Sermons – Page 3

4 Lent: Choices

March 27, 2022 by Cam Miller

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The armchair preachers were wondering
what the word for this week would be.
On Lent One it was “fear,”
Lent Two “loss,”
Lent Three “thirst.”
If there is one word for this week
maybe you can figure it out.

For any of us who grew up in a Christian Church
the story we heard today
has been misnamed “The Prodigal Son.”
The emphasis is on “prodigal”
and that is because Christianity loves sin —
or loves to hate sin and talk about it.

So sin-loving theologians
and guilt-stroking preachers
seem to think the focus is on the youngest son
who is, of course, a major league sinner.

But the story, even as Luke tells it,
is about a parent with two children…a parent with two children.
You could call it a father with two sons,
but the gender of everyone of the main characters
could be switched out
to be a mother and two daughters.
It would be the same story.

So in this sense, because it is Jesus telling it,
the story is about God much more than the sons.

And when the focus shifts to the sons,
it is a story as much about
the choice of the oldest sibling
as it is about the choices of the youngest one.

I am pretty sure that there is more than
one person in this congregation
who might have been
a prodigal son or daughter.
And most adults I know
who were wayward
at one or more points in their life,
and then journeyed back to a more typical level of
human imperfection,
like this story a lot.
And one of the things we like about it,
especially if you happened to be the youngest child
(which I am), is that the finger-wagging oldest child
is left holding the bag with a sneer on his face.

I have also discovered that oldest children,
and even some middle children,
often do not feel warm and fuzzy about this story
in the same way prodigal or youngest children do.
Instead, their response is something like,
“Now isn’t that just like the youngest,
messing up and getting away with it?”

But either way, like all of Jesus’ stories,
it has a barbed hook in it.

The Story of a “Parent with Two Children”
is poignant
sweet
painful
and challenging
no matter which character you identify with.

The two sons make starkly different choices
and yet the father neither affirms nor critiques
either son’s choice.
That right there should blow our minds.

The events of the story,
like life itself,
demonstrate that we live with the consequences
of our choices.

But the action and punch line of the story
hinge like a door on the Dad.

The Dad’s exuberant joy
upon the youngest son’s return
is like a shiny object that catches our attention.
We get caught up with the Dad’s abundant generosity,
either with appreciation for it
or discomfort that the youngest son
is getting away with something.

But the story is not over.

While the Dad welcomes the youngest son back,
he welcomes the oldest son in.
The Dad reaches across the angry,
bitter resentment of hurt and indignation
and invites the oldest son to stay connected.

Basically, the Dad says to the oldest son,
“What’s mine is yours…”
The extravagant love of the father
is extended to both his sons
with unbelievable excessiveness.
His love is not predicated
on any particular choice
either son makes.
Be they good, bad, or ugly choices
the love remains.
Now who loves like that?

Love not connected to the choices we make?
Love not tied to a string
at the other end of a condition?
Love centered in something utterly differentiated
from the actions of the person being loved?
Who loves like that?

Those of us who have been raised
on the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
of popular Christianity,
get smug about the Prodigal Son story
as if such extravagant love
is a unique characteristic of our religion.
It is like that awful camp song:

“They will know we are Christians by our love”
as if we love better
or differently than any other religion.

But centuries before Jesus was a gleam
in Joseph’s and Mary’s eyes,
God took the hand of a people
who had been used as mules
and brought them through the scorching desert,
and set them around a dinner table
on the Plains of Jericho
and fed them.

Here is where the two biblical stories we heard today
come together.

All the way along Israel’s ordeal –
escaping from the slave masters,
surviving wilderness,
living through anxiety and fear,
rebellion and chaos and isolation,
God fed them with a mysterious
and apparently natural y-formed substance
to keep them alive.
Manna, the sweet-bread of wilderness survival.

We heard today in Joshua,
that having crossed the Jordan River,
which throughout the Bible is always the boundary
between Wilderness and Promise,
God gives them a Passover Meal.

After that Passover Meal, manna disappears forever.

It cannot be a coincidence
that there is no Manna in the Promise Land.
That’s the punch line of that story:
There is no Manna in the Promise Land.
Manna is what sustains us
when we don’t have choices —
when we are powerless.

In those unusual times
when we find ourselves on a bobsled chute
going down a fast course
that God
or fate
or serendipity
or randomness
seems to have shoved us into,
the Exodus/Joshua story
says that God takes some responsibility
to sustain us with manna.

