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2 Christmas 2022: Black Holes, Schodinger’s cat, and Jesus too!

January 1, 2023 by Cam Miller

Recent Hubble Photo

I try to understand, I really do.

I read and re-read
about cool new information
coming to us from the study of Black Holes.

It was a New York Times article
about Einstein’s own argument with himself
about gravity verses quantum mechanics,
or something like that.

But now, from the study of Black Holes,
it is beginning to look like
gravity and relativity exist together
or are even the same thing.
What that means, somehow and
for reasons I cannot fathom,
is it may turn out we are nothing but
halograms — feathery images
like on our credit cards.

If true then there is no difference between
here and there
cause and effect
inside and outside
or then and now.

Schrodinger’s cat can be both dead or alive
at the same time
and in the same place.*

”Black Holes May Hide Mind-Bending Secretes About Our Universe” by Dennis Overbye, NYT 10/10/22

Throw the Trinity
and Resurrection in there
and we’ve got a real spooky universe
in which nothing we touch
or smell
or see
or hear
is as it seems.

If I am being honest with you,
I do not understand
a great deal of Christian theological claims
any more than I understand
a lot physics.
They are related of course,
because both theology and physics
attempt to understand
and explain
the world as we know it —
or think we know it.
Actually, they attempt to explain
the unseen world at the end
of our fingertips and vision.

But I am a preacher
and I much prefer Anne Sexton’s attempt
to draw a circle around
a particular kind of experience —
the pleasant surprise of joy
evoked by a God-shot of gratitude.
Anne is all in the flesh of the moment.

Even if we are only holograms
and this is actually “then”
rather than now,
it is the flesh of the moment
and having skin in the game
that tells us we are alive
and that God is in the moment with us.

”…in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing…

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.”

Now there is a theology I can understand.
And it is the invitation I want to offer
as we stand here on this first step
of the new year.

Take it or leave it,
it is up to you,
but an incarnational religion —
which is what we are —
believes
seeks to experience
and looks to make better
an existence
wrapped in a bag of flesh
and among other enfleshed creatures.

Incarnation means “in the body”
as I said on Advent 4,
it isn’t only Jesus that is incarnate —
we all all.

We are in a body,
and in a body with God
and we walk or limp or crawl
through this life
with God in the body
with us — Emmanuel.

And it is in those moments
when we suddenly,
more often than not out of nowhere,
experience God
in this body with us,
that we are jolted with joy.

And it happens, more often than not,
as we sort and live through
the ordinary crumbs of experience
living out our
mostly ordinary lives.

And that is why names are important.
We name people, creatures, and things
because it places us
in relationship to them.
Black Holes and holograms aside,
the unnamed
is really and truly
the unknown.

Ancient people
understood the power of names
and they gave one another
names that meant something.
You know, like Emanuel – “God with us.”

My dog is named Rabia,
after Rabia of Basra
a fifth century Sufi mysic.
That Rabia was named “Rabia”
because in Arabic, Rabia means fourth,
and she was the fourth daughter.
My Rabia is my fourth dog.

Trinity Place
was named because it was Trinity
in a different place.
Before we worshiped and lived here
as a community,
Trinity was only known
as the building at 520 S. Main Street.
So when we started worshiping here,
while still owning the building up there,
we distinguished this place
as Trinity Place.
The name mattered
and it stuck.
Names can be like that, powerful
and pointing to properties and characteristics
we may not even have intended.

My name is Robert Cameron Miller,
named after my dad,
who was Robert,
and with a Scottish name in the middle
that points to my heritage.
When I was a young boy,
even though my family called me Cam,
my father’s peers and friends
would call me “little Bob.”

When I went away to camp one summer,
I said my name was “Bob”
and that’s what they called me.
I liked the idea of being
a little version of my dad,
but his name never quite fit me.

Besides, Robert Miller
is about as generic as John Smith
and there seem to be a lot of Robert Miller’s
with a long history credit and legal problems.

We can long for names
that don’t fit,
and go by names other people give us
that do not fit.
It is important
that we get the right name —
the one that fits
for whatever reason
the power of that name holds for us.

The name “Jesus” is Latin
for the Greek name, Iesous
(pronounced “Yay-soos”).

“Jesus” instead of Iesous,
became the norm of Christianity
because Christianity became Romanized,
and Latin, of course,
was the language of the empire.
So the meaning of the name “Jesus”
now includes the colonial nature
of a religion swallowed by an empire.

But neither the Greek, Iesous,
nor the Latin name, Jesus,
was his name.

Jesus had a Hebrew name —
not a Greek or Latin name.
His Hebrew name was Joshua.
But since there was no “J” sound
in ancient Hebrew,
it was Yeshua (Y’shua).

Like all names,
and especially all ancient names,
Yeshua had a meaning.
It meant, “God saves,”
or more precisely: “Jehovah is salvation.”

It is impossible for us to know
what the name Yeshua
meant to Jesus.

A lot of people in his generation

had that name.
A lot of people,
before and alongside him,
were named, “God saves.”
A lot of people before, with,
and after him, believed that, in fact, God does save.

So we do not know
what his name meant to him,
but we do know that the meaning of his name
came to define how people would remember him.

