are at loving ourselves.

I mean, we know our neighbor is imperfectoxand we look past it — sometimes with mercy
and sometimes with humor.
But accepting our own imperfections
and actually loving ourselves
in full acknowledgment
AND full acceptance of them? That is hard duty.
So arriving at that place
where we can accept a massage —
whether it is physical,
emotional, or spiritual —
in the presence of so much greater need around us,
is like “securing our mask first first,
and then assisting the other people around us.”

That is all I got on Judas vs massage therapist,
so I am moving on to chapter two.

That poem from Isaiah
is a perfect example of “naming hope,”
which is both a balm and a mission
we have been given
as agents of gospel-wisdom.
Isaiah is one of the greatest
poets and prophets of hope
the world has ever known.

“…Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a NEW thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert…”

Something we need to know
about this prophetic poem
is that it was voiced
at the lowest, darkest moment
in the history of ancient Israel.
Isaiah lights a candle
and refuses to listen
to any more groaning and grief.

In his inimitable poetic style
Isaiah figuratively lifts up his hands
and says to the imagined crowd
of grieving voices encircling him:
“Stop! Just stop! God is about to do a NEW thing.
Stop and listen. “

Very few people then or now
believe God can do a NEW thing.
Most of us don’t even believe
WE can do a new thing.

You and I do not have the capacity
to imagine what could or might be hoped for.
The bandwidth of our imagination
is just not that wide.
We simply do not know what to hope for
and so when we do hope for specific outcomes
they are almost always the wrong ones
or the too-small ones.

Just to put a little flesh on his long dead bones,
let me remind us
what those ancients had been through.

As they understood their own history,
they had been saved from slavery in Egypt
by God.

They had been lost in the wilderness
for 40 years and then saved
by God.

They had survived the wilderness
and been given a legal constitution
by God,
It was a constitution that showed them
precisely how to create
a just and equitable society authorized
by God.

So they had been given a land
flowing with milk and honey
and the opportunity
to build a society for former slaves
that was merciful and just.
All of it given
by God.

But eventually their revolution
became a dictatorship
and their sovereign nation
was torn by civil war and divided
north and south.
Diminished in size and stature
they were invaded and occupied.

Finally, they were destroyed
and taken away in exile
to live in servitude
as captives in Babylon.
In slavery once again,
they lost hope
because clearly they had been abandoned
by God.

They could not be Israel
in a foreign country,
they could not be Israel
without the beloved Temple or the Holy City.
They could not be Israel
without the Promise Land.

Into the dark of that total despair
Isaiah says:
“God is about to do a new thing
and bring us home.”

Those exiles would have believed Isaiah
about as much as the grievous and scared disciples
hiding in the upper room would have ever
believed that Jesus would come to be known
all around the entire world.
Even in the best of times
we do not know what to hope for —
and the courage of our hope
is not powerful enough
to hope for what can happen.

But here is an odd thing.
What Isaiah told them to hope for
actually came to pass.
I am not making any bold claim
about God doing the new thing
Isaiah voiced,

I’m just observing history.
Suddenly hope,
which would have seemed ludicrous before,
a poetic vision
that sounded utterly naive came true.

For the moment let’s just reject
the idea that God manipulates armies
and historical forces
so that some people are winners and some are losers.
Let’s just accept that such an idea
may have seemed a splendid explanation
in the ancient world
but is a bucket with holes in it in our world.

Instead let’s just think about Isaiah
sitting in the bowels of the Babylonian Empire –
which was one of the more ruthless Empires
in human history.

There he was, surrounded
by those who had contracted
an all-consuming grief.

He must have been at risk of getting it himself
with misery and hopelessness enveloping him.
And yet he could somehow still see hope.

Like an aperture letting in light
hope gave him vision,
and hope
allowed him to see something
his contemporaries could not see.

So even if we say,
from our perch on history
that it was not God
that brought the Persians to power
who then allowed the captives to return
to the Promise Land and rebuild,
we can still see something amazing.

Even if we acknowledge
that it wasn’t God,
still Isaiah was able to see
historical forces at work
that would create a new opportunity
and bring about a new day.

How did he see the new
that was coming into the world
when everyone else just saw a grim
and growing darkness?
He saw it.
He spoke to it.
He held it up. He fed it.
So here is chapter three,
and the conclusion.

I know a lot of people
who follow our brand of Christianity
are focused like a laser on outreach:
concrete,
measurable acts of goodness
like feeding, clothing, and housing people in need.
I am not going to argue against that — obviously.
But I am going to argue
that is not our primary mission.
In fact, it is at least third
on the list of mission items
for us agents of gospel-wisdom.

First on our list,
is that our communities of faith
and those of us in it
are to be an oxygen mask.

First and foremost, we are
to be a people and a place
in which we can breathe
and receive life
that enables us to live more abundantly —
which includes caring for other people.
But first it includes
accepting love
and learning to allow ourselves to be loved
so that we can learn to love others well also.

The clash of values
that took place with bitterness
between Jesus and Judas in John’s story
is still a hot flame today in most congregations.

I say it is not either/or
but both/and —
and yet, there is a first place
and a third place
in this order.
Second place goes to hope.

Our mission is to be agents of hope
in which we see possibilities
when everyone else sees only despair.
It is not necessarily the ability to see and know
what is going to happen
or even what should happen.
Rather, it is the courage
and imagination to see light
piercing the dark
and to know
that a new possibility
that hasn’t even been thought of yet
is coming our way.
To be agents of hope in our world
is tough duty to be sure,
but our communities of faith
must be places we can practice it
and develop hearts
and minds
that host that kind of courageous hope.

So, first we need to be an oxygen mask
to one another.
Secondly, we need to be a Petri dish for hope.
Third, we need to sell some of the pure nard
and fund Family Promise or Center of Concern
or whatever other acts of goodness
we wish to support.

Would you look at that —
a three point sermon.
Amen.

3 Easter: A Season of Grief

2 Easter: Practicing Resurrection

Easter Day 2022: Hearing the music with touch, feeling the word with memory

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Letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra
By Helen Keller, March 24, 1924

Palm Sunday: Poetry & Historical Fiction

5 Lent: Jesus Gets a Massage

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Letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra By Helen Keller, March 24, 1924

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Letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra
By Helen Keller, March 24, 1924