In such hazardous or traumatic times
manna may turn out to be actual bread
or emotional nurture
or a community of people who hold us up
or a power greater than ourselves
we don’t perceive or know about until later…

In such times,
and I know we have all had them,
we almost never realize
we are being sustained with manna
until afterwards.
It is when we look back
and suddenly realize
we could have never made on our own.

But the Exodus/Joshua story says out loud,
that when we get to the Promise Land –
or as in the story of the Parent with Two Children,
when we “come to our senses” –
it is then that we must start living again
by our own choices
and it is then that the manna ceases.

Now a lot of Christians say things like,
“put God in the drivers seat”
even though God doesn’t have a driver’s license.
If we expect God to run our lives
we are in for a horrible crash.

And a lot of people, Christian or not,
will say things like,
“It’s all good”
or “It was meant to be,”
as if we have no agency
and the choices we make
don’t matter.

But according to the Biblical vision of reality,
the Promise Land is the place
where we get to make our own choices
and where we get to live
with the consequence of those choices.

This biblical point of view is that of former slaves.
The Promise Land
is a place where we have freedom of choice
unfettered by powers greater than ourselves
making decisions for us –
whether Pharaoh or God.

The Promise Land is the place of choice
where we do not need to be sustained by manna
because we are making choices
that not only sustain us
but contribute to the sustenance
of the whole community.

There is no manna in the Promise Land
and we need to stop looking for it!

The Prodigal Son
does not expect to return and be rich.
His recovery
is based upon his accepting the consequences
of the choices he made.

His recovery
is based on the realization
that if he is going to be a laborer
instead of a prince,
he knows that being a laborer
in the service of his father
is better than being a laborer
in the service of someone
who does not care about him.

There is no proposal,
from either the youngest son or the father,
that the he gets to return as a prince.

The Dad welcomes him back
with excessive love
but there is no hint
that it means he is saved
from the consequences of his choices.
He gets a feast not another inheritance.
He gets work and wages, not privilege.

Likewise, the Dad offers the oldest son
a bridge back into the household,
but he is perfectly willing to let the oldest son suffer
the consequence of his resentment
if that is his son’s choice.

The Promise Land
is the one in which we have freedom to make choices;
in which we have the accountability
to live with the consequences of our choices;
and in which our only hope
is a kind of communalism
that creates a supreme interdependence
in which we sink and swim together.

Manna is only for those
who are on their way into or out,
even if they don’t know it yet,
a pig sty of one kind or another.

I truly do believe
there are precious times when
we are sustained with manna.
We only have it briefly,
just long enough to get to the Jordan River
and cross back into the Land of Choices.
But those are rare
and unpredictable moments
and we should never seek them
or count on them.
The times of manna are utter gifts.

So the Prodigal Son story –
which is really about the Dad –
is just another version
of an ancient covenant
that God made with those mule-people
twelve-hundred years before Jesus was born.

It is a relationship of promise
and the promise is this:
God loves us
so extravagantly
that regardless of the choices we make,
we will be greeted on the road of return
with a warm coat
and an even warmer embrace. BUT…
and this is part of the promise too,
that radically extravagant love
does not save us from our choices.

In fact, God promises
that we will be given the freedom
to live with the consequences of our choices.
That is the Promise Land and we live in it.

I sometimes get to the end of a sermon
like this one,
and say to myself, “What the heck did I say
that has value to anyone?”
But you know, we need to be reminded
that we are living in the Promise Land,
and it is a place
where our choices matter —
even the little ones.
That magical manna that saved us once
when we were powerless and in trouble
isn’t available to us here in the Promise Land.
It is our choices that matters.

You and I
are the sons and daughters
in that story — we are not the father or mother.

So I guess it just comes down to that:
thinking about our choices,
coming to our senses,
accepting God’s extravagant love
and then getting back to work
after the party is over.

3 Lent: Thirst

March 20, 2022 by Cam Miller

- - - - Today’s reflection is rooted in
      - Isaiah 55:1-9
      - The poem, “All Thirst Quenched” by Lois Red Elk
      - The hymn, “Come to the Water.”

Okay, there is a problem with today’s Gospel.
They sentences are a series of non-sequiturs —
one thought does not flow from the next
and the second paragraph,
that claims to be a parable, isn’t.

In that first paragraph
Jesus seems to be echoing
one of his proverbial sayings:
”The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”
But then suddenly he is talking about repenting
or perishing.

