Sermon preached Sunday June 5, 2011
Some of you may have seen the rather bizarre news story yesterday of the motorcycle police officer who was seriously injured while riding home from the funeral of a motorcycle officer who was killed while riding home from the funeral of another motorcycle officer who died in a tragic accident.
It’s almost as if we can’t escape death.
Last Thursday a friend of mine, not a member of this parish, was with his wife in his backyard, where they were in the process of burying their cat when his wife seemed to slip, and she fell and rolled down this little hill. My friend rushed to her and she was laughing, apparently uninjured, until they realized that she couldn’t get up, and then they realized she was having a stroke. Yesterday I reached him at the ICU where his wife is recovering. He said, with a kind of wonder, “It happened just like that,” and he snapped his finger. “It can happen to any of us, just like that.”
This, of course, is the most ancient of insights – this kind-of funny, quite horrible kind of surprise when we realize how close death can be.
3,000 years ago, writing on stone tablets, a man named Shin-eqi-unninni wrote down what was for him one of the oldest known works of literature, written 1,000 years before his time, known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many of you, no doubt, are familiar with the epic, which features the demi-god king of Uruk, Gilgamesh. He was the great hero of the ancient world, kind of the Hercules of his time; he had a sidekick named Enkidu and together they had many heroic adventures until one day Gilgamesh witnessed Enkidu’s death. Then, suddenly, there it was – the great surprise; just like that: the realization of the close proximity of death.
This sends Gilgamesh into a panic around his own mortality: does this mean I’m going to die, too? And so he goes off on an epic journey to the eternal city to find the secret to eternal life; and after many heroic deeds and many set-backs, he finds it! He finds a plant, living at the bottom of the sea, which when eaten bestows eternal life. But instead of eating the plant, he decides to take it home and test it on an old person to see if it works. But on his way home, while he is sleeping, the crafty serpent sneaks into his campsite and eats the plant! Gilgamesh wakes up to the realization that his entire heroic quest for eternal life has led to nothing; which gives birth to one of the most poignant and universal speeches in all of literature:
O woe! What do I do now, where do I go now?
Death has devoured my body,
Death dwells in my body,
Wherever I go, wherever I look, there stands Death!
His words are so similar to the traditional declaration from our prayer book, as we commit our bodies to the earth: “In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succor….”
And so it is throughout the history of mankind: the heroic quest for the secret to eternal life, inspired by this magnificent surprise of death.
The phrase “eternal life” runs all through John’s gospel, of course; for the community that formed around John’s gospel, the secret to eternal life was not found in a plant growing in the bottom of the sea but rather in the mysterious knowledge of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
This is the message of this long, rather esoteric and difficult speech that Jesus makes to his disciples in John’s gospel. It’s the night in which he was betrayed; Judas has just been revealed as the agent of Christ’s death, and then Jesus launches into what scholars call his “farewell address” – which goes on for five chapters. Jesus knows that his time is short; and so he tries to pack all of his last words in so that the disciples are not left, as he says, as orphans, but have the necessary teaching to carry on the work of the gospel.
Those of us who have tried to read through this farewell speech would, I think, all agree that just getting through it is something of a heroic journey in itself. Of course, it’s not meant to be easy – this is true for all esoteric knowledge: it’s supposed to be difficult. Here we have the answer to the greatest and most ancient question ever asked: how do I find eternal life? Here is the answer for Gilgamesh; here is the answer for us.
“This is eternal life,” Jesus says, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
In this context, knowing Jesus, and believing in Jesus, and following Jesus are all one and the same thing. They all lead to a moment of recognition in which the glory of God is revealed. And at the heart of that moment of recognition is this secret knowledge found in verse five: that the glory of God revealed in Jesus is the glory that Jesus had with God before the world existed.
Raymond Brown, the great scholar of John’s gospel, tells us that this is the secret knowledge, knowledge that draws us through the glory of Christ on the cross into relationship with the most primeval of all revelations: which is the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush: I AM.
When we declare Jesus Christ as God, the 2nd person of the Trinity, that is what we are proclaiming: that through knowledge of Jesus we are drawn to the fire of that burning bush, where the source of all life and the source of all being is revealed.
We don’t need a mythical Gilgamesh to cross the river of death in order to get to the eternal city so that he can receive the secret instruction and dive to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve the magic plant that will make him immortal, only to fail in the end. What we have in Jesus is what we need: Jesus, in his glory, raised up on the cross, humbling himself unto death out of love for us; through this sacred knowledge we find eternal life.
