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2 Lent B, 2021: Good vs Good

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A video version is found at the end of the sermon text

I have a friend
who, with a younger wife,
had his first child at age 49.
He was both joyful and anxious
in anticipation of having kids in college
at age 70.

I told Katy I didn’t want to be 40
and still having kids.
I was going on 41
when my youngest was born.

But 90 and 99?
Who in the world – who in any world –
would ever think that was a good idea?
Having and raising a baby
at those old ages
is every bit the bad news
as Jesus talking about losing your life for his sake.

And Jesus.
Who thinks giving up your life to save it
is a great sales pitch?

Honestly, I do not know what to say.
Instead, I will echo a proverb
an old classmate from high school
sent me this week
in reference to my newspaper column:
”Like cold water to a thirsty soul,
so is good news from a far country.” (Proverbs 25:25)

We are in the wilderness
and in need of some good news –
a bit of cold water
to slake our parched thirst.
That’s what I want to be preaching.

The theme of our Lenten worship
is “wilderness wandering.”
But that is kind of ridiculous too,
because we have been stuck in a wilderness
of pandemic social distancing
for almost a year now.
We have no need
to make up hard liturgical themes

for the sake of Lenten practices
because we’re living it.

So I am hard pressed right now
to squeeze lemonade out of those biblical lemons.
Yes, Abram and Sarah
is an epic odyssey
that has served as a prototype of faithfulness
in three world religions.
And yes, Jesus’ condemnation of Peter
and command to pick up the cross and follow him
is about as famous a line as there is in the gospels.

But both of those are hard news to us.
We are grounded, probably bounded,
by the stuff we own.

Too much stuff to go wandering off
at the drop of hat
like Abram did.
Too much prosperity
and security
and just plain cool stuff
to lose it all.
In fact, we don’t even know how
or why
we would give it up
or lose it all
for Jesus’ sake.
How would that even happen, do you think?

So for me, in the midst of wilderness,
pandemic-style,
it feels like too much work
to rope in the abstract stories
we read this morning.
Too much work
to bring them close enough
to find our home in them.
I almost don’t know what to say.

But, regrettably, I do know this:
that we live at right angles
with biblical wisdom.
Truly, we really we do.

In our world,
we assume success is the goal.
Accumulation of wealth is a measure of success.

Greatness is measured by how important,
powerful, and famous we are.

Power is very much a part of that success.

Material comfort is part of that success.
In fact, material comfort is just really good.
Material comfort
is so good
our standards for the difference
between abundance and opulence
has basically been rendered meanlingless.

Education is part of success too,
because it is one of the key ingredients to achievement –
and therefore to greatness and power.

Security is part of how we measure success.

The more secure we are
the happier we will be.
And we all know happiness
is a critical criterion of success
because Thomas Jefferson said so.
In fact, the pursuit of happiness in America
is widely assumed
to be a gospel virtue.

Longevity too, a long healthy life
lived well,
without too much suffering
and with a quiet, peaceful death
is rendered a part of success.

So, to summarize,
the assumptions of success,
what makes for a good life
in our culture, are:
wealth
greatness
power
material comfort
education
security
happiness
and a long healthy life
with a peaceful ending.
These are the prizes of a good life.

Oh, and we need to add a few more to that list:
beauty, love, and good hair.

None of these criteria for success
and a good life
are even very controversial.

Even the once criticized
craven decadence
of American materialism and consumerism
is now mostly taken for granted.

When we put these criteria up alongside
the biblical description of success and a good life,
well, they don’t necessarily overlap a lot.

Life lived in relationship with God
is number one for biblical wisdom.
That is not even questioned.
It is what defines good.

Then there is fidelity
to the norms of our relationship with God.
Living in close proximity to those norms
is the criteria of success
for biblical wisdom.
Mercy
kindness
compassion
justice
servanthood…these are the standards of success.
These are the standards
of a good life.
Compare that to the personal acquisition
of power, wealth, security,
and achievement.

This biblical wisdom
has a grounded, earthy application to it.
The way goodness and success
are judged in the Promise Land
is by how well its resources are shared.
Living in fidelity
to the norms of relationship
with God,
means that no one does without.
That is what makes the Promise Land
a land flowing milk and honey.
It is what makes it “good.”

In fact, for biblical wisdom,
land minimizes the dangers of drought
and enslavement,
while increasing the opportunity to build
an equitable community.
Land is actually a metaphor
for fidelity to God
and one another.
Living in fidelity
is how the land was going to be kept,
and infidelity
was how the land would be lost.

So living in relationship with God –
in fidelity to the norms of that relationship –
is pretty much how our spiritual wisdom
describes the good life – the successful life.