Now, because we are a highly secular culture,
there are a lot of people who think
that Jesus’ last name was, “Christ.”

But Jesus did not have a last name,
any more than millions of people
in some cultures around the world today
have last names.

Yeshua bar Joseph, was his name.
Or more accurately, Yeshua bar Yosef;
that is, Yeshua “son of” Yosef.

We can see why the scandal
of Joseph not being the father of Yeshua,
in a Patriarchal society,
would be so tramatic.
He would be “bar nothing.”
Son of no one.
Instead, he became “bar God” —
son of God.

But Yeshua,
long after his death on the cross,
began to receive a title
alongside his actual name:

Yeshua Messias,
or Hebrew for Messiah.

But we also know that the title, Messias,
got changed like the name Yeshua did.
It became the Greek form, Christos or Christ.

Messias means, in Hebrew, literally,
“anointed one.”
When we say Yeshua Messias,
or Jesus Christ,
we mean them as synonymous.

In our world,
to say Jesus
is to say Christ
and to say Christ
is to mean Jesus.

That is because the Roman Empire
spread, inspired, converted and coerced
that version of Christianity
all across the globe
until you and I,
and most of the modern world,
took for granted that Jesus means Christ
and vis versa.

Even those who do not believe
Jesus means Christ,
know that those two words
are synonymous for Christians.

Jesus or
Christ
or Jesus Christ
is one heck of a powerful name
because it is loaded to the brim
with meanings.

Even those Christians who reject Jesus
as Christ
or as God
or as son of God
still have to contend with the power
of his name.
What is the meaning of his name…for us?

This is New Year’s Day,
a powerful day in and of itself.
The first day of the new year
is loaded with meaning,
and I think a propitious moment
to ponder these things.

What is the meaning of your name?
Does your name
or what people call you, fit?

What is the meaning of the name, Jesus?
Does the meaning you give that name
fit the relationship you desire
with that wisdom, or that man, or that God?

I invite and encourage us
to ponder these things:
our own name and his,
what they mean
whether the meanings fit
and what we want them to be…

As old as many of us are,
it is not too late to ponder these things.
I like to imagine that if we do,
we may just find ourselves incarnate:
A moment of joy
in which we experience
God in the body
with us: Emmanuel.

For the last time until next December, Merry Christmas.

 

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Black Holes, Jesus, Schodinger's cat

Last Epiphany: “When we should be making whoopee instead of hay” (Dillard)

March 5, 2022 by Cam Miller

Many of us thought that war in Europe
was something relegated to history
but today it is in our headlines, on our minds,
and in our prayers.
The Bishop of The Episcopal Church in Europe,
Mark Eddington, reminded
those in his diocese that is spread across
the continent rather than in just one nation,
that the place where war lives
is in the human heart.

As we pray for peace
I encourage us to do the work
of eradicating war in our hearts.

And now, I invite your focus
to be present here
and in this moment.

I say that, but I was not
where I should have been
when writing this sermon.
Here is what I mean.
We have three readings today
but I got stuck in the verses of Exodus
that appear before the ones we actually read.

But honestly, that is only half true.
I was really enthralled and taken up
with the excerpt from Annie Dillard
and hovered over it
wondering if I could preach on it
instead of Luke.
But then, because of Annie Dillard,
I got curious about Moses.
Suddenly I wanted to re-read in Exodus
where God sticks Moses into the little crack.
It is at the end of chapter 33
right before the part of the story we read today.

But before I get into that one,
the readings from Exodus and Luke that are
actually appointed for today,
have Moses and Jesus with magically shinning faces.
That is weird and unusual right?
It can’t be an accident, can it, that the architects
of the Revised Common Lectionary
put these two readings as bookends on the same day?
So what’s with the shinning faces?

I have preached on these stories
so many dang times,
and you know by now
that Luke is telling this story
to proclaim that Jesus belongs in the pantheon
of spiritual superheroes with Moses and Elijah.
That is the headline:
”Jesus seen hanging out in the clouds
talking with Moses and Elijah!”

Christians have trouble playing well with others
so it wasn’t enough for the Church
to celebrate a Big Three event.
It had to make the transfiguration
all about Jesus
and how he is greater than anybody else.

But I dare say, that wasn’t the original intent.
So all of that is fine
if we want to remain in the clouds
talking about theology
and trading intellectual nuggets with each other.
But I don’t.
I want to bring it down from the mountaintop.
I want to talk about you and me
and where we live —
without the glow,
without the magic, without the light show.

Annie Dillard and my curiosity helped me do that.

Here is a piece of Exodus just before today’s reading:
(33:)18 Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

19 And (God) said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you (my) name…

20 But,” (God) said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”
21 And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock;

22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;

23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

So there we are,
right in the middle of Annie Dillard,
stalking the gaps.

Cleft in the rock.
”The gaps are the clefts in the rock,” she says,
where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells
the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery.”

It is such a weird little story in Exodus
about the relationship between God and Moses,
but we hardly ever get to talk about it.