Death, to Jesus, was just as present as it is to us; at the Garden of Gethsemene, when he saw death approach, he was as surprised as the rest of us. But he didn’t run from it; and he didn’t try to defeat it like the mythic warriors of the ancient of days. Instead, he followed where love led; he trusted love over death; and in the process revealed the secret to eternal life.
Last September, I was sitting in a hospital room with my brother Chris. My whole family was there, and for days we were telling stories, remembering the days of our youth with him, the golden boy of the family. And so we were switching back and forth between past tense and present tense: telling stories in the past tense, and asking questions in the present tense: how are you feeling; where does it hurt; what do you want. And the day came when it was time to fly back to California; and I realized that in a very few days, we would no longer be talking about him in the present tense; very soon, we would only be talking about him in the past tense.
That was my little moment of surprise about death.
I was reminded of that the other day, as I was meditating on the Ascension, which we celebrated last Thursday and which is described in our reading from Acts. I realized that when we stand together to affirm the mysteries of our faith in the Nicene Creed, we are talking about Jesus in the past tense: He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary; he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, etc… until we get to the Ascension, when a stunning shift in tense occurs: “he ascended into heaven” (past tense) “and is seated at the right hand of the Father” (present tense) and “he will come again in glory” (future tense).
And then it hit me: when Jesus rose up into the sky, he broke the bounds of the past tense; by defeating death and ascending to the Father, Jesus eternally became present tense. Now and forever more, it’s Jesus IS, not Jesus was; just as the name of God revealed to Moses in the burning bush is I AM – present tense.
And just as my brother, now fully alive in Christ, is, forever more; present tense. I was wrong about that past tense thing; in God we are all brought into glory in the great, ever revealing, ever burning, never consuming presence of God, who lives beyond time in the eternal now.
That is where I will see him again (future tense); in the meantime I believe on Jesus, and give thanks for the love that he reveals, which is the path that I follow as long as I am present to his presence - present tense.
AMEN.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Divided No More
Happy Easter!
This is a happy occasion, and I pray this day of resurrection finds you feeling renewed, restored, brimming with new life, and made whole.
It’s been a long rainy Lent –the season has put us through our paces.
Ash Wednesday seems like a very long time ago now. Some of you might remember Ash Wednesday, when we were here imposing ashes on our foreheads. I gave a sermon in which I encouraged you to get ambitious about your Lenten discipline. I said, try giving up something that’s so important to you that you are likely to fail at giving it up. Because Lent, really, is all about failure.
A few years ago I visited a relative of mine who had been diagnosed with emphysema. She said the doctors were really pressuring her to quit smoking. But she said, the thing is, she just loved smoking so much. Sure, she’d tried quitting many times; but you know, that first cigarette in the morning with her coffee just tasted so good; and once she’s had her first one, well, that was it, she’d be smoking through the day.
I asked her if she had tried the nicotine gum – yep, tried that, didn’t work; the patches? yep, tried ‘em; then I said, Well, have you tried praying about it?
And she looked kind of uncomfortable and said, “Nope, can’t say that I have.” I asked, “Why is that?” and she said, “Well, I guess ‘cuz it might just work!”
Last week someone asked me, Well, how is it that Jesus’ death on the cross redeems my suffering? How does that work, exactly?
I’ve been chewing on that question all week; and to answer it well would take a lot more time than we have this morning. But one thing I can say is, we know how it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work if you really don’t want it to work.
It turns out that if you want to change, it really helps if you’re actually willing to change.
God can’t do that for you.
And it turns out that God has a hard time answering prayers if you’re not actually praying.
I wonder: is there a prayer that, like my relative, you are afraid to pray – because you’re afraid it might actually work?
For a lot of us, I think, we have such a prayer. Maybe you’re not even sure what that prayer is – you just know it’s there, waiting for you to notice it. Maybe as soon as I asked that question, it sprang to mind for you. Maybe, right at this moment, you are telling yourself that actually this whole topic is not such a good one, let’s change the subject, forget it, move on. Maybe there’s something in you that wants to pretend this whole thing isn’t happening.
Well, may I suggest you take a moment and just pay attention to that?
Maybe that prayer is the scariest thing in the world to you. If that’s true, what I need to tell you is that God is like an artist who works in the medium of joy. If your prayer is of God, there is great joy – surprising joy, unimaginable joy, complete joy – waiting for you on the other side of that prayer. In fact, it’s that joy that is calling to you now, asking you to pay attention.
