Love

5 Easter 2019: Trust

May 19, 2019 by Cam Miller

Preachers are such an easy target.
And church-goers in general, way too easy
for the culture to lampoon and caricature.
I’m not breaking any news here, am I?

We used to be the mainstream
and one of the weightbearing pillars of society,
and when we occupied that space,
it was just pot-shots from intellectuals.
Now, reduced to categories and demographics
in the partisan cultural divide,
us church-goers have become easy sources of humor.

But the best of that humor, and
one of the first and most famous,
is still “Elmer Gantry,” by Sinclair Lewis.

It was written in the 1920’s when Fundamentalism
and Pentecostalism were taking off
in non-denominational form,
and infiltrating the more mainline
Baptists and Methodists.

It was a satire of Christian hypocrisy
with Elmer an amoral, self-interested charlatan
that becomes a nationally renowned
preacher and evangelist.
I’m sure many of us read it once, years ago.

It is a little painful to read now
because it appears that the Elmer Gantrys
have taken over religion and politics
in our moment in history.

Be that as it may,
I want to read a brief excerpt of a sermon
Elmer preaches, a kind of signature theme of his.

You have to hear this as Burt Lancaster
playing Elmer Gantry,
preaching in a tent to the suckers born every minute,
with a smarmy lilt and slight drawl:

“Love! Love! Love! How beauteous
the very word! Not carnal love
but the divine presence.
What is Love? Listen!

It is the rainbow that stands out,
in all its glorious many-colored hues,
illuminating and making glad
against the dark clouds of life.
It is the morning and the evening star,
that in glad refulgence,
there on the awed horizon,
call Nature’s hearts to an uplifted rejoicing
in God’s marvelous firmament!”
Love, love, love. (“Elmer Gantry” by Sinclair Lewis, Chapter 20)

I offer that bit of satire
in contrast to Teihard de Chardin,
the famous French Jesuit paleontologist
and theologian.

Maybe they are almost the same,
except the religion that Sinclair Lewis
was lampooning
is built upon wiggly worms of anxiety about death,
while Chardin embraces death
as a natural source of fire in a cosmos of love.

“And on that day, for the second time
in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.”

Elmer Gantry knew we hate death.
Death is like a raspberry seed stuck in our teeth.
It doesn’t matter how magnificent and beautiful
the day,
the month,
the year,
the life…
just the idea that death is inevitable
makes it a ghostly presence in our midst.

This anxiety and struggle against death
goes way back, way…way back.
We can cast our gaze on those iconic cave paintings
from prehistoric France,
and imagine how they express hope
for something more from life
long before the advent of words.

But we also see it more directly
a mere two-thousand, six-hundred years ago –
in that poem from which the Book of Revelation
snagged its poetic imagery.

Six-hundred years before Jesus was born,
the poet Isaiah envisioned
a new heaven and a new earth,
but it was on a mountaintop
rather than a city,
where John of Revelation envisions it.

Isaiah wrote:
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And God will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples…”
(by which he meant death).

And note that the opposite of death is a feast.
He went on to write:
“God will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth…”

So, we can see how much John,
in the book of Revelation,
writing from some dark, dank corner
of a Roman prison,
was paraphrasing Isaiah, when he wrote:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…
And I saw the holy city of Jerusalem
coming down…(and there)
God will dwell with (God’s) people,
and God will be with them,
(and) wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning nor crying
nor pain any more,
for the former things have passed away.”

So we see that the musings
in John’s book of Revelation
barrow directly from old Isaiah,
and both of them,
like prophets, poets, and sages
from the past and present,
imagine a world without death.

We need to see this in the context
of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:
Once we have food stored up in the cave
or the barn or the refrigerator;
and once we have a nice warm fire going
to keep the cave warm
or the pipes from freezing;
and once we have a sense
that we are pretty well hidden and protected from the tigers,
or the tribe living around the next bend in the river,
or the gang of criminals prowling the neighborhood,
or the cops who bang on us…
then we can look up to the heavens and say,
“Hey, is this all there is?”

When we humans
get enough of a cushion
between ourselves and starvation,
and even a hint of stability and security,
it is then
we start asking questions about life and death.

It is then
that no matter how fat and sassy we are,
it does not feel like enough.

And it is then
we want some assurance
that this is not all there is,
and in fact, the rest of it needs to be pretty good too.

Heaven,
Moksha,
Jannah,
Salvation,
Nirvana…all the ideas
about what happens after we die,
reflect what the cultures they derive from
believe would be an improvement
on what is now.