Spiritual good
describes a way of being in relationship,
whereas our cultural definition
of the good life
describes possessions
and benefits to the Self.

Being in relationship to
and having stuff for the Self
is our wisdom.
Being in fidelity to God
and in an equitable relationship with the community,
is biblical wisdom.

Now I don’t want to go overboard.
Biblical wisdom does not disdain money
power
greatness
health
comfort
security, and the rest.
It does not preclude the possibility
of being a wealthy, comfortable, successful
and a healthy person
who lives in fidelity to the norms
of relationship with God
and the community.
But what we know
is that the culturally defined goodness
that is all about acquisition,
is far more compelling
and dominant than
the biblical notion of goodness
that is about fidelity to relationships.

What we also know
is that the acquisition of the good stuff
makes us forget
about the primacy of fidelity to relationships.
Getting all the things
our culture defines as good
and measures as success,
confuses us.

That is why Peter
can recognize Jesus as the Messiah
and then turn around
and tell Jesus to stop talking about hard choices
and dangerous possibilities
and other scary stuff.

It is why Jesus gets so angry at Peter.
It is because it is hard enough for Jesus
to stay in fidelity to his relationship with God
without Peter trying to convince him
that there are other equally good
and less painful choices.

Something about money
comfort
security
power
greatness
and all the rest,
makes us forget the primacy of fidelity.
Something about it
confuses us
at those very moments
when we most need to be clear.

In that story we heard, Jesus is trying to stay clear
and Peter is making it murky again.
Knowing Peter,
he probably had a moment of clarity too,
and immediately reverted
to forgetfulness
and confusion.
I think we all do that pretty well,
I know I do.

Biblical wisdom’s measure of success
and the good life
is fidelity to our relationship with God.
That fidelity is practiced
with all those community-related norms
that do not necessarily have the Self
at the center of it all.
That doesn’t seem like a very good idea to us
and so we pull the hoodie
of opposing desires and acquisitions
over our heads
and pull the strings.

You can see now,
why I didn’t have much to say.
In the midst of pandemic,
when it is a difficult time already,
who wants to listen to biblical wisdom
when there is so much else to distract us
and make us feel more comfortable?

I know I should have more to say
on this important topic
but that’s all I got right now.
I hope it offers a little bit to chew on.

1 Lent B 2021: Don’t wait for the angels

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Scroll down for Video version

I’m starting all over again.
This is a second stab at a sermon,
the first one just didn’t seem right.
It may have been okay
if we weren’t in our eleventh month
of a pandemic
but context is everything. Right?

We don’t need the Holy Spirit to drive us
out into the wilderness
because we have been wandering it for awhile.
We just want “the other side.”

We’re like those ancient escaped slaves
brought by Moses through the wilderness
to the far banks of the Jordan River.
They could look across that small
meandering boundary but weren’t allowed to cross.
They had to sit down
and listen to another sermon
when right across the muddy way
was a land of milk and honey.

Slowly but surely,
chaotically and maddeningly,
we are getting vaccines.
Hope for “the other side” is named
as “July” or “the end of the summer”
or ”by next fall.”
But we are here, on this side,
with the threat and memories
of sickness, variants, and death.
For many of us loved ones are far away,
even if we can see them through plasma screens.
Good friends must keep a distance
and smiles go unseen.
Favorite cafes, bars, and restaurants
have closed.
We are close and yet so very far.

For some of us
the wilderness is knowing that our pain
is so much less than most people’s suffering.

Millions and millions and millions
have lost work,
live tenuously in the shadow of back rent
and food lines, or worse.
Around the world the pandemic
has only deepened the isolation
of those suffering extreme deprivation.

We see it,
know about it,
do not live it and
are far from doing anything about it.
In that scenario,
we are in the land of milk and honey
looking back across the Jordan
at those still in the wilderness.

Yet, somehow,
we feel as though we are wandering
in the wilderness still.
And we are.
Such is the strangeness of this time.

Obviously the boilerplate for Lent
comes from the gospel story
about Jesus in the wilderness for forty days.
But he got angels waiting on him. No fair!

There is yet another thing to notice about that story,
at least in Mark,
and it is a parfait of love and suffering.

First he has a private religious experience.
A voice in his head (remember, in Mark
only Jesus hears the voice),
tells him he is beloved.

That peak spiritual and emotional embrace
is followed by some kind of harsh wind
that transports him to a wild and desolate place.
It wasn’t a polite invitation to Lent,
it was coercion.

In the midst of a wildness,
home to beasts and the darkness of his shadows,
he gets some TLC from angelic counter-forces.