All of us live with a divided self. None of us lives in complete harmony with God. What makes us Christians is not whether or not we succeed at living out that prayer; what makes us Christians is that on a regular basis we pay attention to how God is stirring within us, calling us to new life; every Sunday, and hopefully every day, we come home to ourselves; we commit ourselves to this difficult practice of repentance.
This Lent I took my own advice – I tried giving up something that I love a little too much - and during the entire season of Lent I felt like that guy in the cartoon, with the little devil on one shoulder, tempting him into folly, and that little angel on the other.
Except the truth is that the little voice of the angel – that’s not some cute little cartoony version of me with a halo around my head. That voice is actually Christ within me; who occupies my entire frame; who forms the complete man; the man I was created to be; the One who is me as I am in God’s eyes. The truth is that if we actually give those two beings a chance to compete, there is no competition – God wins, every time.
Which is, of course, what we’re afraid of. Which is, of course, why we don’t pray.
And so it typically takes some kind of crisis to bring us to the point at which we are ready to pray that prayer. Because until we get to that point, we will resist, we will dissemble, we will avoid God, we will skip church, we will do everything we can to keep God at bay lest the Holy Spirit actually wiggle Her way through the chinks in our armor and give us the means to actually turn to God with our complete selves; the courage to live lives of wholeness, divided no more.
The ancient wisdom of the church is that that courage is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, if we’re too afraid to pray the prayer that we really need to pray, it really helps just to pray for the courage… to pray.
There’s a wonderful Greek word for all of this moment: metanoia. It has to do with this moment that my Greek dictionary calls “turning to God in pious sorrow.” For alcoholics and other addicts, it’s that moment when we have finally reached bottom; when we have given up trying to keep God at bay; when we are ready to admit that we have failed at the task of living our lives on our own terms; that we are helpless over our addiction, and then we turn to God for help.
But you don’t need to be an addict to know about this. In fact, this concept was invented by people who really had almost no idea what addiction even was.
But what they did know about was failure.
People like Peter. He thought he was strong enough and brave enough that nothing would get him to deny Jesus – nothing, except a girl, sitting around a campfire warming her hands, who innocently asks him, “Aren’t you also one of his disciples?”
We hear the cock crow; we see the blood drain from Peter’s face; his eyes go wide; it looks as though he is about to throw up; and he gets up quickly and runs away.
I imagine the others around the fire watching him run away, and the girl asking, “What’s with him?”
What’s with him is that he’s terrified of death. He’s in a panic for fear of pain and imprisonment and torture and death. Well, who wouldn’t be?
And during those three long days, while Jesus lay dead in the tomb, Peter is the most miserable of men. He is a coward; a failure; a completely humiliated disaster of a man. If he hadn’t been so afraid of death he probably would have killed himself along with Judas.
Peter has reached bottom. The absolute bottom.
And then, early on the morning of that third day, he wakes up; he opens his eyes to a quiet, cool morning; the dew on the ground is rising; for a moment, in his sleepy state, he has forgotten all that has happened, all the sadness and failure of his life is held at bay; and then he hears the women’s voices, their shouts of joy, he gets up and sees them running, a mad look on their faces: they have seen the Lord! He is risen! He is risen!
What does this mean? How can it be?
And then it’s all confusion; the women are pouring out their story to anyone who will listen; and now Peter is running, running to the empty tomb, and it seems as if he’s being carried by a spirit not his own, he’s running faster than he ever thought he could run; and now here is the tomb; here is his burial shroud, cast aside; and then: there He is.
Radiant. Whole.
It turns out that everything Peter thought was true - about God, about Jesus, about death, about failure – everything he thought was true turned out to be wrong. There is newness of life. There is forgiveness of sins – complete and total forgiveness even for him, in all his weakness and cowardice. In the light of that risen Christ, radiant, nothing matters but love. Nothing exists but love. Through this love all things come into being. In the sea of this love all of us are swimming. In this love death does not exist!
Peter comes to see, fully, what we can only glimpse on this day: that a life dedicated to love will live forever; and everything he was ever afraid of is nothing – nothing! – in the face of that all-powerful, ever joyful, unstoppable love.
And that's what gives us the courage to stand up and proclaim, Alleluia! Praise God! For He is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
AMEN.
This is a happy occasion, and I pray this day of resurrection finds you feeling renewed, restored, brimming with new life, and made whole.
