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16 Pentecost: From A to B (or dying again, and again, and again…)

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There is something about September,
even when it has been years since you were
in school or had kids in school, that is so fresh.

To me September feels more like the New Year
than January 1…or Advent 1 for that matter.

I don’t know how to launch into this gracefully,
so here goes: I know we all think we are special.
I don’t know if that is a Western thing,
or an American thing,
or a human thing,
but we all think we are special —
even if we think we are a terrible person
we think we are an especially terrible person.

Whether you are unemployed at the moment
or a corporate executive;
whether you are a teacher of children
or a child of teachers;
whether you are of Italian ancestry
or your genes are rooted in Tanzania;
whether you eat sushi from expensive restaurants
or Mac ‘N Cheese from a box;
we are all on our way
from A to B
and there is only one way to get there.

Now we all have different ideas
and names
for “A” and “B.”
And that is what this sermon is about –
indeed, that is what today’s Gospel is about
and what religion is all about
not to put too fine a point on it.

When we hear stuff like Jesus predicting
he will be rejected and killed and suffer,
and that he supposedly wants us to do the same,
that is,
deny ourselves,
find a cross, and
follow him into oblivion,
that is the A to B path
being recommended by the gospels.

Now let me add a caveat
included in Marcus Borg’s “Reading the Bible Again, for the First Time.”
He tells of being at a Christian seminary somewhere
when a guest speaker, a Hindu,
offered an interesting response
to such gospel language.
In particular, it was to Jesus purportedly declaring
that HE is
“the only way
and the only truth
and the only life.”

“It is absolutely true” the Hindu said,
“that Jesus is the only way.
And that way – of dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being –
is known in all of the religions of the world.”

You see, it is a universal A to B.

It is an example of Jesus’ abundant reversal sayings
that are rough paradoxical wisdom
that every one of us knows from experience,
but which we would rather not know
and look away from.

Dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being
is a universal human wisdom
that is echoed in particular
at the heart of the Christian Gospel.

But please, let’s not be literal-minded.
Just because the text says, “take up your cross
and follow me”
does not mean
we have to go looking for ways
to be persecuted.
And most especially
it does not mean the myriad
assortment of pain and suffering
we all experience – as if the cross
is a symbol of random tragedy.

This saying gets bastardized
and trivialized
when we talk about our arthritis
as a cross we have to bear.
Or our domestic partner’s slovenly habits
as our cross to bear.
Or our children’s discipline problem’s
as our cross to bear.
Or any one of the standard and normal
difficulties that we humans encounter
in the course of our every day lives.

Dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being
is about choice.
It is about choices we have the opportunity to make
that subvert the way the world is organized
and which helps the transformation of the old order
to a new place.

Whether it is our own resistance to being transformed,
or the resistance of those with power
who use that power to repress justice,
dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being,
is about becoming agents
of transformation.

The cross we have to bear
is not about our personal pain and suffering,
it is about our willingness
to become agents of personal
and social transformation.

Please allow me to repeat that,
because it is so counter-cultural:
The cross we have to bear
is not about our personal pain and suffering,
it is about our willingness
to become agents of personal
and social transformation.

It is about our willingness
to become midwives of death
and the mothers of new birth.

Peter’s horrified reaction to Jesus’ A to B, is typical.
We want to be comforted.
We want some assurance
that all this effort will give us some safety
and some personal protection.
We want our religion
and our god
and our church to calm our fears,
cradle our pain,
caress our grief,
erase our scars,
forgive our crimes,
heal our remorse,
and generally make us feel better.

Peter’s response is our response:
“Hey, man, what are you talking about?”

But the stunning wisdom we behold
underneath this ugly text,
tells us that the God
who invites us to die to the old —
an old way that is keeping us from being transformed into the new —
is not the least bit deterred by our fear,
or our pain,
or our anxiety
or even our death.

If I am even close to understanding this text,
then the God who we come to worship —
while not desiring our suffering
or encouraging our pain —
does not consider they are a barrier to our efforts
to bring justice into life.

I don’t mean to over-emphasize this point here,
but it does seem kind of important.

Most of the prayers I offer to God,
are petitions for God to intervene somehow
on behalf of other people
or myself,
and for the relief of our pain and suffering.
But I get the distinct feeling
from this very core gospel text,
that such things
are not really at the heart of God’s concern.
Rather, that in giving birth
labor is expected
and pain
has a function in delivery.

If I listen to this wisdom,
and don’t get angry because I don’t like it —
which I don’t — then what I hear
is that much of our pain
and much of our suffering
is unfortunate
but a natural course of events.