Then, after surviving that,
his spiritual mentor and a prophet like him,
is arrested.
So from the spiritual high
of an intense experience of both light and dark,
he now has to decide whether the risks are worth it.
Apparently he does, and goes off preaching.

Just as an aside, Mark is an economic story-teller.
He describes all of that action in seven sentences.
Our tradition lumps Mark in with Matthew and Luke
and so we lose Mark’s point of view.
Jesus was totally human,
had a spiritual awakening as an adult,
knew he was beloved by God,
and it empowered him to do what needed to be done.

And just an FYI,
Mark never proclaims Jesus as the only son of God.
The earliest Gospel doesn’t make that case,
nor offer any notion of a supernatural birth
or extraordinary beginning.
To Mark, Jesus was a human being like us,
who has an intense awakening
and allows it to change him.
Much like Noah, Abraham, and Moses.

When I am in the wilderness
and need a guide and a hand to hold,
I prefer that prophet and messiah
to the one Paul and John proclaim.
But that is just me.

Now, back to our wilderness wandering.

In normal times
the wisdom I would think to follow
is community.
Community is a spiritual practice, you know?
It is the practice of inter-dependence.

In order to practice community
we have to run interference with
the demons of individualism
and self-sufficiency
that whisper we don’t need others —
especially those others not like us.

You know those beasts.
They insist that we resist vulnerability,
that no one is to be trusted,
that we have to look out for Number One.
Those beasts.
They make community difficult, and impossible
if they have taken over.

The practice of community
involves throwing our lot in with others
as if – AS IF –
our well-being and survival
is dependent upon them.
AS IF we are all in this together.
You know, as if we are dependent
upon those who harvest the crops
and slaughter the meat
and drive the produce
and stock the shelves
and sell it to us.
You know, AS IF
we were dependent upon those folks.

That practice of community
also involves an intentional,
and continuous choice
to live connected to people we may not even like.
People we don’t agree with.
People we don’t want to be connected to.
All of that is required because it is real.
Interdependence is the actual nature of the universe
and it does not consider whether the elements in play
like each other or agree with one another.

So you see, the practice of community
is a big, complicated, and even
comprehensive practice
that includes our economic choices
and our political choices
and our social choices,
along with all our more personal choices.

That is why there are so many beasts and demons
at work to keep us from practicing it.
There is a lot of room in there
for those shadows to fly around and create havoc.

But you know, a community
making it forty years in the wilderness together,
like those escaped slaves did,
seems like a more realistic strategy
than waiting forty days in the wilderness
for the angels to arrive.

We are all in this together
whether we want to be or not.
We will do better practicing community
than waiting for the angels.

Plus, it is usually in the practice of community
that we encounter our own belovedness.
Often just after
we have run into our own beasts and demons.

So community is practiced a bit differently
during a pandemic
but the alternative is an awful isolation
that makes social distancing
seem like child’s play.

Welcome to Lent,
and a communal practice
of wilderness wandering.

Last Epiphany B 2021: “You”

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The video format of this sermon can be found by scroll to the end of the text

Today is the Last Sunday of Epiphany
and this is a reflection on the “Transfiguration” story
in the gospel of Mark.

I have mentioned this at least once before
but I think it is worth remembering
that Jesus is also a central figure
in the Quran and Islam.

In the Quran, Jesus,
like Elijah in the Hebrew text,
was taken up to heaven without dying.

This is because Jesus is a great prophet
in Islam too,
and it is inconceivable in Islam
that Allah would kill his own prophet.

So, unlike the traditional Christian interpretation
found in the Passion narrative,
the Quran indicates that Allah saved Jesus
from the cross.

Up he went by-passing death,
and he will appear again at the appointed moment.
Muslims believe that when Jesus returns,
he will kill the anti-Christ
and bring a reign of peace and justice.
Then, at the end of his forty year reign,
Jesus will finally die –
because all humans must die.

In fact, there is an empty burial site
waiting for Jesus right alongside
the place where Mohammad
and the first two Sunni caliphs of Islam,
are buried.

While I don’t think that is factual,
any more than I think Jesus hang gliding
on the clouds with Moses and Elijah is factual,
the symmetry is kind of cool.

It is a powerful demonstration that Abraham’s children –
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad –
are blood brothers.
But that is not why this story was told
the way it was told.
It was not about solidarity
so much as it was about supremacy.
Darn religion.

To a first century Roman citizen living, let’s say,
along the boot of Italy,
this story may have made the sale.
It made Jesus seem like a pretty cool God.

But to 21st century North Americans,
nursed from childhood
on a cocktail made from
one part skepticism,
one part scientism,
and one part rationalism,
this story has Disney or Marvel Comics
written all over it.