In the second paragraph
we are told to expect a parable,
which is a contrast of two points — as in,
“the kingdom of God is like…”
But here we have a proverbial story
with an ambiguous punch line
and no contrast.
It is not a parable.

I could push and pinch and stretch
these two paragraphs to say something
but it would be a total manipulation.
I think it better to let them just lie there in the corner.
Meditate on them if you will
but I am honing in on “thirst.”

Isaiah, speaking for God, says,
”Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters…”
And the Native American poet
remembers the year
”all thirsts were quenched.”

So, two weeks ago it was fear.

Last week it was loss.
This week it is thirst.
Do you see a theme developing here?
(No? I don’t either).

But I do love, love, love
the lyrics to the hymn we just sang
and the tune also.
Obviously, “Come to the Water”
is based on that Isaiah reading.

O let all who thirst
Let them come to the water
And let all who have nothing
Let them come to the Lord:
Without money, without price
Why should you pay the price
Except for the Lord?

I love that.

But it doesn’t make sense either.
There ain’t nothing without price.
There ain’t nothing without price.
Everything we thirst for in other words,
everything that is valuable to us,
has a price.
There ain’t nothing without price.

And usually the price
is exactly what we do not want to pay.
We love our children to death
and what is the very thing
that loving them requires of us?
To let them go,
to let them fly.
To actually teach them
how to find their way in the world
even if that is far from us.

We love someone
who has an addiction
and we watch them
self-destruct little by little
until it is head over heels.
We want to stop them.
We want to heal them.
We want to fix them.
But what does love require
but to allow them to find their bottom —

if indeed, there is a bottom before death.
We can offer them every possible hope
and resource there is,
but they have to ingest it
instead of the substance
that is laying waste to them.

My back condition
reminds me of this
almost every daily.
I wake up in pain
and what is the thing
that makes it better?
Exercise. Exercises
that intensify the pain at first
until suddenly it is better.
The very price I do not want to pay
is the thing that must be paid
to satisfy the thirst.

What the hell?
Who made the world work
based on this equation anyway?

What is the substance
that truly slakes our thirst? Water.
What do we want? Anything but…
a cold beer,
an ice cold coke,
a scotch on the rocks,
a martini with an olive,
a dry red wine,
a hot cup of coffee,
or how about a thick chocolate milkshake…

We want so much,
so very much.
And yet, our most basic thirst
is the one
that gives us life.

Yes we need food,
less than many of us eat.

Yes we need drink,
less than many of us consume.

Yes we need shelter,
more basic than many of us support.

Yes we need clothing,
less than many of us wear.

Those things are what keep us breathing,
but then there is what offers us life
and makes life worth living.

Yes we need community,
but we would benefit from more of it
than most of us have.

Yes we need love, to love,
but we love less
than most of us could love.

Yes we need to be loved, to be loved,
but we probably receive less
than most of us
wish we had — certainly less
than we could enjoy.

We have a lot more
of the stuff that keeps us breathing
than we have
of the stuff that gives us life.

And that is because
money can buy us stuff for breathing
but it can’t buy us love
or life
or what makes life worth living.
Those things come with a price,
a price money cannot pay.

I’m not telling you
anything you do not know already.

Life
and the things that make life
worth living
cost us.

They cost us vulnerability —
to allow ourselves, potentially, to be hurt.

They cost us risk —
to allow ourselves to actually feel pain.

They cost us humility —
to allow ourselves to see our own insignificance.

They cost us compassion —
to allow ourselves to feel-with others
even when there is nothing we can do for them
other than feel what they feel.

They cost us powerlessness —
to recognize when we cannot fix it
and to then look around and embrace
what we can do,
which is often simply be present.

They cost us the gift of dignity —
which is to see and feel and honor
the humanity
of the person in front of us
who is bleeding neediness and deprivation
of the most basic necessities,
and for us to care
and respond
no matter what we think of him or her,
no matter what we think of the reason
for their deprivation,
no matter what we think
is their long term prospect.

The gift of dignity,
the surrender to powerlessness,
the courage of compassion
the wound of humility
the strength to risk
and the resolve to be vulnerable…
These are the costs
of life
and living life more abundantly.

They are not a reflex of desire,
something we are attracted to.
They are not a price we love to pay.
They are not ever something
we go shopping for.

But they are
the source of life
and living life more abundantly.

Doggone it.

