Love

2 Pentecost: True Story

June 19, 2022 by Cam Miller

We just heard my favorite Gospel story.
To my way of thinking about it
it is the most wonderful of many, many
wonderful stories.
So I am not going to preach today,
I am just going to unwrap a few things
you may not have noticed in the story.
In other words,
the story preaches itself.

In those days everything had spirits
and demons
inhabiting them: tables, trees, stones and people.
Stub your toe on a rock?
It’s the demon of the rock
that just struck you.
Schizophrenia,
psychosis,
dementia,
epilepsy…all 21^st century names
for 1^st Century demons.

By the way,
I know the poem doesn’t exactly match
the story — it goes with Jesus
stilling the storm.
But think of the wild man
in the cemetery
as a storm — as a killer storm —
and the Mary Oliver poem
works beautifully

Now, we do not know
what hour of the day
Jesus and his crew arrived
on the shore of the Gerasenes.

For dramatic effect
I like to imagine it was dusk.

No 1^st Century Judean or Galilean
in their right mind
would willingly go to Pigsville
if they didn’t have to.
You hired someone to go there for you if you could.
The country of the Gerasenes was pig country –
where Gentiles like us lived.
You know, Goi or pig-eaters.

To put it mildly, such people
were spiritually filthy.
No one with an ounce of spiritual wisdom
went to Gentile country
where they would become defiled
simply by association with pig-eaters.

That makes me think
that Jesus and crew got becalmed
out on the lake
and finally ended up
drifting to the wrong side.
Maybe it was late and they were tired,
so they figured on sleeping on the beach
until dawn and then shove off.
But that’s not how it came down.

Immediately,
as soon as they took that first step
onto the beach
they were met by the demoniac.

Here is one of the first little details
I just love about this story.
In the translation we’re using today,
Luke calls him, “the madman from town.”
Translations that stick closer to the original
say “a man from the CITY who had demons.”

Think of the severe social and political rupture
we have now between urban and rural America.
Jesus and his disciples were mostly
country peasants.
The demoniac was a urbanite
who had fled into the wilds.
It is worth noting
that Jesus was popular in the countryside
but found himself crucified in the city.
This story may be a fore-shadowing.

The demoniac was also naked.
Public nudity was not allowed in Judaism.
And living among the dead was a defilement as well.
Luke says he’d been naked for a long time,
by which he might have meant
the wildman didn’t have any tan lines.

So a big, naked, hairy guy
met them on the beach
probably smelling to high heaven,
and immediately begins shouting at the top of his lungs

Another cool detail.
Spiderman, Superman, or Batman
would have beat up or killed the guy
because that is what our superheroes do.
Our Gospel story guy…heals the enemy.

Compared to Marvel Comics
or James Bond,
Jesus is kind of boring.

Confronted by this wild,
screaming mass of ferocious energy
Jesus does something truly astounding.
It is something that even you and I could do,
but usually don’t have the presence of mind to do it.

In response to this loud, menacing figure
Jesus simply asks for his name.
But it is not just practicing good manners
on Jesus’ part.
In that culture,
to know the name of someone
or something
was to know its essence —
it was to know its power.

Whether a god, spirit, demon,
person, place, or thing,
its name gave it meaning
and the meaning described its power.

If you wanted to utilize the power
of that god, spirit, person, or place
you had to know its name.

When Moses meets God for the first time
and God tells Moses to go back to Egypt
and free the slaves –
an adventure that would likely get him killed –
Moses insists on knowing God’s name.
“What kind of God are you,” he asks,
“because I know what kind of god Pharaoh is
and what kind of other gods he has backing him up.
And if your just a little old fertility god or something,
I am not going.”

In the Gospel of Mark,
when Jesus meets God for the first time,
which is at the Jordan River
with John the Baptist looking on,
God names Jesus, “the Beloved.”

Joshua was a very popular name
and meant, “YHWH saves.”
But through Mark’s story,
Jesus is the Joshua who is God’s “Beloved.”
That’s a big name.

Even for us, in our 21^st century sophistication,
when we can name something that is bothering us,
we suddenly have a new grasp on it.
When we finally have a firm diagnosis,
or arrive at an “Ah Ha!”
that fills in a nagging blank,
there is an almost immediate sense
that we can do something about it.

Naming the problem is the first step in solving it.
Naming the enemy is the first step
in reconciling with them.
Naming the illness is the first step in treating it.
To know the name
is to know the power,
and in the end, this story is really about power.
In the end, of life that is,
the question for all of us is,
“How did we use our power?”