To make matters worse,
if the person hearing this story
is hearing it for the first time as an adult –
without the inoculation of Sunday School
or a childhood of looking
up into stained glass windows,
then it makes sharing Christian wisdom
all the more difficult.

Jesus said that we must encounter God
like a child,
or with the mind of a child;
and that may be more true about religion
than God.

We know most religion and spirituality
is not rooted in the rational
and is not dictated by the logical;
both tools and formats
upon which adulthood is constructed.

It shouldn’t be based in emotionalism either,
because that is a retardant of maturity.
Instead, the default setting for adult spirituality
is the imagination
and working with intuition.
But these stories hit us
at the doorway of logic
and rationality,
and we want them to make perfect sense.

So let’s see how this story might make sense
to the rational mind.

The punch line of Mark’s story
is that Jesus belongs in the Spiritual Hall of Fame.
We know that because Mark places him
up on the clouds
next to the other G.O.A.Ts:
Moses and Elijah.

That is one way to deconstruct this story
and unpack its meaning.
You see, whether it is factual or not
it can still express meaning.
It’s meaning, it’s truth,
has nothing to do with whether it
actually happened.
We can even understand that distinction
with our rational mind.

The meaning of this story,
as told by Mark,
is that Mark believed Jesus
was to be elevated
to a status with the greatest of all prophets:
Moses and Elijah.
And so this story links Jesus
to ultimate authority: God.

At his baptism,
at least as Mark tells it,
no one hears God tell Jesus he is “beloved” –
except Jesus.

In Mark, Jesus’ baptism
is  private spiritual awakening.
But as we get ready to hear
about the last week of Jesus’ life,

Mark tells us about this event
and verifies it with witnesses
so that everybody now knows

Jesus is God’s “Beloved.”
The transfiguration is Jesus’ coming out party.

One more thing to note
before we fall off the scaffolding
of logic and rationalism
and land in the abyss|
of the whacko-mystical:
Mark has Jesus as God’s son –
but not his only son.

Jesus is not elevated
at the expense of Moses and Elijah,
at least not in Mark’s story.

The Church, early on,
began interpreting it that way
but Mark, as our earliest gospel,
does not say Jesus is God’s only son.

In Judaism,
a prophet need not be “the only prophet”
in order to be an important presence
or to speak for God.

A prophet,
by nature of being a prophet, voices God.
The trick is in discerning
true prophets
from false prophets
rather than which is the only prophet.

Unfortunately, for a variety of historical reasons,
Christianity painted itself
into a theological corner
by declaring that Jesus is “the only”
or he is nothing at all.
So, if we unpeel the layers of Christian interpretation
on this story from Mark,
we can see it as a more innocent, limited claim
than the one the Church came to make.
Mark’s point was simply that Jesus
belongs in the Hall of Fame
with those other guys.

But the real intent of this story
from the story-tellers point of view,
is simply to say, “Hey, listen up –
this guy speaks with authority.
This guy is the real thing.”

That is where we arrive
when we allow our reason and logic
to unpack the meaning of this story –
to hear its truth
whether it actually happened or not.

Now that we did that
we can jump into the broiling brine
of wiggly, squiggly spooky stuff.

So, there is one experience –
one supernatural,
spiritual experience –
that is accessible to every one.

It is an experience that will,
and surely did,
even if only briefly,
transfigure us.

It is a small moment
not a gigantic one.

It is a quiet moment
not an explosive one.

It is a deeply personal moment
not a public one.

It is an off-handed moment
not a planned one.

It is that moment when you know,
when one day, unexpectedly,
probably for a reason you can’t put your finger on,
know
that you are beloved.
Beloved of God.
Beloved of God.

When you know,
as surely as you know how to breathe,
that you are beloved of God,
you are transfigured
even if no one is there to see it.

Even if it does not show on your face,
in that moment you are transfigured.

I am not talking about narcissism.
It is not accessed through the Ego.
It comes up through the dark moist soil
of voices and experiences
that blanket our innards.

It comes up
unaccompanied
and disconnected
from our own efforts.

It comes up
in spite of everything to the contrary
and is not warranted by any success
or achievement we have had.

It comes up
like the first quiet rays of dawn,
a velvet glow out of the darkness almost unrecognized at first.
It comes up
into our stomach first
and then into our throat
and lastly into our brain.

It comes up
like the recognition in the gaze of another
when the shutter of the eyes opens
and we see INTO each other.

It comes up
almost like a shear veil being removed
and we see what was always there
but now we see it in nakedness.

You are beloved;
you…the beloved of God.
Not just Jesus,
but you.
Can you feel that?

Do you remember it?
If not, can you use your imagination to taste it?

When you know,
in your body, that you are beloved
by someone else, even if not God,
then you are transfigured.