It’s been a long rainy Lent –the season has put us through our paces.
Ash Wednesday seems like a very long time ago now. Some of you might remember Ash Wednesday, when we were here imposing ashes on our foreheads. I gave a sermon in which I encouraged you to get ambitious about your Lenten discipline. I said, try giving up something that’s so important to you that you are likely to fail at giving it up. Because Lent, really, is all about failure.
A few years ago I visited a relative of mine who had been diagnosed with emphysema. She said the doctors were really pressuring her to quit smoking. But she said, the thing is, she just loved smoking so much. Sure, she’d tried quitting many times; but you know, that first cigarette in the morning with her coffee just tasted so good; and once she’s had her first one, well, that was it, she’d be smoking through the day.
I asked her if she had tried the nicotine gum – yep, tried that, didn’t work; the patches? yep, tried ‘em; then I said, Well, have you tried praying about it?
And she looked kind of uncomfortable and said, “Nope, can’t say that I have.” I asked, “Why is that?” and she said, “Well, I guess ‘cuz it might just work!”
Last week someone asked me, Well, how is it that Jesus’ death on the cross redeems my suffering? How does that work, exactly?
I’ve been chewing on that question all week; and to answer it well would take a lot more time than we have this morning. But one thing I can say is, we know how it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work if you really don’t want it to work.
It turns out that if you want to change, it really helps if you’re actually willing to change.
God can’t do that for you.
And it turns out that God has a hard time answering prayers if you’re not actually praying.
I wonder: is there a prayer that, like my relative, you are afraid to pray – because you’re afraid it might actually work?
For a lot of us, I think, we have such a prayer. Maybe you’re not even sure what that prayer is – you just know it’s there, waiting for you to notice it. Maybe as soon as I asked that question, it sprang to mind for you. Maybe, right at this moment, you are telling yourself that actually this whole topic is not such a good one, let’s change the subject, forget it, move on. Maybe there’s something in you that wants to pretend this whole thing isn’t happening.
Well, may I suggest you take a moment and just pay attention to that?
Maybe that prayer is the scariest thing in the world to you. If that’s true, what I need to tell you is that God is like an artist who works in the medium of joy. If your prayer is of God, there is great joy – surprising joy, unimaginable joy, complete joy – waiting for you on the other side of that prayer. In fact, it’s that joy that is calling to you now, asking you to pay attention.
All of us live with a divided self. None of us lives in complete harmony with God. What makes us Christians is not whether or not we succeed at living out that prayer; what makes us Christians is that on a regular basis we pay attention to how God is stirring within us, calling us to new life; every Sunday, and hopefully every day, we come home to ourselves; we commit ourselves to this difficult practice of repentance.
This Lent I took my own advice – I tried giving up something that I love a little too much - and during the entire season of Lent I felt like that guy in the cartoon, with the little devil on one shoulder, tempting him into folly, and that little angel on the other.
Except the truth is that the little voice of the angel – that’s not some cute little cartoony version of me with a halo around my head. That voice is actually Christ within me; who occupies my entire frame; who forms the complete man; the man I was created to be; the One who is me as I am in God’s eyes. The truth is that if we actually give those two beings a chance to compete, there is no competition – God wins, every time.
Which is, of course, what we’re afraid of. Which is, of course, why we don’t pray.
And so it typically takes some kind of crisis to bring us to the point at which we are ready to pray that prayer. Because until we get to that point, we will resist, we will dissemble, we will avoid God, we will skip church, we will do everything we can to keep God at bay lest the Holy Spirit actually wiggle Her way through the chinks in our armor and give us the means to actually turn to God with our complete selves; the courage to live lives of wholeness, divided no more.
The ancient wisdom of the church is that that courage is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, if we’re too afraid to pray the prayer that we really need to pray, it really helps just to pray for the courage… to pray.
There’s a wonderful Greek word for all of this moment: metanoia. It has to do with this moment that my Greek dictionary calls “turning to God in pious sorrow.” For alcoholics and other addicts, it’s that moment when we have finally reached bottom; when we have given up trying to keep God at bay; when we are ready to admit that we have failed at the task of living our lives on our own terms; that we are helpless over our addiction, and then we turn to God for help.
But you don’t need to be an addict to know about this. In fact, this concept was invented by people who really had almost no idea what addiction even was.
But what they did know about was failure.
