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

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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

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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

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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.

4 Lent: Choices

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Scroll down for video version

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

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          • 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.

 

Trinity Place

 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).

 

 

 

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