If you have had that experience –
the quiet,
brief,
momentary stillness
when you know,
when you know you are beloved –
then you have been transfigured.

That is the primary spiritual experience.

So, don’t go looking for something else –
don’t be greedy
don’t be grandiose.
If you know, even for a fleeting moment,
that you are beloved,
then you have had it all.

That’s all I got.
Thank you for sharing in this,
and the peace of God be with you.

 

1 Epiphany: Hear Voices

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A video version can be found below if you scroll to the end of the text.

Genesis 1:1-5 In the beginning God created the sky and the earth. The earth was empty and had no form. Darkness covered the ocean, and God’s Spirit was moving over the water. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, so he divided the light from the darkness. God named the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Evening passed, and morning came. This was the first day.

Mark 1:10-11 Immediately, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven open. The Holy Spirit came down on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with you.”

God said, “Let there be light”
and there was light.
And God saw the light
and God saw that it was good.

So, curious minds want to know: who was the witness?
Who was there in the beginning
to say what God saw or what God did?
Who else saw the formless void
in the vast darkness
in order to confirm what the beginning was like?
On the other hand, maybe there was a witness,
or rather, two witnesses,
because they saw and reported two different things –
just like witnesses do.

The Book of Genesis begins
with two separate Creation stories:
the one we heard a piece from today, which is
the familiar “seven days of creation” story;
and the other one that involves Adam and Eve.
Lest you think they are the same story
they actually have two versions of the beginning.

Two distinct, different stories.
The editors of Genesis must not have been able to agree
on which was the right one,
and each represented a different theological tradition
in the history of Israel,
so they did what committees do – included them both.

But actually, that is misleading.
They did not work as a committee.

Our best guess is that the Book of Genesis
was compiled over several centuries
and represents a snowball rolling down the hill of history
gathering stories
and momentum along the way.

When we open up the Bible
Genesis is the first chapter we see,
and so naturally we imagine –
and were probably taught –
that Genesis was the first book written.
Not true.
Genesis does contain very ancient, pre-Hebrew myths
borrowed from early Mesopotamian culture.
But it does not get formed into a collection
and edited together in any coherent fashion
for five or six hundred years after Moses.
You see, Moses and Exodus are the actual beginning
of the Biblical story.

Genesis probably came into existence
in its present form
while Israel was in exile
in the Babylonian captivity
and used as a way to remind the dislocated Israelites
who they were
and whose they were.
And by the way, that is what stories do –
and what theology is meant to do:
remind us of who we are
and whose we are.

But I digress badly.

God said, “Let there be light”
and there was light.

And God saw the light
and God saw that it was good.

Don’t get me wrong,
I love the first chapter of Genesis
and this imaginative notion of how it all began –
it’s not even that far-fetched
from a science-oriented reconstruction.
Indeed, we think we know
from a geological reference point
that it did begin with water covering the formless void
and wind sweeping across it.
But of course, that is only how biological life began
not the planet itself
and not the Cosmos.
So even Genesis 1 leaves a big black hole
to the imagination.

My long, laborious point
is that the first chapter of the Book of Genesis
is an imaginative theological narrative
describing what the storyteller thinks
is the relationship between God and Creation.
It is not science.
It is not history.
It is not fact.
It is a story, a theological story,
aimed at delivering a theological point of view.

We do not have to agree with it
to be faithful people.
We do not have to accept its version of Creation
to be faithful people.

We do not have to regard it in any way
as authoritative
or authentic
or meaningful
to be faithful people.

Like the entire Bible, it is commentary.

It is not the first and last word
from the mouth of God to your ear or mine.
Some people believe that –
just like some people still believe the Earth is flat
or that Climate Change is not real.
But holding such beliefs is not the criteria
for Christian faith.

Now having said that,
I should also be explicit that you are welcome
to hold that point view
and also be vigorously part of this community.
However, you and I are not welcome
to hold everyone else to our points of view.

See how that works?
We do not have an answer book here.
We do not have an answer-all-the-questions doctrine here.
We do not have THE answer here.

Rather, we have lots of answers
and lots of points of view
and lots of speculation
and lots of ideas.
But in this community,
and in our tradition,
we have no one,
no single authority
empowered to declare the truth.
We do not even have one authoritative doctrine
because we are not a doctrinal church.
We do not have a pope.
We do not have a college of cardinals.
We do not have an ecclesiastical council
that determines truth or fact or the one-and-only theology.
We got noth’n…
except a long tradition of being on pilgrimage together
in community,
knowing that the light is good
and struggling to see it.

Now, everything I just said about Genesis
is also true about the Gospel of Mark,
another beginning we heard about today.