In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions of the West,
a very human-sounding distributive justice
is exacted upon the good guys
and the bad guys alike,
and the rewards and punishments
meted out at the end of life
will right the scales of justice.

In Hinduism, the scales of justice
are measured somewhat differently than in the West,
and balanced through reincarnation.
Hinduism explodes the mind into openness
with a withering array of gods
and levels of the universes,
and succession of lives
that make possible
any and all conceptions of fairness.

Buddhism, of which there are as many brand names
as there are Christian denominations,
reckons that all lives,
good and bad,
are spokes stuck on a wheel of suffering.
The only hope hinges,
not upon the balancing of a scale,
but upon release into nothingness.
Nirvana is not heaven,
it is the absolute going out of existence
and so disappearing from the relentless cycle of lives.

Modern science, with its own brand of religion,
has given us a new vision:
an odd kind of afterlife
knit within the matrix of molecules and atoms.
Science has declared
that no energy is ever lost
but simply changes form.
We live, we die, we become part of the soil
and that in turn feeds
and becomes a part of the on-going
cosmic cycle of energy –
whether confined to planet earth
or released into space.

But is that all there is?
Are those our only choices?
Heaven, Reincarnation, Nirvana, Thermodynamics?

I suspect that all of us, to some degree,
have that pervasive human desire
to know what is next.

For some people that desire
is an underground river
coursing through their upper consciousness
with nerve-endings of anxiety.

For others, the desire to know
holds the key to peace of mind.

Some people cannot accept
their powerlessness before death
without the certainty
of knowing what is next.
Those people cannot, will not,
comprehend the value of any religion
that is unable to satisfy all questions of eternity.

But there are also people
who find the focus on life after death
and theories of heaven and hell,
a loud distraction from the ethical action
upon which they believe Christianity is built.
To some of those people,
all our talk about Original Sin,
Salvation,
Redemption,
Heaven and Hell,
the Age to Come and Life Everlasting,
keeps us from the real business of the religion
and makes people vulnerable to the
Elmer Gantrys of this world.

But as is often the case,
there is a third way, a middle way, and
quite simply:
Trust that the creator loves us.

When we trust – deeply and profoundly –
that someone truly loves us,
then we make ourselves vulnerable to them.

When we trust
that someone truly loves us,
we know – not by any scientific measurement,
but in our gut – that our welfare matters to them.

When we trust
that someone truly loves us,
we put ourselves in their hands
in ways we do not even calculate beforehand.
We do that, knowing
they may not be able to protect us
from all dangers, or even
keep from hurting us sometimes themselves.
But we trust their love
and we bank on it
and we live by it,
and we know
no matter what happens,
we can live into it
because they love us.

That kind of love is as powerful as fire.

So, if we trust in the love of God,
if we trust that God loves more completely
than we have ever been loved before,
then no matter what happens,
it will be okay.

You see, if we can find for ourselves
that kind of trust
in the love of God,
then we will no longer need to speculate
about what happens when we die
because we are loved…
because we are loved by God
and whatever else happens,
it is okay.

Obviously, we do not
get to know ahead of time anyway.

All religious theories are fantasy at best.
When our trust is in fantasy
we are most vulnerable to the Elmer Gantrys.

But the love of God,
if we have ever felt ourselves touched by,
even slightly,
is enough to hold onto.

In fact, if we can only extrapolate
the love of God
from the most profound human love
we have ever experienced,
that too is enough to hold onto.

And that, by the way,
is what the Biblical Hebrew word for faith means:
“to hold onto.”
Literally, faith means, to hold onto.

Yeah, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I hold onto
the love of God.

Trust.
In the end, that’s all we’ve got…
and it turns out to be enough.

Proper 25A 2017: A Non-random Act of Kindness – Lower the Toilet Seat

October 29, 2017 by Cam Miller

Link to Matthew:https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:34-46

The Liturgical Poem for This Week:

From “The Forms of Knowledge”
by Kenneth Patchen

Calling to each other across the graves,
the beautiful and strong whom
horror eats, whose bones are already
bleached in city deserts, whose stars
and moons bestride another world –
these, these few, these holy –
they are not drowned by the great white rains
of this winter; they are not trampled
by the horses of murder and death;
instead, they try to live above life,
as the birds above their flying,
as the dead beyond their dying.