This excludes, of course, the pain
and suffering we inflict upon one another.

If I am hearing this wisdom right,
then I can imagine God saying to me:
“Cam, I feel your pain, I really do,
but your pain is beside the point.”

”Listen, I hear your fear,
and I know, I really know,
that fear is difficult to move beyond,
but that is your task.”

”I know you hurt, Cam,
and I know, because I hurt too,
that it gets hard to see beyond your own needs,
but that is what you need to do.”

“Cam, I know you are very sad
at the loss of so much which was familiar to you,
and I really do know
what grief and sorrow feel like,
but don’t use that to hold back the tide
of transformation
which is something I have set in motion.”

“Remember Cam, I have searched you out
and known you…
I really have
and I really do.

So you need to know
that your life is found in death,
and that all those things you cling to
need to be let go of.
And you need to risk the death
of what you care about
in order to gain the life you imagine.”

That is just my imagination:
what I imagine God would say to me
in a way I could understand.
Inside this ugly text of the gospel,
is a stunningly beautiful wisdom:

To be transformed
and be born into a new way of being
we have to die to our current way of being.

If you don’t like this painful wisdom
seek not the Buddha,
for he will tell you that
before enlightenment
much death comes first.

Seek not an escape from this wisdom
through Hinduism,
because the cycle of life is an endless dying
to the old in search of the new.

Seek not an escape from this wisdom
through Islam, for death is the doorway to relief.

Seek not even the science of Physics
for it will tell you
that energy is transformed through death –
over and over and over again.

In fact, I suspect this wisdom
is what we are looking for in coming here.
Not because we cherish suffering.

Not because we necessarily believe Jesus
died for our sins.
But because intuitively,
experientially,
every one of us knows
that there is only one way
to get from who we are at this moment
to the person we have always wanted to become.

That way,
in one way or another,
includes a death.
Not a physical death
but a letting-go-death of the things
we hold onto that keep us from transformation.

I don’t know what that is for you —
it could be an obsession with power
dependence on alcohol
drivenness for beauty
an endless lust for pleasure
a bottomless hunger for success
a penchant for absolute security
even the toxic nectar of resentment —
but to the extent that they keep us from being midwives of justice,
and hold us back
from a personal transformation
that has called to us through the years,
is the extent
of the death that awaits us.

This ancient and homely story
we tell over and over and over again
through the centuries,
is a metaphor for the wisdom
that aches inside us all.
It is universal.
It is the way from A to B.

5 Lent B, 2021: Reversal Wisdom

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While the story we heard from John
this morning,
does not appear in the other gospels,
one of it’s sentences does
and is clearly a preserved Jesus saying.
Here is that Jesus-saying as it appears
somewhat differently
in each gospel.

Mark: For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Matthew: He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Similar to Mark but without the gospel reference.

Luke: For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. Exactly the same as Mark but leave’s out the gospel reference.

John: He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Quite different.

There is a semantic difference
between these four versions of a Jesus saying
but there is also a significant difference
in meaning – a theological difference
if you don’t mind my using that term.

The semantic difference
hovers around the verb used:
whoever would save his life…
find his life…
love his life…
Or conversely, whoever would lose it
or hate it…

We could make mountains
out of mole hills over those differences
but without much significance.

Then there is a big fat difference in meaning.

Mark was the earliest Gospel
by perhaps half a generation
before Matthew and Luke,
and as many as two generations before John.
Matthew and Luke use Mark
to tell their stories,
and more often than not
following Mark’s chronology of events.
But then they make changes,
and when they do
they often make the same changes.

For example,
Matthew and Luke
have this saying from Mark
but they change it
and they change it in exactly the same way:
they cut off, “for the sake of the gospel.”

Mark’s Jesus says,
whoever would save his life will lose it;
and whoever loses his life for my sake
”and the gospel’s”
will save it.

Matthew, Luke, and John
leave off “and the gospel’s.”
That could be a coincidence
or happenstance of history –
because the version they received
didn’t include it –
or it could be intentional.

I think it is intentional
because it reinforces a difference in emphasis
between Mark and the other gospels.

Mark’s Jesus is fully human –
no miraculous birth story.
He has a spiritual awakening
at his baptism as a young man.
He comes into the awareness
of his special relationship with God,
just as any of us might.
At the end of the gospel
there is an empty tomb, period.
No resurrection stories
just the promise
that God will have the last word.

In Mark’s telling of Jesus’ ministry
there is special attention given
to Jesus training his students
to go out two by two
and do what he does:
preach and teach about the kingdom of God
that is breaking into the world
even here
even now.
Jesus is always pointing
to the Kingdom of God
that we are to create
”on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matthew and Luke echo this somewhat
but they also increase the pointing to Jesus.