Who was there at the moment of baptism
to see the heavens torn apart
and to witness the Spirit descending like a dove
and to hear the voice from above
coo into Jesus’ ear?

The earliest Gospel storyteller we have is Mark,
and it is quite clear
that it was only Jesus who saw the heavens torn apart
and only Jesus who saw the Spirit descending like a dove
and only Jesus who heard the voice from heaven.

According to Mark,
it was a personal religious experience
not a sporting event.

Just as the Book of Genesis has more than one
story about the beginning,
the gospels do too.
The next storytellers, Matthew and Luke,
offer their theological points of view
which are somewhat different from Mark.

Luke insists the Spirit
came down in “bodily” form,
making obvious that anyone present could have seen it.
And Matthew insists
that the voice from heaven declares “this is my son,”
and so makes clear that it was addressed to witnesses
rather than only to Jesus.

The other Gospel storyteller, John,
writing as much as a generation after Matthew and Luke,
doesn’t even have Jesus being baptized.

That is probably because
John decided that Jesus being baptized by John
would not fit well
with the theological story he was telling.
I mean, think about it.
If you are John, and Jesus is the Word,
and was with God in the beginning – before Genesis –
you do not want Jesus
going down to the riverside
to be baptized for the forgiveness of his sins.
See what I mean?
For Mark, Jesus was fully human
and that means sinful in some way.
But for John, Jesus is divine
and necessarily sinless.
I do not even like the concept of sin
but let’s put that aside for the moment.
I prefer Mark’s version because it describes
a private religious experience
rather than a splashy public one.

I like it because what Jesus hears
is what every single one of us is dying to hear,
not only from God
but from those who are the closest thing to God for us:
mother, father, wife, husband, grandparent, soul-friend.
“You are my beloved,
and with you
I am so pleased.”

What is better in this whole wide world
than to be loved and affirmed
by the ones we most desire
to be loved and affirmed by?

So Mark’s story, the way he tells it,
is like that Genesis story
that affirms the light is from God
and God has declared it good.

The first chapter of the Gospel of Mark
is an imaginative theological narrative
that describes what the storyteller thinks
about the relationship of God and Jesus.
It is not science.
It is not history.
It is not fact.
It is story,
a theological story
aimed at delivering a theological point of view.

We do not have to agree with it
to be faithful people.
We do not have to accept its version of Jesus
to be faithful people.

We do not have to regard it in any way as authoritative
or authentic or meaningful
to be faithful people.

It is a theological story
delivering a point of view
about the relationship of Jesus and God.
Like the entire Bible, it is commentary.

Luke has a commentary too,
and it is different from Mark’s.
Matthew has a commentary too,
and it is different from Mark’s and Luke’s.
John has a commentary too,
and it is different from Mark’s and Luke’s and Matthew’s.

This is good news…and bad news.

Good news because we are free
to take Mark’s commentary and develop it with our own.
Bad news because we do not have a single,
definitive, factual, and final point of view.

So what do we do?

Here is one man’s opinion, mine.
Take it for what it is worth because I’m only a preacher.

We listen for voices.
We listen for the voice that speaks to us.
We allow the text to dance with our own life experience
and in the intimacy of that dance
whispers get heard.

We hear the whisper of a voice
we can’t be sure is from the text
or our own experience – or both.
But either way we trust it
because something about it speaks
with an authority that makes sense in our own experience.
For whatever reason,
it speaks to us
like that voice in Mark:
it affirms us
and it affirms what we have known to be true
and it sheds light
on what was covered by darkness
and void
in our own lives.

It is a voice
that affirms the light is good
and keeps us moving in a direction that bears hope.

So in our tradition,
we do not have the luxury of a loud,
authoritative voice
that can be heard or delivered in writing
to settle everything
once and for all.

We hear voices instead –
whispers really.

We hear whispers
and then we have to figure out
if what we heard makes sense,
and how it makes sense
and whether or not to follow it.

In fact, I believe there is a whisper here for you.
Today I mean, in this worship.
There is a voice with a word
or a story
or a whisper
with your name on it,
and for me too.

I believe that if we listen
we will hear a voice with our name on it.
It may have been in the text,
or in the dance between our lives and the text,
or in the prayers,
or in the music,
or in the silence between the prayers.
It may come later
in the reverberations from we hear now
or in the rest of the worship.
Heck, it might come days or weeks later
when all of a sudden we hear what we heard.
That happens to me as the preacher all the time.
I will write it
and preach it
and then days later – bang –
it hits me right between the eyes
in a way I hadn’t realized
as I was doing it.

Whenever,
whatever,
wherever – listen for the whispers.
Some of them have your name on them.

2 Christmas 2020: Who Makes Meaning?

by

Paul Gauguin, “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?”