Leviathan’s scales sparkle in the heavens
and the whole fist of the universe
turns on the enraptured spit of God.
Through the flames I can see the lowered faces
of creatures that watch us in amused love.
We live on only one side of the world.

Sermon

There are hints today –
whispers up the sleeve if you can hear them,
of saints and stewardship to come.
We’ll just let those things roll in slowly and
mosey in with the tide of November.

As today’s poem by Kenneth Patchen concludes,
“we live on only one side of the world.”

We imagine,
or think unconsciously if we don’t imagine,
that everything we see and do
is all there is.
We imagine,
but not very imaginatively,
that what we are aware of
and what we can smell and taste,
and what we can think about and know,
is all there is.

Meanwhile,
“…Leviathan’s scales sparkle in the heavens
and the whole fist of the universe
turns on the enraptured spit of God.
Through the flames I can see the lowered faces
of creatures that watch us in amused love…”

Still, the distance between knowing and unknowing,
between the lustrous and luscious
heaven on earth, and the earth of daily bread,
is love.

Even a small love, as poet Ann Sexton mused.
According to her, a thin vein
is all God needs to cover that distance,
a thin vein with even a small amount of love in it.

That is the distance
between those creatures who watch us
with loving eyes and kindly smiles,
their faces smashed against of the glass of heaven.
Only a thin veil away;
only a thin vein with a small love in it.

As a preacher in a techno-world,
where religion is irrelevant at best,
and in which preachers are pie-in-the-sky schemers,
it is difficult for me to stand up here
and preach about “love” without feelig self-conscious.

From Billy Sunday to Elmer Gantry
every Christian bible-thumping crook
has tried to cash in on love.
Yet underneath
the muck of self-interested misuse and abuse of love;
and underneath
the fluffy clouds of yellow smiley-faces that trivialize love;
and underneath
the blackwater of despair and cynicism from those who have
given up on love;
underneath all of that detritus,
there is powerful and practical wisdom
in those two little sentences from Jesus.

While on this side of the glass,
in the cottoncandy Valentine’s Day world
of Disney and Wal-mart,
love is a noun.
But in that teaching of Jesus,
rooted in the rich moist soil of Moses,
love is a verb.

While we write, sing, and speak of love as a feeling,
an emotion to be consumed,
Jesus speaks of love as an action that embodies
one’s total posture toward another person.
Love is concrete
and muscular –
and as such,
sums up Torah from Jesus’ point of view.

To get persoal, even homely,
my mom taught me about love as a verb.
It caused me no small amount of consternation at the time,
but through the wisdom of years
I have found myself grateful more times than I can count.

My mom’s first commandment was be considerate.
She was fanatical about it.
She convinced me, slowly and over time,
that being considerate is a core requirement of being loving.
I will offer one, very humble and earthy example
I often inject into pre-marital conversations
with those who are about to be married.
To the husband-to-be I say,
if you leave the toilet seat up and don’t flush,
the message is clear:
You are not thinking of the person who comes after you,
and if you are, you expect them to clean up after you.
That is not loving.

It is only a small pithy example,
but it points to love as a verb –
love embodied in actions more than words.
Even small actions, even a thin vein.

In this sense, love is sacramental:
and outward and visible sign
of an inward and invisible reality.

In the end,
and from the beginning,
all we ever have is the opportunity to love.

We begin life as mostly hairless,
drueling, and utterly dependent.
All we have throughout those months and years
of infancy and beyond, is the opportunity to love
and to receive love.

In the end, as we drift toward death,
we are once again mostly hairless,
drueling, and utterly dependent.
And still, all we have is the opportunity to love
and receive love.

In betweeen, love is the best of what we have:
the opportunity to love
and accept the love that is offered us.

It is easy to conceptualize:
Let us imagine that the stock market crashes –
it is not so hard to imagine, is it?
The banks close – all of them.
ATM machines flash, “System Shut Down.”
There is no money, other than what is in your pocket
or squirreled away under your mattress.
When the money is gone,
your job, if you have one, is not far behind.
Or your pension,
or your social security, or your IRA.

When our job, the work or profession
through which our identity was nurutred;
and our money, the means
by which we purchase safety and security
and everything else big and little;
are gone, what we have left
is the opportunity to love and be loved.
It is so simple and true
that it seems ridiculous to say out loud.

Let’s take it an uncomfortable step closer
to that glass veil of heaven.