Moses, being Moses, pesters God for more access.
To be honest, Moses agitates for control
in their relationship,
as if he is God’s manager or promoter.
Moses wants to see God’s face
because it is not until we look into someone’s eyes
that we really sense we know them.
To see God’s face would be
to know God’s essence,
and be with God
in the same place
at one and the same moment
would be to know God in a utterly new way.
This is like wanting to know what it is like
to swim in molten lava — you can do it
but then you’re dead.

God says, “’No,” but then throws Moses a bone.
”Because I like you,” God might have said,
here is what I will do.
I will squeeze you into a cleft in the rock, real tight, facing away from me.
Then I will cover your eyes as I pass by
and let you know I am passing.
Once I pass, and only then, you can look.
You will see where I have just been.”

Moses wants more, but because he is human,
that is the best he can hope for…and live.

So Moses was allowed
to see where God had just been
as God receded into the distance.
He could look
where God was
but not where God is
(because if he were with God
in the same time and place in real time,
he would die).

In fact, to be even as close as to where God was
just a minute ago,
was enough to alter Moses’ face forever.
From then on Moses’ face glowed.

The message is that we don’t get to be with God
in the same time and place either.
We don’t get to have God look us in the eyes
and tell us what we most want to hear.
We do not get anything like that
and we do not promise such rare delights either.
Remember, if we look upon God we die.

So message number one for you and me,
we do not get to see or know God. Period.
The part does not get to know the whole.
And as far as being a part of God,
we are but a speck — an infinitesimal
bacteria
riding on a cell
on top a dust mite
within the cosmos that is God.
Like Moses, we agitate for more
and want to be in control of the relationship
but we do not get what we want.

Even so, and point number two,
our smallness doesn’t mean we are stuck
hiding in the cleft.

Instead, we can storm the gaps.
Like Annie Dillard says, “’…There is always a temptation
to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues…’”
(But) “I won’t have it,” she says.
“The world is wilder than that in all directions,
more dangerous and bitter,
more extravagant and bright.
We are making hay when we should be making whoopee;
we are raising tomatoes
when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”

And so here is a fitting end to Epiphany
and this sermon.
Here is how we can storm the gaps.
We have a covenant,
the one we take hold of in baptism
and that we claim
is the shape of our spiritual practice.
There is nothing itsy-bitsy
or diddling about it.
If we are actively engaged in this covenant,
even if only one promise at a time,
it will get us rattled,
it will get us in trouble — good trouble —
and it will open the dangerous
dimensions of the world all around us.

We have been reminding ourselves of these promises
all Epiphany, so no one should be shocked
when we get pushed out of the itsy-bitsy
into the wind fiercely howling
between the gaps.

Here is what you and I say we will do.
Here are the promises of our spiritual practice.
You tell me if they are itsy-bitsy.
First, we promise to mine the wisdom
and stay within the community of worship
that will make us cry.

This wisdom, and this community,
will cause us to feel one another’s pain
and to voice our own,
and then to sing about it
as well as eat the bread and wine of affliction.
We promise to stay connected,
which is turbulence and trouble enough for anyone.
There is no itsy-bitsy about this promise.

We also say we will persevere
in confronting our demons —
that we will actually stalk the gaps
in our own shadow
and name the problem characters we find in there.
We say we will recognize and name
the things we do
and the tendencies we have
that we are not proud of
and that we know cause problems for others.
And then, having done all that,
we will turn around and be different.
We say that, and then we promise to do it.
That in itself is a wild promise!

Then we promise,
in our baptismal covenant,
that our lives will become — actually,
that we will become —
the wisdom, the love, and the hope
that Jesus promised.
Really, we say that.
It is in the promise we make
that by word and example
we will proclaim the divinity
that animated the human known as Jesus.
That is no diddling around in that promise.

After we have promised
that our lives will embody divinity,
we then promise that we will look for
and serve divinity in all people —
including the radical act
of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
I don’t think we have any ideas
how dangerous this promise is.

Finally, in our stalking the gaps
and putting ourselves in the hazardous situation
of trying to be where God has just been,
we promise to strive for justice
in a world and economy that bleeds injustice;
strive for peace in a world at war;
and most poignant of all,
respect the dignity of every human being.
We promise these things as if,
as if,
they were just one more thing
we will do today
along with grocery shopping
and emailing the kids.

Here is what I know.
I know that Moses couldn’t look on God’s face
and that we can’t either.

In fact, the best we can do
is see where God just was —
whether it was a thousand years ago
or twenty seconds.
We are always working with less information
than we want to know
and with a God that is less knowable
than we want or hope for.

But that does not handicap us
from stalking the gaps
and resisting the temptation
to live itsy-bitsy lives
that are measurable and safe.

We have promises to make
and promises to keep
and they are not itsy-bitsy at all.

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Jesus, Moses, Whoopee

4 Epiphany: Jeremiah & Jesus back to back 500 years apart

January 30, 2022 by Cam Miller

Statue of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Scroll down for video version

You know I am in my happy place
when I get to talk about
both Jeremiah and Jesus
at one and the same time.

We actually have some biographical data
on each of these prophets
and it is interesting
to put them back to back
even though they lived more than
500 years apart.

Jeremiah and Jesus
lived the restless and perhaps
tortured lives
of those immersed in the anger
of their peers
and contemporaries.