So back to the story.
Jesus asks the demoniac his name
and here Luke gets in a little dig.
“My name is Legion.” he says.
Our weird translation says, “mob.”
Legion is the name of the oppressor.

If you are a 1^st Century Jew
living at the margins of the Roman Empire
and hating them with every fiber in your body,
Legion is the name that personifies your hatred.
A name with the essence of hatred
is indeed a powerful name.

A Roman legion was 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers
which was more than enough
to subdue a rural backwater like Galilee
where Jesus was from.
6,000 Roman soldiers
could crucify, rape, and pillage a lot of peasants.

6,000 Roman soldiers could tax
and bankrupt
and dispossess an awful lot of people.
So to call the Gentile demon Legion
was both a description
of the demoniac’s power
and a commentary
on the Roman Empire.

Trigger warning for Animal Rights people,
a whole bunch of pigs die.
Jesus doesn’t actually send the demons
into the swine herd,
he just insists that they leave the naked man.
So in a reverse of COVID or the Swine Flu,
the legion jumps out of the human genome
and into the swine.

The pigs here are obviously a metaphor
for everything that is wrong with Gentiles.
But the fact that Jesus is engaged in healing a Gentile
was incredibly radical.
The fact that he has anything to do
with people like us
was also incredibly radical.

To truly pick up on this story
we have to think Bernie vs MAGA,
Iranians vs Saudi Arabians,
Pakistanis vs Indians,
Palestinians vs Israelis.

The implication of this story for 1^st century
Judeans and Galileans,
was that all borders can be crossed
and no boundaries will be kept
and no limits will be acknowledged
to the love of God
around the table of community.

You and I can intellectually
assent to this idea
but if we truly lived it out,
if we truly believed it,
we would not live
in segregated neighborhoods
and lead lives or hold friendships
so thoroughly segregated by
class,
ethnicity,
non-genderfluid,
race,
age,
and sexuality.
If we really bought into this ideal
of diversity and inclusion
that is so often touted in the least diverse settings,
then building congregations and institutions
with deep and meaningful diversity
would not be so difficult.
Rather, it would be the natural thing to do.
So if we are really honest
this story has as much bite now
as it did for those who first heard it.

Well there are two more little nuggets
tucked into the end of this story
that are my two favorites.

The Garesenes are scared to death of Jesus
and they ask him to leave their country.
It doesn’t say why Jesus scares them so,
but I think it was the fear
of Jesus’ impact on the economy.
If Jesus would so easily
allow the devastation of private capital
for the sake of one naked, flailing demoniac,
then there is no telling
where Jesus’ influence would lead.

Clearly his values were inverted
if he thought that the cost-benefit ratio
of the demoniac to a valuable herd of pigs
was acceptable.
They didn’t need an influence like him around, especially one with the kind of power
that they couldn’t control.
The demoniac was bad enough,
but clearly Jesus
was more powerful than the demons.

Finally, and to tell you the truth,
my favorite part of the story,
is the surprising ending.
It ends just like it began,
on the beach
with Jesus and his pals
getting into their boats,
and the now-healed demoniac
right there in their faces.

By the end of the story,
the healed-demoniac has
showered, shaved and dressed,
so he is more pleasant to be around.
But still, when he asks to go with Jesus,
Jesus says, “no.”

The poor guy begs – begs it says – to go with them.
But Jesus says “no.”
”No, you can’t come with me.
Please?
No, you cannot get into the boat and go with me.
Please?
No, you cannot follow me.”

What I love so much about this ending
is how subversive it is to evangelical
and even mainline Christian thinking.
No, not everyone has to follow Jesus.
No, not everyone gets to follow Jesus.
Jesus tells the the sad and downcast man
to stay at home
and tell the people he lives with,
the ones he works and plays with,
about how good God has been to him.

In other words,
Jesus sends him to be
where he has the most power –
with the people he knows.

I told you this was about power.

Power is the ability to influence,
and the ability to influence change.
MAGA enthusiasts don’t have much ability
to change the hearts and minds of people
who are absolutely hostile to them,
but they do have enormous power and influence
to change the hearts and minds of those
who are true believers with them.
And vis versa.

Most of us have far more power
to influence prejudice
among our peers
than we do influencing strangers.
So the punchline of this story
is go where your power is.
Use your power
to influence change
among the people who you know best
because that is where you are most powerful.

Finally, and really finally,
just one more little detail to note.
Jesus tells the guy to go back to his people
and tell them how good God has been to him.
What does he do?
He goes back, Luke says, and tells them about Jesus.