Imagine being in bed
during the last days of life.
Our muscles shriven,
unable to walk or even void by ourselves.
It is not a very pleasant thought, I realize,
because such dependency is the worst of all indignities.
And yet, as life fades from our body
like the thickening gray of the evening sky,
here come our family and friends.
Gathered around the bed,
they smile and make small jokes from time to time,
an effort to clear away the pain.

They fight back tears
and their eyes grow more swollen by the hour.

What is left then, at the end of our life?
The very same thing that was present at the beginning
when our eyes first opened
or we learned to walk and fall down again:
the opportunity to love and be loved.

To love God
withour whole life, and to love ourselves
and one another,
with the service of our body,
is not just the greatest thing, it is the only thing.

To love God with our life,
is measured by what we do with our relationships,
and by what we do with our money,
and by what we do with our labor,
and by what we do with the talent we have been given.
All of it reflects our love of God…or not.

To love God with our lives
and to love ourselves and one another,
is to be guided by the knowledge that our choices
are never just about us.

It should give us pause, as a church and religion,
that when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment,
he did not answer:
To believe in God,
or believe in the Trinity,
or believe Jesus was the son of God,
or believe in any doctrine or creed.

Rather, Jesus said to love God
with our whole being, that is,
body, mind, and spirit.

We are to love our neighbor,
not for what he or she can do for us,
but as ourselves –
as if our neighbor is us.

Jesus said loving God is physical,
and that God loving us is mystical.

I am not saying anything new here.
We all know,
deep in the pit of our stomach,
that this religion of ours is about action –
about doing love, not believing in love;
about doing love, not defining love;
about doing love, not feeling love.

And right here, on this doorstep,
is where I am going to leave the baby today.

If you were to ask me
why I am a Christian, instead of one of the other
religions I studied, explored, and found compelling,
it would come down to this:
We are incarnational.

We know,
and we experience,
and we act out – with ritual and in our lives –
the improbable love of God
that requires only a thin vein,
and a small love
to bridge the distance
or lift the veil between us.

In the world of religious ideas,
the notion that God is embodied –
is present in human flesh,
probably seems nutty and ridiculous.
And I am not talking about Jesus,
I am talking about God embodied
in your flesh
and mine.

That our flesh and blood is good and wonderful,
precisely because we embody God,
is a unique idea.

That the earth and stars and oceans
are filled with gooness
rather than the source of suffering,
is a strange idea to millions of other people.

That food and sex and emotional intimacy,
and the sensual beauty of art and music
are meant for our joy –
and not simply as a lesser reflection
of the joys of heaven,
would seem a peculiar idea to millions of other people.

But that is what we claim.

God is incarnate in human life, we say,
and not our life only,
but animate and inanimate substance,
seen and unseen,
throughout the entire Cosmos –
all of it infused with God.

We claim that and more
when we embrace the love of God with our whole selves,
including our woeful, imperfect
yet fantastic bodies.
We claim that and more
when we embrace the possibility and desireabilty
of loving our neighbor as if loving ourselves.

God’s love
and our love of God
are incarnational: in the body,
our body.

The Creation is an act of God’s love.
The presence of God among us,
even here and even now,
is an act of God’s love.

Likewise, how we spend and share our money;
and how we use and share our resources;
and how we live out our relationships;
and how we act toward others, even those we do not know;
and how we care for others, even those we do not see; and, how we care for the earth, even the air we do not breathe;
all of that is the measure of how we love…or not.

You see, our religion is mystical at its core.
But it is both mystical AND phsyical.
To love God with our whole self
is a mystical experience.
To pop open and suddenly know
that we are less than a sub-atomic particle of God,
and still feel loved sweetly and serenely by that same God,
is a mystical experience.

It can happen when we stand in the presence
of the awesome natural wonders around us,
and it can happen all of a sudden in the heart of worship,
and it can happen when least expected
in the darkness of despair,
or in the silence of prayer,
or at any time or place.

When suddenly we know,

know it in our bones
or in the soft tissue holding our heart,
that God loves us,
it is a mystical experience.
It need not be big and flashy.
Even a small love coursing through a thin vein
is enough to deliver such a mystical moment.

And that is the astounding physicality of our religion:
that the mystical presence of God,
everything bugeoning on the other side of that veil
between us and God,
is made known in our bodies.

And we embody it, make it known,
with our bodies
when we commit small acts of love.

It is astounding; it is
fantastical; it is an
amazing and a speechless
wonder.

5 Easter 2019: Trust

Proper 25A 2017: A Non-random Act of Kindness – Lower the Toilet Seat

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