I don’t have to tell you
what it is like to be the object
of anger, not only
from one person
but from many of the people
in your close circle of family and friends.

You want to talk about polarized,
try going back to Jeremiah or Jesus’ day.
It was an angry, violent, snarling,
dog-eat-dog world.

But Jeremiah and Jesus
could not have been more different.

Jeremiah came from money –
the small power elite class of his society.
Jesus came from dirt,
as in dirt-poor.

Jeremiah was educated,
and it shows in the exquisite images
and parallelism of his poetry.
Jesus was likely illiterate
and it shows in the pithy, earthy parables
so easily recite-able from memory.

Jeremiah was a priest
before he was a prophet,
and his father was a priest who taught him the trade.
Jesus was a peasant who made doors
and wheels, and tables and ploughs
just as his father taught him to do.

But both of them,
Jeremiah and Jesus,
separated by almost six hundred years,
knew from a very young age
they were in trouble.

Both of them knew
that WHAT they knew
would cause those who loved them
to become very angry.

WHAT they knew
was a word God had given them to speak.

If we want to get right down to it,
both of them were what we would call…preachers.

Now I realize being a preacher
isn’t an elevated position in our day,
nor something most people would aspire to.
But just like the Bible
is more sermon than text,
the main characters of the Bible
and its prophets,
are more preachers than magician or guru.

Whatever magic they had
came from their lips
more than their hands.

But pause on that for a moment.
Because the idea that God speaks on the lips
of an ordinary human being
is not something we believe today.
If someone were to walk into Trinity Place
on a Sunday morning that we were in-person,
and tell us that God had told him or her to come in here
and give us a message,
we would think they were bonkers.
And yet, that is the idea of a prophet or preacher.

In fact, last summer someone did
barge into our tent worship
and makes such a claim,
and we did think they were bonkers.

Figuring out the difference
between a prophet and someone who is bonkers
is more difficult than we might imagine.
But that is the topic for a different sermon.

Back to Jeremiah and Jesus.

A prophet had the unenviable task
of speaking God’s mind to humans,
and sometimes
speaking the mind of humans to God.

If you break that down,
who in their right mind would want that job?

The prophet was a mouthpiece:
not welcomed to speak his or her own mind
but to articulate GOD’s vision
or dream
or judgment.

In poor Jeremiah’s case,
he was given the words of ‘doom and gloom’
to speak to his peers in an affluent society
that was “partying like it was 1999.”
600 BCE in Judah
was like the 1920’s in the USA:
a big party
before the big bust.

So there at the party
was poor old Jeremiah
lobbing stink bombs at everyone’s good time.
Fortunately, at the end of Jeremiah’s life,
when Jerusalem had been torched
and ground down to rubble,
and his peers and contemporaries
brutally carted off into exile,
Jeremiah was given a vision of restoration
to spread among the survivors.

He was given a vision of good news
and how it would be
when God welcomed them back
with open arms.

Jesus was more like the prophet Amos
than he was Jeremiah.
He was peasant
sent into the halls of power
where he did not belong.
He was sent to deliver
both judgment against the status quo
and an alternative vision
for how God wanted us to live.
We all know that never goes well.

But again, let’s pause.

Does God really
touch the lips of some
and give them a vision or critique to articulate?

Well I do not have any incontestable proof
that  God speaks
on the lips of prophets today,
at least not in any scientific sense.
But I do know this –
and so do you.

In 1776 there were numerous people
who spoke against slavery —
Southerners as well as Northerners.

And in 1876
there were citizens
who spoke out against
the genocide of Native peoples.

The vision of equal rights for women
was articulated long before women could vote.

Child labor laws had advocates
a hundred years before they were passed.

In 1924 the first public voices were heard
advocating for Gay Rights.

Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring”
and warned of Global Warming sixty years ago.

We know about
Ida B. Wells
Sojourner Truth
Emmeline Pankhurst
Dorothy Day
Martin Luther King, Jr.
John Lewis
Nelson Mandela
Thich Nhat Hahn,
Desmond Tutu
Alicia Garza
Malala Yousafzai…

All of them, and literally thousands
of others occupying the space with them
have given voice
to what would take years
or generations
or even centuries
for everyone else to accept.

We can make a case
that all those folks
saw another reality breaking through
the dense matter
that others around them
were stuck inside of.

We can make a case
that God was breaking through
the ordinary
and they heard it
and saw it
and spoke it.

Or how about this?
We could make a case
that you and I have seen and heard
God breaking through the ordinary
and delivering a word
to people we know…even to us.

“We will proclaim by word AND example the Good News of God in Christ.”
In other words, we will be the incarnation
of the Gospel.

That is prophetic.

Or how about this.
“We will seek and serve God in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.”

In other words, we know God is
in ALL persons
and we have been sent to discover it
and serve it
and even name it,
no matter who we discover it in.

That is prophetic.

Or this.

“We will strive for justice and peace among all people,
and respect the dignity of every human being.”
In other words,
our task is to bring about the kingdom
on Earth as it is in heaven.

That is prophetic.

So I do know for a fact
that there are people in this world
who make those promises
and in doing so,
sign up to be prophets of God.

And by the way,
that is how God does stuff
in the world.