I think the truly amazing nature of the Gospel
is that it is not about Jesus –
we have corrupted it to be about Jesus
but that is not what it is about.
Jesus was about God
and changing the world
through the love of God.
Jesus was always pointing to God
and not himself.
But the succeeding generations
made it all about Jesus.

The clear message of this story
is that we do not have to be followers of Jesus
to be agents of God’s love.

What a great story — so unexpected.
It’s all about using our power
to change the world
as agents of God’s love.

7 Epiphany: You are the data point!

February 20, 2022 by Cam Miller

*Countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_in_2020*

THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP VIDEO FOLLOWS

I am going to be brutally honest with you.
This sermon I am about to share
feels to me
like yelling into a stiff wind
standing over the Grand Canyon.

It is not that I think you do not care
or that you will be belligerent,
it is more that I know myself
and I know how frequently I turn my back
on what I know
even though I know it to be true.

It is like Marie Howe’s poem about the earnest intention to pray
and be a good pray-er:
”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

We know what we need to know
and we have the capacity we need to have
in order to act.
And yet
and yet
an yet we know
we have not and
we do not and
we will not.

Arrh!

It is like Climate Change.
We know what we are doing
and that we should change
but we are not
and likely will not
…in time.

But, here I go
because, well because,
it is my job.
I also happen to believe it is true
even if I turn my back on it regularly.

This passage from Luke
leads us to the very heart of the Christian dilemma
because it tells us what we know
even though we know
we won’t do it.

Will we really spend the currency of our lives
in the Economy of God
when what we know and trust
is the Economy of Self-Preservation?

The Economy of God
and the Economy of Self-Preservation.

There is our dilemma.
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate,
dispossessed Holy Man –
insists that we reverse
our long nurtured impulse toward Natural Selection.

This is a basic conflict of interest
between how we choose to live life
and how Jesus urged us to live life.

Do to others
what you want them to do to you.
In other words, love them
by doing good toward them — especially the ones
who hate you.

Loving them
is not just refraining
from smacking them
or spreading gossip about them.
No, restraint is not the loving Jesus is talking about.
Jesus says to be pro-active — do good,
do good to them. Do something you wish
someone would do for you.
That kind of loving.

Oh, and by the way lend your money and stuff
without expecting anything in return.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Here is some more of the bitcoin
we are supposed to spend in the Economy of God.
God is kind
to both the ungrateful and the wicked,
so be merciful, just like God is merciful.
How?
Do not judge, and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Just to be really clear about Jesus
and the Economy of God,
he concludes with this:
The measure you give will be the measure you get back.
Wow.

I am sure I don’t have to tell you
that the Economy of God is a metaphor
for the Kingdom of God
that Jesus says we are to create on earth
as it is in heaven.
And that means, of course, its counter-part
is the Economy of Self-Preservation
which is the economic culture of consumerism
in which we live.

So the heart of Jesus’ wisdom
is in blaring dissonance
with what we believe is our self-interest.

Unlike our economy,
the benefits of spending our lives as currency
in the Economy of God
is not measurable in with a cost-benefit formula.

We measure benefit and reward
by productivity,
profit-margins,
and the bottom line.
God’s economy trades on risk,
generosity,
and abundance.

Now here is where I am going out on a limb.
While you and I
rarely exchange the currency of our lives
as if in the Economy of God,
I believe
that you and I know,
deep down in our bones,
that it is both better than ours
and doable.

Here is what I mean.

We know,
because we have experienced it, that love creates love.
We know it.
We have done it.
We have witnessed it and been healed by it.

The fact that love creates love
means there is no scarcity of love, only abundance.
Even more than that,
loving our enemy frees us
from the debilitating burden of hatred and resentment.
We know it
because we have experienced it.
It is a fact
and we are the data.

So the willful choice to love someone
who we could more easily hate
actually heals our woundedness
and generates greater capacity to love.
That is not pie-in-the-sky,
some nice sentiment.

It is a fact. Love creates more love
and loving an enemy liberates us.

Now in our economy of self-interest
a self-generating commodity
that had an ever-increasing capacity
to produce more —
a self-generating resource in other words —
would be more valuable than gold or bitcoin.

Then there is the fact
that forgiveness attracts forgiveness,
in the same way that cells attract other cells
in the process of forming new life.
Forgiving someone else
generates within the forgiver
a greater capacity to forgive him or herself.
So without any further self-improvement
the simple act of forgiving someone
improves how we feel about ourselves.
That is an amazing characteristic
and valuable beyond scale.
Like love, forgiveness is absolutely synergistic:
the willful choice to forgive someone
who it would seem more easy to resent,
conditions the spiritual muscles we need
to more deeply accept ourselves.