A Link for this Sermon in video format follows below

In the beginning…

In the beginning…
was the word
was formless void
was light
was the spirit moving over the deep
was a big bang.

In the beginning…it is the beginning.
We have crossed over to the new year
in secular time.
On the Church calendar we are
not quiet yet into Epiphany – and still
in Christmas season.

But we know, even if the tree is still up,
that this is the second-to-the-last stop
on the train to a new beginning.
We are at the beginning of a new year: 2021.

This is as close as we ever get to a fresh start.
It is the beginning.
So I want us to notice something about New Year’s
because it is instructive
to so much else that we do
when we gather as “Church.”

Today is actually no different
than any of the preceding 365 days.
No different than the preceding
Millennium of days.
No different than the preceding
billion years of days.

In the history of the Cosmos
today is not even another day,
it is an unmeasured event in a string of events
that has no measure or shape.

We measure time
in units that are relevant to us –
to our daily life
and experience
but such measurement is meaningless
in the universe.
The Cosmos is indifferent to our sense of time.
But even so, cosmic indifference
means nothing to us
because we make meaning.

That is what we do,
we human beings we make meaning.
You know, we hang time upon the sun
and a season upon the moon
and a moment pregnant with meaning
upon the New Year.
That is what we do,
we human beings: we make meaning.

In the endless strand of Cosmic events
we use time
to chop up meaningful moments
like a knife slices scallions for the salad.
That is what we do,

we human beings, we make meaning.

But ritual – from which we make meaning –
is such a struggle for many people these days,
and religious ritual
seems especially onerous.

Think of the teenager
who has grown up with ritual
but sees it as empty and rote –
a drudgery that adults drag him or her through.

To the uninitiated in religion,
those who did not grow up with church ritual,
what we do for worship may seem like
standing in a crowd of people
speaking in another language –
the novice can pick out familiar words every so often
if he or she listens really hard
but otherwise, it is completely alien.

In the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer,
on page 880, you will discover the “Rules
for Finding the Date of Easter Day.”

I am going to read this out loud even though
it is a lengthy quote.
Here goes.

“Easter Day is always the Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox on March 21.

This full moon may happen on any date between March 21 and April 18 inclusive.  If the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday following.  But Easter Day cannot be earlier than March 22 or later than April 25.

To find the date of Easter Day in any particular year, it is necessary to have two points of reference – the Golden Number and the Sunday Letter for that year.

  1. The Golden Numberindicates the date of the full moon on or after the spring equinox of March 21, according to a nineteen-year cycle.  These Numbers are prefixed in the Calendar to the days of the month from March 22 to April 18 inclusive.  In the present Calendar they are applicable from A.D. 1900 to A.D. 2099, after which they will change.
  2. The Sunday Letteridentifies the days of the year when Sundays occur.  After every date in the Calendar a letter appears – from A to g.  Thus, if January 1 is a Sunday, the Sunday Letter for the year is A, and every date in the Calendar marked by A is a Sunday.  If January 2 is a Sunday, then every date marked with b is a Sunday, and so on through the seven letters.

In Leap Years however, the Sunday Letter changes on the first day of March.  In such years, when A is the Sunday Letter, this applies only to Sundays in January and February, and g is the Sunday Letter for the rest of the year.  Or if d is the Sunday Letter, then c is the Sunday Letter on and after March 1.

To Find the Golden Number

The Golden Number of any year is calculated as follows: Take the number of the year, add 1, and then divide the sum by 19.  The remainder, if any, is the Golden Number.  If nothing remains, then 19 is the Golden Number.”

Okay, you get the idea.
This is like the difference between
using a computer to send an email
and understanding how a microchip works.
If you’re like me, Easter Day is on the calendar
so who knew how complicated it was to find it.

I was ordained a priest on the spring equinox,
March 21, 1981.
That means this March is the fortieth anniversary
of my priesthood – holy mackerel!

Anyway, the preacher at my ordination,
who is a dear friend of mine,
took the congregation through a hilarious,
imaginative scenario
in which I was hiding out in the hills
of Southern Indiana
with a small tribe of Episcopalians,
after some kind of devastating holocaust.

As he described it, there I was
desperately trying to figure out The Golden Number
and the Sunday Letter
so we knew the date of Easter.
Judging from everyone’s reaction to this image,
no one thought I was likely to be able to do it.

Keep those calendars coming!

The point is, we go to great lengths to mark time,
to preserve ritual,
and  to nurture tradition.
That is what we do, we human beings,
and it is how we make meaning.

Behind every one of our religious rituals
is an elaborate matrix
of ideas and traditions,
as well as people, that are set aside
just to execute that ritual.
If we hold them up under the light of day,
standing naked in comparison to our daily chores,
these rituals look like a rubber chicken
used for silly gags.