Interesting, huh?
Peace be with you.

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Ida B. Wells, Jeremiah, Jesus

Worship & Sermon for 11 Pentecost,Year A, 2020

August 16, 2020 by Cam Miller

Muncie, Indiana

WORSHIP VIDEO

 

TEXT OF SERMON

I don’t want to preach today,
instead I just want to share some thoughts.
Jesus gave us a true gem this morning,
or I should say, Matthew’s memory of Jesus
gave us something special.
So by way of my grandfather
I want to talk about this story of Jesus.

By all accounts my granddad was a peach.
I never knew him,
he died before I was born.
As a dentist in his small,
average American town for those days,
he cared for some people that pushed him
beyond his comfort zone.
I know that
because of stories handed down in the family.
But I also know,
because my dad told me in a quiet moment,
that my grandfather belonged
to the Klu Klux Klan,
known as the Indiana Klan in those parts.

Now the way my dad explained this to me,
was that back in the day – my grandfather’s day –
the Klan was like a political party
and it had a social dimension
because “almost everyone” belonged it.
I checked that out, and indeed,
Indiana has the dubious distinction
of being the state with the highest ever
Klan registration.
From 1920 to 1925,
30% of “native born white men in Indiana,”
as it was recorded,
belonged to the Indiana chapter of the Klan,
and the Governor and over half the legislature claimed membership.
”Everyone was in it,”
I think was the phrase my dad used to explain it.

My dad had a childhood memory
of being with his father
in a downtown building
when a Klan meeting let out
and being scared by the procession
of men in robes
coming down the dark stairway.

The mind has lots of tricks.
Because my granddad was a good guy
I embraced my dad’s explanation
for quite some time.
Then, one day, the dissonance
embedded in that explanation
agitated me enough, so that
I started thinking about it more.
The heart of the Klu Klux Klan
is racism and bigotry –
against African Americans,
Jewish Americans, Roman Catholics,
and nearly any immigrant
from anywhere other than northern Europe.

It did not matter if “everyone was doing it”
there is no way around the darkness
at the heart of that beast.
You do not become part of evil
without first having that evil within,
or getting poisoned by more of it
while being part of it.

My grandfather may have been a wonderful guy
to his family
and some members of his community,
but there is no easy explanation or excuse
that will dissolve the ugliness of his association
with the Indiana Klan.
”Everyone was doing it” is a rationalization
meant to put its dissonance
with everything else we know
to sleep.

My point here,
is not so much about my granddad
but the importance of listening to dissonance –
of allowing ourselves to feel the rub
and agitation
between what we think
and have been taught
and what we experience
and what we practice.

Let me repeat that
because it is counter-intuitive:
It is GOOD
when we allow ourselves to feel
the dissonance
between what we have been taught
and our actual experience,
or between what we believe and espouse
and what we actually practice.

When there is a crinkle and a rub
that makes us uncomfortable,
it is better to pick at it
than to leave it alone.

So again, my granddad
may have been a peach of a guy
to his family and some people in the community,
but his participation in the Indiana Klan
tells us something else as well.
Allowing myself to be uncomfortable
about my own father’s rationalization
about his father – because it didn’t really jive
with my knowledge and experience of people –
caused me to acknowledge
my granddad’s participation in evil.

We all have filters, right?
I mean we all have lenses
we’ve crafted or been given,
that explain the world and the people around us.
There are macro filters
like science, religion, politics, and economics,
and there are micro filters
like family culture, neighborhood consensus,
professional culture,
and personal prejudices and superstitions.

When we feel a dissonance
or agitation about something
we can’t quite put our finger on,
it is probably because
we are calling into question
the trustworthiness of a lens or filter
we’ve been seeing the world through.

In such moments, our instinct
is to turn away from the dissonance.
Our knee-jerk reaction is to deny
or rationalize
the discomfort and move on
without thinking too much about it.
But having the courage and curiosity
to wonder about that dissonance
and explore the agitation
is the gem this story about Jesus holds up to us.

But we have to pay the price of entry
in order to see this gem up close.

In order to even see the gem embedded
in this story from Matthew,
we may have to question
one or more of our filters
about Jesus.

There is an orthodox Christian lens
that looks at Jesus
only through God-and-Perfection
colored glasses.
Anytime there is a story
in which Jesus says or does
what seems distinctly ungod-like
or less than perfect,
a corrective lens is asserted
that finds an explanation or rationalization
that likely strains credulity
but leaves in tact the orthodox lens.
If we will get curious
and muster some courage,
the insight in this story
is actually low hanging fruit.
This story of Jesus
gives us a glimpse
of a human being struggling
with his own bigotry
along with the lens of his cultural and theological assumptions.
If Jesus is perfect
we do not get to see this moment of enlightenment
brought on by Jesus listening to the dissonance
within himself.

The dissonance
is between what he says he believes
about the universality of God’s love
and the bigotry held within
the spiritual practice of his own religion.
I would go so far as to say,
this moment of dissonance
and Jesus’ willingness to listen to it,
may be the turning point
in the life and ministry of the messiah.
Here is the story behind the story
that tells the story.
It begins with Jesus ignoring the woman.