But it is kind of funny to think about this treasure
in our economy.
Such radical self-acceptance
would sound the death knell of whole industries
and marketing programs that prey upon and promote
self-doubt and self-hatred.

Again, looking down the denominations
of currency in the Economy of God,
we come upon mercy.
Jesus says mercy spawns mercy also.
The reason for this is that mercy melts away
our drive to be right
and it does so with the warmth of kindness.

By the willful choice to be merciful
when we could more easily demand fairness
or distributive justice,
we are freed to enjoy the sensation of kindness.

If we do not have to figure out
how the good guys and bad guys
are all going to get what’s coming to them,
then we get liberated from a ton of yucky gunk
that builds up on our heart and soul.

Lastly on our list, is generosity.

We know all about generosity
because we choose it sometimes.
We know that generosity ignites generosity
just like love creates more love
and forgiveness begets self-acceptance.

The risk to stop clutching what we own
empowers the dissolution of anxiety.

The willful choice to let go or give away
when we could more easily clutch and hoard,
actually increased our generosity
as it reduces our anxiety. Wow!

You have been there,
and you have experienced this, I know you have.
The impulse toward generosity — when we embrace it —
produces an almost miraculous affect
of igniting a sense of abundance
where only moments before there was scarcity.

In our economy, if unleashed,
the power of generosity would transform
the barren divide
between the have’s and have not’s
and turn it into a field of dreams.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

You see the dilemma as well as I do:
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate, dispossessed Holy Man –
talks as if you and I can
reverse the long nurtured impulse of Natural Selection.

We know that what he says is true
because small moments in our own experience
serve as the data points.

Jesus’ list of tough love,
is tough because it is to be aimed at our enemy
and those we hate
as well as those we love.
Do good.
Do not judge.
Do not condemn.
Forgive.
If we do, it will generate more riches for us.

That is a fact
and we are the data
that proves it
in those few times and occasions
when we have chosen it.

So why do I feel like
I am shouting into the wind
over the Grand Canyon?

”Help us(God). Even as we contemplate these words
we are reaching for reasons they are not true,
rationalizing our other choices
and along with the preacher,
finding ways to walk away before
Cam finishes the sentence.”

The crazy thing of course,
is that what Jesus told us is in fact true,
are in fact, facts
about the nature of a life we could live
and a kingdom we could create.

We know every one of these
crazy ideas is true,
is a fact,
because we have done them before
at least once.

23 Pentecost B: Swallowing it Whole

October 31, 2021 by Cam Miller

“Ahava” – Hebrew version of Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture

In ancient Israel, and reportedly still today,
careful distinctions were made between people
who belonged and did not belong,
including between a “foreigner” and “sojourner.”
Both were aliens, most likely immigrants such as
Canaanites and Moabites.
But a sojourner referred
to someone from the outside
who settled down and made their home
among the Israelites.
Even though they were still not considered
an Israelite, sojourners
were treated as what we might call
“Green Card” holders or “DACA” kids.
“Foreigners” on the other hand,
were met with less graciousness.

It is amazing that Ruth became a book of the Bibl
because it is about a foreigner,
one held up as an icon of faithfulness, and who
became the great-grandmother of King David.
It is a story from a time after the Exodus
and before the monarchy,
but actually written centuries later.
It comes to us from after the Exile
and seems to have been written to argue with
the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
that opposed marriage to foreigners.

It is a great and fascinating story for sure,
with a woman as the hero — also uncharacteristic —
but it does nothing to hide how marginalized
and vulnerable
women were within a misogynistic
social caste system.
Nor does it advocate for something different.

The whole book
is like a page and a half or something,
so I suggest you go home and read it
and then tell people you just read
a whole book of the bible today.

Let’s turn the page to Mark and Mary —
Mary Oliver, that is.

Like you, I have many neighbors.
Some of them are people with whom
I share core political and economic values.

Some of them are people with whom
I share…some important values.

Some of them, I suspect, are people with whom
I hold little in common except cordialness
and shared geography.
Jesus wants me to love each of them.

Heck, I want to love each one of them…theoretically.
Actually, to the extent that I know them,
I do love them, at least intellectually.

But Jesus wants me to love each of them.

I want to begin with Mary Oliver
talking about Jesus and love:
“Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.”