I do not know why we are made this way
or why our deepest thirst
is only slaked
by costs
we wish we did not have to pay.
But I do know
that is exactly the way we are
and the way it is for us.

Let us come to the water.

1 Lent: Wilderness is the place we go to find freedom from our fears

March 6, 2022 by Cam Miller

I am going to ask each of us
to do something we do not like —
to touch our fear.

Now remember, a lion
knows as much fear
as a Thompson’s Gazelle,
it is just that the Gazelle wears its fear
much more visibly.
Both lion and Gazelle own fear
even if about different things,
and they both carry fear
wherever they go.
So do we.

If you are wondering
why I am talking about fear
it is because Jesus in the wilderness is all about fear.

So, to help us touch our fear
I am going to engage in a little simulation.
This is my favorite backpack.
I bought it when I was traveling alone for the first time
to El Salvador.
Before this, I had always gone with others,
large groups of others.
The backpack I took with me while traveling alone,
suddenly and literally fell apart in the Atlanta airport –
just kind of disintegrated.
So I bought this one.

I was traveling with my fears that day.
I don’t love flying to begin with
and because my Spanish
was almost non-existent, and
I was not going to being met
by anyone at the airport — which
is an hour or more away from the capital —
I felt apprehensive about finding
my way for the first time by myself.

All of which is to say,
this backpack has had some fear in it.
I am going to pass it around
and invite you to deposit
one or more of your fears in it.

Nobody will know which fear
you put in the backpack,
and because this is an exercise in imagination,
nobody else knows how big your fear is.
It’s just a game of pretend
and you do not even have to play.
I mean, if it is too scary to play
then it has already worked
and you can just pass the backpack on.

Just to be clear,
this is a game of pretend
in which you are asked to name a fear you carry —
name it to yourself, silently,
it is not a sharing exercise.
Then pretend you are putting that fear
in my backpack
which has carried my fears
long before you ever added your own.

If you don’t want to play,
just pass the backpack on to the next person.
When the last fear has been deposited,
I will zip it up
and put it where our prayers
will soon be.

Now, let’s begin by taking a very brief moment
in quiet,
to call up a fear or two

silence

Thank you.
Here comes the backpack.

The title of this sermon is:
”‘Wilderness is where we go
to find freedom from our fear.”

I know that seems like an oxymoron
but the wilderness is where we will discover
freedom from fear.
But please do not hear
more than I am promising:
it is not that we will no longer be afraid,
but that we may find the freedom
that comes with living in spite of our fear.

There is only one way
that I know of,
that we discover that kind of freedom
and I will share it with you…in a minute.
But let’s leave our fear hanging there
while I talk a little about this Jesus story.

This story of Jesus in the wilderness
was told in order
to make Jesus look and sound like, Moses.

Moses leads the escaped slaves
in the wilderness for 40 years
and Jesus is in the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses spends 40 days and 40 nights
on the mountain of God
during which time he neither eats nor drinks anything.
Jesus, in his wilderness,
does not eat or drink either.

Moses, when the people he is leading
rebel and question God, reminds them
that they do not “live by bread alone.”
Jesus, in his story, reminds his nemesis
that we “do not live by bread alone.

Moses lectures the escaped slaves
as they prepare to enter The Promise Land
not to forget who brought them to their liberation,
and so, warns them to worship God and God alone.
Jesus, when offered great power and authority,
reminds his nemesis of the same thing:
“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.”

Finally, Moses cautions his people
not to test God
but to remember that their identity and meaning
derives from how they live their lives.
Jesus recalls the same thing
when he is challenged to test God’s
real-world/real-time power.

So you see, this wilderness story
is told the way it is
because of the author’s belief
that Jesus is a new Moses.
Most Christians hear this story
without any context
and so think it is about Jesus vs the devil
like some Marvel comic movie.

To tell people that Jesus
did all the same stuff that Moses did
is to say that Jesus is a great prophet
in the mold of the greatest prophet Moses.
So as Christians,
we need to understand that Jesus
did not come out of nowhere
or sprout from nothing.
Jesus is Jesus
because Moses was Moses
and they are peas in the same pod.

Now, back to wilderness.
Wilderness is the place of freedom.
Wilderness is any time
and any place
we discover freedom from our fears.

The first category of fear
in the Jesus in the wilderness story
is the dread of hunger.
Jesus’ first temptation has to do with hunger.
Now we can see hunger in this story
as having to do with an empty stomach
and bread as having to do with satiation
OR we can understand them as metaphoric.
As in, we have HUNGER –
deep and abiding hungers.
We are hungry
for love,
for acceptance,
for affirmation,
for approval,
for success,
for companionship,
for security,
for beauty,
for youth,
for health,
for whatever it is we have
and are afraid of losing.