Under the florescent light
of the 21st century,
our ancient rituals look like museum artifacts
rather than living moments in time.
In other words,
they no longer  seemfilled to the brim
with meaning.

Take the bread and wine ritual, for example
and put it out on the sidewalk.
Take it away from subdued candle luminosity
and away from the filtered light of art glass.
Set it on the concrete
with the noise of passing traffic
and without the soundtrack
of church music and singing
that swabs it with aural afterglow.

What is there then?

Cheap wine and odd bread
without butter or mayonnaise.
You see what I mean?

New Year’s day
is a day like every other day
since the beginning –
whenever that beginning was
and whoever its author.
But we make New Year’s meaningful
by giving it power
by giving it clothing
by giving it drama.

It is the beginning
from which we can have a fresh start.
We can loose weight now,
even though just yesterday we could not.

We can spend our time differently now,
even though yesterday we were unable to.
We can quit smoking now,
even though yesterday we didn’t stand a chance.
Today is different –
it is the beginning.

You see how we do that?
It isn’t fake.
It isn’t rote.
It isn’t stupid.
It isn’t just made up.
It isn’t arbitrary
or irrelevant.

Rather, it is powerful,
it is meaningful, it is ritual.

We bring ordinary grape juice
that has been transformed by nature,
and it not only becomes wine
but somehow becomes Jesus, too.
We take ordinary wheat
transformed by a natural process into bread,
and we allow it to become life.

We take the historical Jesus,
a human being with extraordinary wisdom & gifts,
and we allow him to become our guide
to more abundant Life.

Heck, our rituals are so powerful
they can transform a cold stone or brick building
into a sacred space,
simply with the deposit of thousands of prayers,
staccato silences,
private tears,
healing touches.
Presto, a sacred space.

The same thing can even be done
with a group of unrelated strangers.

Have them pray together,
sing odd songs with one another,
repeat certain ceremonies,
take bold internal risks,
makes some personal investment,
bond them with the vulnerability of intimacy,
the tensions of working with strangers and others
and the challenge to grow their hearts a size bigger,
and the unexpected happens.
They become a spiritual community
where encounters with the holy happen
and the people involved actually change
as a result of being together.

Ritual is powerful.
It is transformative.
It is healing.
It is a weapon in our struggle
for freedom from all that imprisons us inside.

So, if you have cheated yourself
out of ritual lately,
and diminished its influence and power
by dismissing it as – well, just ritual –
then give yourself a New Year’s gift
and allow the joys
and power of ritual
to return in 2021.

Today is just January 3rd
but through ritual
it is the beginning.
It is your beginning.

One of the unrecognized thefts
of the pandemic,
has been ritual – especially
for communities of ritual.
That has robbed us of a powerful source
of change, healing, and growth.
It is time to take them back
even before the pandemic is ready to let go.

Obviously we cannot meet at 78 Castle Street
and do what we used to do
without every really thinking about how fortunate
we were to do it.
But we can take ritual back
by adding them back into our own lives
at home,
around the home,
among friends,
and out in the world.
We can do what is possible
for the moment
and be creative with adding ritual
to the long, flat landscape of pandemic.

Prayer stones
candles
daily walks
daily walking prayer
weekly letter-writing
daily journaling
set times of meditation, prayer, or contemplation
set phone calls or zoom with a friend of group…
there are so many things we can do
and doing them as a ritual
gives them a power
that will surprise us.

It is a new year, a new beginning –
make it so.
It is within your own special power.

Trinity in Time of Pandemic

Our vision…to be known in the community as a welcoming home to everyone, responding effectively to the needs of our community, in collaboration with fellow Episcopalians and other faith communities

Our mission…to strive in our daily life and parish life to respect the dignity of every human being, and to treat each person entering our doors as if that person is Christ.

We are striving to be as open as the table Jesus hosted, in solidarity with the people of Geneva, and an accessible partner to others who share our sense of the gospel.

It also means we have opened ourselves to the future, and not only moved but adopted a new way of being church from the more traditional model. Join us at Trinity Place, 78 Castle Street in downtown Geneva, NY.

 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

Trinity’s historic building and our adaptive reuse plan has been named and embraced by The Landmark Society of Western New York. Among thousands of worthy historic sites and projects, Trinity’s was selected. Follow this link to read more: https://landmarksociety.org/2019-five-to-revive-announced/

Visit “savetrinity.org” which tells the exciting story of historic re-use striving to be born. You can help us save this magnificent building by visiting savetrinity.org and signing a letter of support! Thank you.

https://www.savetrinity.org

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