This so-called “Great Commandment”
is one we like to argue and quibble about.
We like to smooth the corners
and see if we can make it fit reality —
to change its roundness
to fit into our squareness.
Unlike so much of Jesus —
which is often way too radical for us —
we can almost make it fit…almost.
But let’s not.

Let’s try treating this like Communion.
Let’s try not ‘thinking’ about
but experiencing it.
Let’s try swallowing it whole
and imagining how life would be different
were we able to do it —
or as Mary Oliver wrote,

“If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.”

Let’s receive the Great Commandment like the bread
and allow it to dissolve on our tongue
and not think about
whether it is the Body of Christ
or not.
Let’s just do it,
swallow it whole
and know we are better for it.

Okay, I know. I can’t do it either.

There is an interesting difference
between Matthew, Mark, and Luke
in how they frame this teaching.
In each of them,
it is generally surrounded by conflict —
the Pharisees and temple clergy
arguing with Jesus
or trying to trap him
into saying something that will get him arrested.
The lawyers nitpick
and push and prod.
The clergy sniff around
and act passive-aggressively.
The people wait to see what will happen.

But in Mark, with this particular teaching,
a scribe seems to ask about it sincerely,
and at the end,
is so authentic and open to it,
Jesus praises him.
”Yeah, you get it,” Jesus says with a smile.
”You are very close.”

But I am guessing,
you and I are not so close.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth
or thoughts in your brain,
but I think we get tripped up
on three things here.
We read them and hedge our bets
with a “Yes…But.”

First, we want “neighbor” defined
a little more narrowly.

Secondly, and ironically,
we want to keep the focus on loving our neighbor
rather than loving ourselves, because…
well, we don’t really want to go into that, because…
well, because our difficulty with loving ourselves
is personal.

And third, love God
with ALL our heart,
with ALL our soul,
with ALL our mind?
That seems a little extreme —
how will we love God like that and make money,
or more importantly, spend money?

I guess when we break it down like that
into its constituent parts,
we might have trouble with the whole thing.
We better go back to swallowing it whole
with mindless acceptance.

I know that there are people
you do not love.

I know that, because
I believe you and I are not too different
and for sure, there are
people I do not love.
There are some people
who do things
and espouse things
and contribute to things
I find repugnant.
I would have to cheat on the test
in order to say I love them.

Maybe you are different than me,
but I am guessing not many of you are.

What do we do with this hard core
of resistance to Jesus
that hides inside of us?

Here is what: we keep swallowing his teachings —
crazy and absurd as they are —
keep swallowing them whole
right along with the Communion bread.

Look, let’s be real.
What do we have inside
if our religion is political ideology?
What do we have inside
if our religion is patriotism and nationalism?
What do we have inside
if our religion is racial and ethnic identity?
What do we have inside
if our religion is fidelity to an economic system?

What do we have inside
if our religion is the Self?
In every one of those religions,
love has boundaries;
love is transactional;
love is a zero-sum game.

Jesus is talking about love —
real love, as in loving God.

Jesus doesn’t prescribe niceness.
Jesus does not tell us we have to like people
who act like jerks.
Jesus does not tell us we have to allow ourselves
to be victimized by people who do not love us.

Jesus does tell us
we need to be about loving our neighbor
as ourselves —
and by the way, for all practical purposes,
that is also how we love God with our whole heart.

Loving our neighbor
means resisting the urge to hate.
Loving ourselves
means extending ourselves mercy
when we feel ashamed.
Loving our neighbor
means sharing what we have in abundance
with those who are in need, and no matter how they got in that need.
Loving ourselves
means accepting what we wish was different
with a heart of generosity.
Loving our neighbor
means accepting our differences
and celebrating them where we can.

Because love is a verb
what Jesus is poking us to do
is act in particular kinds of ways
that may or may not be reflective of how we feel.

We may feel repulsed and angry and offended
by someone’s political viewpoint,
but we can act in such a way
that respects their dignity
and embraces their humanity.

When we swallow Jesus whole — in the bread
or in his teachings — then we have him inside
agitating us
guiding us
and poking us
to resist our resistance
and act in love.
When we have Jesus’ Great Commandment
as our religion inside,
our neighbors might not be better
but we will be.

It is about how we act not how we feel;
it’s about how we treat ourselves and one another
not what we believe.

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.

2 Pentecost: True Story

7 Epiphany: You are the data point!

THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP VIDEO FOLLOWS

23 Pentecost B: Swallowing it Whole

5 Easter 2019: Trust

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

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