We do not need a devil in our world
to create the situation Luke has described,
we have marketing
and advertising
and consumerism
and literally millions of people
hawking wares that claim
to satiate our hungers
and put away our fears.

With Convenience Stores
and Snicker’s Bars
and Gatorade
we need never be hungry or thirsty
ever again.
And should we feel hungry
or afraid
or disappointed with anything,
we can get an app for that
or a pill for that
or a surgery for that.

But Jesus tells us: be hungry.
FEEL the want
FEEL the fear of a want
that might never be met.
In touching it,
in feeling it,
we will find freedom from it.

It does not mean we have to stay hungry
or that we can’t feed our need
but that until we feel the want
and touch the fear
they will own us.
So long as we are afraid to be afraid,
and afraid of feeling the thing we fear,
fear will own us.

The second category of fear in this Jesus story
is powerlessness.
We hate it.
It drives us crazy.
What is the proverbial ‘need for control’
if not the fear of powerlessness?

Some of us are better at tolerating powerlessness
than others,
but no one likes to smack up
against their limitations.
A limitation
is what we hit
when we cannot do something
or do something as well as we would like.

A limitation is when we want the world
or our life
or our relationships
or another person
do and be
the way we want it or them
to do and be.

A limitation
is like a slap in the face
and when we encounter limitations
in a public kind of way,
it evokes a very special kind of humiliation.

Jesus says: be powerless.
Know your limitation.
In fact, let your limitation bark in your face
and be fully immersed in its hot, dark mud.
Then, when we are confronted with the limitation,
we will be able to surrender
to a power greater than ourselves.
Until we can do that,
we will be owned by our fear.

Powerlessness is a base human fear for all of us,
and yet, if we do not touch it
we will never learn
the base human experience of faith —
which is surrender,
surrender to powerlessness.

The third category of fear in this classic Jesus story
is the fear of death.
But this is truly the trickiest of the three fears.
The fear is not about death –
as in a mortal ending.
The fear is about meaning
or the loss of it.

Most of us,
if we had a rock bottom confidence
in the meaning and purpose of our lives
could let our lives go quite willingly
when called upon to do so.

The FEAR
is that our life
does not have meaning
or that the meaning will not be known by anyone.
The FEAR
is that we will go silently into the night
and no one will notice.
The FEAR
is that we lived for the wrong things
or that we lived wrongly for the right things
or that we were not good enough
or that we did not achieve enough
or that we will not be loved enough
especially by the One whose love
matters most when we die.

We FEAR death
when we do not trust
in the value of the meaning
we have chosen to spend with our lives.

So the wilderness is any place
or any time
that we allow ourselves
to TOUCH our fears
and FEEL them —
to get in their face
and say, “Yeah, I know you.”

We don’t do it very often
because somehow we imagine
that if we chase them away
we won’t feel the fear any more.
But we always have fear
whether we are the lion or the gazelle.

There is always stuff to be afraid of
and for good reason.
But our fears need not own us.
And as long as we keep them at arms length
and as long as we numb ourselves from feeling them
and as long as we engage in
intricate dances to avoid acknowledging them
they will own us.

When we do not see our fears,
when we do not feel them,
when we do not know where they are…
we can be certain
they are moving about in the shadows
and that we are acting
and reacting
to their presence
and nothing good comes of it.
That is also when our fear is the most powerful
and dangerous.

That is why, as Jesus did,
we enter the wilderness and touch our fears
from time to time.
If need be, we can ask God
to hold our hand in the process.

So that is what the season of Lent is about.
Whatever ritual practice we engage in —
like giving something up
or doing something we would not normally do —
it ought to help us
be in the presence of a fear
so that we might discover freedom
in the midst of it.

Now if you thought I was collecting these fears
to get rid of them
or to somehow magically make them disappear,
you were wrong.
I collected them
to place them in our midst.

I will place them now,
at the altar where we will be invited
to place our prayers via prayer stones.
They are our fears
and they are legion, and
they are here with us.

Gracious God, please hold our hands
as we walk out into the wilderness
to touch our fears.

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.

4 Lent: Choices

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3 Lent: Thirst

1 Lent: Wilderness is the place we go to find freedom from our fears

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

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