But that is not all.
His bigotry toward her is pretty obvious.
He as much as calls her a dog –
in fact, he does call her a dog.

A mother, desperate to save her child,
accosts Jesus.
Now consider what we know
about the plight of peasants in those days.

There was no social safety net.
No medicine, and without any money,
there was not even access to spiritual healers.

It was a social caste system
that left poor women utterly powerless.
It was a society that placed children
on the absolute bottom rung of the ladder
where their value was measured
by their potential for labor.

If you were a female child,
your value was in eventual marriageability.

As a matter of fact,
a poor female child possessed by a demon –
or with mental illness if you prefer –
was truly a life without value or worth.
She would have been completely vulnerable

to all forms of human cruelty.

The mother, as most mothers do,
loved her child beyond value.
She would have been beside herself;
woeful in her fear
about what would happen
to the daughter she loved.

I am guessing that most mothers,
and fathers too,
would chase down any and all options.

So, despite the social and ethnic wedge
that stood between them,
the mother goes after Jesus.
She is poor, so she had already learned
not to be too polite –
that would get her nowhere in the first century.
Instead she charges into the crowd of men
and shouts.

That’s important: she shouts.
She yells at Jesus to stop and “have mercy.”

My image of this moment
is of of Jesus as a deer in the headlights.
He is accosted by a strange woman
demanding mercy.
We should remember too,
that “mercy” was a special feature of
Jesus’ stump speech.
So, just to fix the scene in our imagination,
this an aggressive outcast woman
publicly begging Jesus for mercy.
The first thing Jesus does is ignore her.
How human: Ignore it and hope it goes away.
I’m good at that, how about you?

But his disciples did not allow
an avoidance strategy.
They begged Jesus, and I quote, ‘get rid of her.’

”That’s harsh” Jesus might have said to himself.
But still, he concurred.
“Look lady, I’m not here to help Canaanites.”
He probably motioned her to leave, as in “shoo.”
“If you want to know the truth lady,
I was sent to help the lost sheep
among my fellow Galileans and Judeans.
I got nothing for you.”

Now to put a really fine point on this moment,
we need to recall what Jesus said
just prior to this event.
In Matthew’s version of the story,
Jesus has just said:
“…What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart,
and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions…”

Granddad, is that you?
Something dark slipped out
from the heart of Jesus.
In fact, Jesus’ treatment of this women
contradicts everything he just preached.

Remember what I said about dissonance?
One source of it is the rub between
what we say we believe or value
and how we actually behave.
When there is dissonance, pick at it.

Hypocrisy is pretty human.
I hope I am not speaking out of school
when I suggest that you may have had some experience
with hypocrisy yourself.
I know I have.

All of us violate our own values
and veer off the walk of our talk.
But the question for Jesus – and for us –
is what to do about it?

“Go away lady, you are not my concern”
sounds so awful to us but we can rationalize it
like my dad did for my granddad.
Jesus feels completely justified
in ignoring this woman
and for asserting an immediate distance
between them.

You see, Judeans and Galileans
saw Canaanites as morally unclean,
socially despicable,
and ritually filthy.
Keeping a distance
from such low-life
was integral to the practice of good faith.

For Jesus, social distance
from a Canaanite
was practicing good hygiene and “good faith.”
Plus, she is an unattended woman
and so Jesus had plenty of reasons
not too get close.
Social and religious policy
dictated that men
not enter into conversation
or deal with in any way, an unrelated woman –
especially one that was not with a man.
Again, that was a matter of good hygiene
and good faith too,
because a woman might be
on her menstrual cycle.
If a man touched a woman when she was menstruating,
he would make himself unclean.
Making himself unclean
would separate him
from the company of other men,
and any religious activity.

So you could not associate with women
you did not know.
And then, on top of all that,
there was the reputational issue.

Jesus just wanted her to go away.
Clearly Jesus does not want to help her.
He may even be disgusted by her.
His compassion was not aroused,
nor his mercy.
He was likely repulsed
and closed off
by the cultural and religious
lens he wore.

On top of all that,
everything in the culture
justified and reinforced his rejection of her.
”Everyone does it.”

But Jesus seems to have listened
to the dissonance
and recognized what we so clearly see
from our historical distance:
his first response,
while very much part of the normalcy
of his moment in time,
is the wrong response
when seen through the lens of God’s love.

Friends, we need to pick at the dissonance
when it arises within us
amidst the current political moment
and in the rising up of people of color
insisting that the impact of 400 years of slavery
now be addressed and reconciled and healed.

We need to pick at the dissonance within us
whenever we feel defensive about our privilege,
victimized in our whiteness,
hostile or afraid or mistrustful of any class
or category of human being –
as if Canaanites are somehow different
from Galileans.

We need to listen to the dissonance
between the universal love of God
and the normal and routine prejudices
bigotries, and fears
held within the lenses we’ve been given
or crafted for ourselves.

So if what I am saying is disconcerting
or agitating in any way, good.
Pick at it,
explore it,
follow what you know
about the universal love of God
and our call to be agents of that love.

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3 Advent, Year A, 2019: Is this sermon about hope?

December 15, 2019 by Cam Miller


If I can be personal for a moment,
I want to echo Wendell Berry’s poem about trees:
“They are the advent they await.”