Whereas Mark features Jesus
always points to the kingdom of God,
Matthew and Luke start pointing more to Jesus,
and by the time we get to John
it is a full-blown emphasis on Jesus.

So John’s Jesus
is talking about eternal life
with that saying,
rather than Mark’s Jesus
who is talking about this life.
John says, “…he who hates his life in this world
will keep it for eternal life.”

If Mark was standing alone
without these other versions of the Jesus saying,
especially John’s,
it could be a proverb
about how to live a more meaningful life
in this world.

As you likely know by now,
I am biased in favor of Mark’s Gospel
and of the four,
find John’s the most problematic.
That often puts me at odds
with the more orthodox elements of the Church
because it loves John.

But I want to turn toward John now
and appreciate the rich metaphor
he has given us –
because it is as apt
for living our lives focused
on this life
as it was to him about living this life
with an eye toward the next life.

First of all, I have to tell you
that the pulpit I preached from for ten years
had a little plaque underneath the light
which rested just above where the preacher
would place his or her notes.
It quoted today’s reading from John:
”Sir, we would see Jesus.”
I don’t know which predecessor put it there
but I suspect it is still there
at St. Stephen’s on the campus
of The Ohio State University.

No pressure, just show us Jesus.

The irony is that John doesn’t tell us
if Jesus ever meets with those Greeks.
Instead, he delivers to his students
one of the most insightful lines
from John’s gospel:
”I tell you the truth,
a grain of wheat must fall to the ground
and die to make many seeds.
But if it never dies, it remains only a single seed.”

I would like to divorce that metaphor
from its literal meaning,
by which John understands it,
and extend its connotation to life as we live it.

Think of the various grains or elements
of our own lives that could,
if we allowed,
enrich our lives
rather than in John’s sense
of life as defined by its ending.

For example, when we hold onto things we love
or that have been especially meaningful to us,
it can often spell its demise.
Change comes to all things
and all lives
and all relationships
but when we try to hold them in place
and resist the change and transformation
that is natural to everything,
we break –
or we break the thing we loved.

Resisting change makes us brittle
and the more brittle we are
the more likely we are to shatter
when changes we did not seek or want
come into our lives and relationships.

Parents watch as their children change
and become their own special free agents
with allegiances and values and activities
their parents may not share or even like.
When parents try to hold their children in place
and refuse to let them change,
the relationship will break
or become terribly toxic.

Likewise, adult children
see their parents change, and often,
witness their parents making choices
they don’t like or understand.
When children try to keep their parents
from breaking out of their childhood mold,
the relationship can shatter.
In our city of Geneva, as in many places,
the relationships between the police department
and the general public, as well as
activists and government,
are changing.
The parties involved can become rigid
and resistant, and so end up brittle,
or they can accept that change has come
and seek to grow into new relationships
that are mutually beneficial
even if different from the past.

When something we have thought
or believed
or valued
has been buffeted
by countervailing ideas
and beliefs
and values,
we can cross our arms and say “NO”
to any and all challenges…or we can wonder.

We can get curious about how and why
other people are seeing things
differently from the way we
have always assumed
things should be.
We may not have a revolution of thought
but softening and opening
may teach us more
and allow for more growth
than brittle resistance at all costs.

The palpable fear and anxiety
about becoming just one minority among many
in various parts of the
White, Euro-centric community,
is leading to wicked efforts
to repress voting rights.

Rigid resistance to the change that is coming,
that is in fact happening now,
is leading many to extreme and ugly behavior.

That rigidity is poisoning them on the inside
and leading to a threatening toxicity
among all those around them on the outside.

Letting the way things have always been
go through their natural life-cycles
and die,
allows for vibrant
and surprising new life
to blossom.

This is true for us as individuals
with regard to our values and ideas,
as well as with our relationships.
But it is also true
with our institutions and social order.

Not all change is good
but all things change.

Not all change is what we want
but all things change.

We may be able to influence change
and be the architects of change
instead of its victim only,
but resisting it carte blanche
will mangle us
if not kill us.

”I tell you the truth, a grain of wheat
must fall to the ground
and die to make many seeds.
But if it never dies, it remains only a single seed.”

That’s a pretty good proverb.
John may have meant it about life after death
but it seems to me
pretty good advice –
maybe even a warning –
about how we live life now.

Peace be with you,
and may your curiosity lead to many deaths
with abundant life that follows.

 

 

 

Trinity Place

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).

 

 

 

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