Advent, an arrival or emergence, or
as we say in church-speak, a coming.
Trees are and do Advent –
they arrive without notice,
a seed in the soil
as anonymous as an infant
born into poverty at night
hidden from sight.
Trees are the thing they await,
both the recipient
and pure embodiment
of light.

Trees are that “light come down to earth”
consumed and processed
and transformed into more and greater tree.

Truly, we do not think of them as such,
but they are channels of sunlight
absorbed and changed into
bark and stem and leaf.

You likely think I am nuts now,
but truly, trees are perhaps
the most heavenly creatures on earth –
their very life a benediction (or blessing)
to the rest of us.
As Berry says, we “walk on (their) radiance
(and are) amazed.”
But they are also “a benediction said
over the living and the dead” –
literally granting comfort and shade
above our graves.

They bless us in life and death.

We pray for light and life
every dang time we open a prayer book,
and there they are –
trees all around us,
life and light blessing us while
we all but ignore them.

Trees are so god-like,
and our ignorance and negligence,
and at times downright belligerence toward them,
is just so darn human.

Jesus was hung on a tree,
one that itself had been tortured into wood.
We make that ragged wood of the cross
our symbol of holiness
instead of the tree from which it came –
also very human of us.

I don’t want to over-do this metaphor
but trees are potent symbols of life,
and the veritable incarnation of light
and its presence among us even on a cloud-filled day.

Why am I talking about trees?
Glad you asked.

I once read a quote in an interview
with the aging folk singer, Joni Mitchell.
The interviewer asked Joni if she ever got disillusioned.
“No,” she immediately replied,
“because I never have any illusions.”

You see, it is illusions that, in the end
cause us to become cynical and disillusioned.
What we need is VISION, not illusion
and many people – especially many idealistic people –
confuse those two.
Isaiah is all about vision
rather than illusion.

It is an easy and common mistake
to imagine that Isaiah
is creating a specific set of criteria
by which to discern
God’s presence in the world.
“When the desert gets to be like this,
then we will know God is with us.”
But that is what his poem says
only if we read it as a formula
or the directions for a how-to manual
instead of as poetry.

First of all, we are not wilderness people.
We do not live in a desert –
in fact, just the opposite.

We live along or near a lake,
a giant blue lake
fed by roaring tributaries
pouring off dramatic waterfalls
and adorned with vineyards,
forests, and orchards.
We are Hobbits
who live in the lush green Shire,
not denizens of Isaiah’s desert –
or John the Baptist’s wilderness,
or any of the Biblical dryness metaphors.
Using desert metaphors for us
is like referring to Jesus as the bread of lifein Japan,
where rice is the staple.

The VISION in Isaiah’s poetry
is not embedded in topography
or geological features of the land.

They are metaphors, like Wendell Berry’s trees.
They are metaphors
mouthing to us in whispers
about when we can be sure that God is
present and at work
in the world about us.

Here is how I translate his metaphors.

God is present and at work
where the hawks of war
fall in love with the doves of peace
and their progeny is hope.

God is present and at work
when power is used to raise up the powerless
and make vulnerable
those who are steadfastly arrogant.

God is present and at work
when our economy is driven by the invisible hand
of fairness and equity
instead of moved by the clutch of scarcity
pr the suction of gluttony.

That to me, is the substance of Isaiah’s vision.
But our vision generally does not come from Isaiah,
instead, we get our vision
from CNN…FOX…MSNBC…Brietbart…NPR
or any other electronic sieve
that filters the universe
into small enough particles
that they can be transmitted by electrons
into 15 second sound-bytes,
or 30 second streaming images,
or a “generous” two-minute expose.

Our news…our vision…our very perspective on the world,
is filtered into manageable sound bites
and polished into a lens
by businesses, organizations, and platforms
driven by profit,
rather than a prophet of God.

It is as if we are presented
with a daily paint-by-numbers world
with a few stray dots
we are directed to color in
and told which colors to use, and then,
we are told what the image is
we are supposed to see.

You and I do not actually know
what is going on in the world.
We only get briefings
from people who want us to see the world
in a particular way – theirway;
the way that is best for them
to have us see it.

But here is the laughable part.
They do not know
what is happening in the world either.

The idea that anyone has the right perch
and a good view
of what is actually taking place in world is an illusion.

The idea that there is a constellation of facts out there
that can be gathered,
and that once pulled together for us
can be added up like an equation…
to give us “Reality”
with a capital R – is an illusion.

We do not get to see “reality”
we only get to see very small snippets
of life as we experience it;
and then we get to salt it
with a conglomeration of information,
some of which is helpful
but a preponderance of which, is not.

So, let’s back up,
and back away from CNN and FOX
and that barrage of information,
whatever its source.
Let’s instead, go sit by the lake.

I imagine that all of us
have had the experience
of sitting by a lake or pond –
one small enough
to have an apron of trees around it.

Seated there at the water’s edge,
we see the surface of the of lake or pond
and the tangle of trees
stretching up and out toward the sun,
and in the midst of it all,
we see the chaos of textures and colors
and we can probably hear a cacophony of sounds.
If we sit there long enough,
and wait patiently enough,
our eyes will actually adjust to the abundance.

Think about that – our eyes
will adjust to the abundance
and we will see more of what is there.
In the same way as we wait for our vision
to adjust to the dark,
if we are patient at the water’s edge
we will see a stunning array of detail emerge.

We will see the dance of light upon the carpet of shadows.
We will see the complexity of grasses
and an almost wasteful variety flowers and plants –
especially if we are there in the growing season.
But even in winter,
we can see a reckless variety of once green bodies
poking out of the snow
or leaning in all different directions
like a bad haircut.

We will hear a symphony of natural music
played by the freakish vocal instruments
of chitterling birds,
fractious insects,
undulating amphibians,
chortling mammals,
and even the strings of the wind.

If we sat there long enough,
this intricate canvass of life will change by season
over and over and over and over again.
Autumn with its subdued colors and receding hairline;
Winter with its purity and milk of God;
Spring with its scent of life and squeal of green;
Summer in all of its full-bodied shapeliness.

Were we patient enough,
were we very good listeners,
were we to have the studied vision of a cat,
we would see this year-long scene
as one whole turn of the page.

If we had the vision,
instead of looking upon its minion of component parts
and seeing them as separate and discrete activities,
we would see it as a rolling and rippling whole.

But even if we had the patience and vision of a tree
to see the wonderful wholeness of lake and seasons,
we still would not actually see it.
That is because there is so much else going on within it.

We still would not have seen the microbiology;
not have witnessed the microbes at work
in the moist wet soil along its banks.

We would not have perceived
the interaction of worms and acid and decay
within the blankets of leaf-strewn mud on its icy bottom.

We would have
witnessed the trees changing color,
but hidden from our sight would be
the thickening liquid sucked up from their roots
and pumped like blood to the vessels in their leaves.

We would have enjoyed the sparkling surface of the water,
but never have guessed
the presence of a water table
resting beneath the green stubbled earth,
and that even that invisible body of water
ebbs and flows up and down by a connecting aquifer
that roars like a river
still deeper in the soul of the earth.

Standing by the exquisite elegance of the lake,
and having even an inkling
of how much life
and how many relationships
form the matrix of that exquisite web,
we understand CNN and FOX give us a 100-mph view
and call it the world.

But that view is not the world.
It is a view. It is a profit-driven and power-hungry view.

We know instead,
and Isaiah is telling us so,
that the world is composed of billions,
perhaps trillions of lakes and ponds– and please,
that’s a metaphor –
each with their own ecosystem
and yet inter-connected
with every other ecosystem
and forming a magnificent, single wholeness.

We could sit and study for an entire year
just one pond,
just one amazing day
just one moment in our lives,
and still we would not have the vision to see it.
The idea that we see it or know it,
is an illusion.
The way to keep from being DISillusioned
is to abandon the arrogance of illusion.

Is God present and at work in the world about us?
It does not seem so
if CNN, Facebook, or FOX is our lens.
But those who take the time,
who have the patience,
whose curiosity will allow,
and who have the eyes to see,
will know that God is present
and at work even here…even now.

If we are looking in the newspaper
or on television
or in our favorite online sources
for where God is carpeting whole nations
with peace and cures and prosperity,
then our ability to see God is diminished.

If we are waiting for the power-mongers in Washington
or Albany or the county or city
to suddenly speak with honesty
and act with integrity,
then we will become cynical.

If we are following our own vision
and insisting that WE KNOW
what the world is supposed to be like,
as if it had a script that follows a plot
and arrives at a happy ending
penned to our own liking, then we will be crushed.
If we are holding God
to the exact words that appear in Isaiah
or Matthew,
or to some mystic poet we read somewhere,
then we will become rigid
and encrusted
like anything else that has been dead that long.

To see the movement of God
here and now,
present and at work in our own lives,
we must be prepared
to look without expectation,
to listen without talking,
to observe without planning,
to feel without protecting,
To study without proving.

As we approach the Big Day of Christmas
and tell the story of Jesus born in a barn,
consider how many years
Nelson Mandela was in prison
before the world ever heard of him!
Think about how many seasons that tree lived
before you ever noticed it.

As we approach Christmas
and assume it is about a baby being born
late at night under a star
instead of a poem about God’s presence
here and now in our midst,
consider how many acts of kindness,
how many small acts of love,
how many life-changing encounters,
how many transforming moments
will never get one bit of ink or airtime,
and how few of them you or I will ever know about.

Consider how knowing about them
might change our vision
or at the very least, subvert our illusions.

Coming up through the roots of the tree
and feeding its leaves;
deep in the soil where death is refashioned into life;
and under the surface of the water
where a universe thrives,
God is present and at work.

There are 16 days left in this worn-out old year
and instead of rushing to the end,
I invite us to slow down,
take a deep breath,
and observe the small, the ordinary
the neglected elements, moments
and people
in our busy lives.

If we do, I suspect we will be able to see that
God is present and at work.

But you don’t have to take my word for it,
go out and touch the bark of a tree
and feel the naked little stems on its branches,
and poke around to notice a hint of its roots.
Realize what you feel
and what you see
is light. Sunlight.
Present, right there with you.

 

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 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. 

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