People like Peter. He thought he was strong enough and brave enough that nothing would get him to deny Jesus – nothing, except a girl, sitting around a campfire warming her hands, who innocently asks him, “Aren’t you also one of his disciples?”
We hear the cock crow; we see the blood drain from Peter’s face; his eyes go wide; it looks as though he is about to throw up; and he gets up quickly and runs away.
I imagine the others around the fire watching him run away, and the girl asking, “What’s with him?”
What’s with him is that he’s terrified of death. He’s in a panic for fear of pain and imprisonment and torture and death. Well, who wouldn’t be?
And during those three long days, while Jesus lay dead in the tomb, Peter is the most miserable of men. He is a coward; a failure; a completely humiliated disaster of a man. If he hadn’t been so afraid of death he probably would have killed himself along with Judas.
Peter has reached bottom. The absolute bottom.
And then, early on the morning of that third day, he wakes up; he opens his eyes to a quiet, cool morning; the dew on the ground is rising; for a moment, in his sleepy state, he has forgotten all that has happened, all the sadness and failure of his life is held at bay; and then he hears the women’s voices, their shouts of joy, he gets up and sees them running, a mad look on their faces: they have seen the Lord! He is risen! He is risen!
What does this mean? How can it be?
And then it’s all confusion; the women are pouring out their story to anyone who will listen; and now Peter is running, running to the empty tomb, and it seems as if he’s being carried by a spirit not his own, he’s running faster than he ever thought he could run; and now here is the tomb; here is his burial shroud, cast aside; and then: there He is.
Radiant. Whole.
It turns out that everything Peter thought was true - about God, about Jesus, about death, about failure – everything he thought was true turned out to be wrong. There is newness of life. There is forgiveness of sins – complete and total forgiveness even for him, in all his weakness and cowardice. In the light of that risen Christ, radiant, nothing matters but love. Nothing exists but love. Through this love all things come into being. In the sea of this love all of us are swimming. In this love death does not exist!
Peter comes to see, fully, what we can only glimpse on this day: that a life dedicated to love will live forever; and everything he was ever afraid of is nothing – nothing! – in the face of that all-powerful, ever joyful, unstoppable love.
And that's what gives us the courage to stand up and proclaim, Alleluia! Praise God! For He is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
AMEN.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Letters from Paul
At our Lenten Series on Wednesday April 6, Anna Eng led us through a study of Paul's first letter to Corinth, and then had us split up into three small groups with the assignment to write a letter to our church from Paul's perspective. Here's what our groups came up with:
Dear Church of the Incarnation,
I praise you for caring for one another when one is hurting or burdened, being open about decisions made, being open and welcoming, being a safe home, providing a beautiful space, having a strong desire to reach out to the needy in the community, and for being faithful in worship and prayer.
However, it has come to my attention that there is fear amongst some that if you serve the needs of people outside of the church that you might get embroiled in controversy, and a fear that this controversy will destroy the church. There is a fear of leaving the boundaries of the church, fear of the church becoming divided, and people are operating based on fear not faith. Also some fear that reaching out will make this an unsafe place to come to. People are resisting change because they are satisfied with the church as it is, and they expect outsiders to conform to the church's way of being. While being open, your diversity could be better, and pledging could be better.
I hear that some people are cutting back on pledging based on rumors without making an effort to verify whether true. [Editor's note: this, also, may be more rumor than fact.]
I challenge you to give to the church in a way that is not based on partiality or personal taste. Ask yourself, "What is the Spirit trying to do with this Church?" This should be the primary question instead of asking what ideas can we come up with ourselves or what works now. So therefore think about how you can serve the church.
What is the Spirit asking the Church of the Incarnation to do in the community and how can you, as an individual, be part of that?
You need to be honest with yourself whether you are not being authentic to the call of the Spirit, whether you are impeding change.
Set aside your judgment. You need to not be afraid to challenge one another; open up the lines of communication. Be proactive in your communication with one another; if you know people are unhappy, speak to them. And if you are unhappy you must take responsibility and go speak to the people you are unhappy with. Do not be afraid to take that first step to communicate with one another. Step out in faith and away from fear.
Blessings to you and to God be the Glory!
Paul
Dear Church of the Incarnation:
I praise you for your wish for diversity, your hospitality, variety of liturgy, concern for the poor (Living Room and Open Table), small groups, and for encouraging differing beliefs and lifestyles.
However, you could be more diverse, especially in terms of the age of your congregation. You have too few younger people. And there seems to be division among the three services: each group is entrenched in their own liturgical style. In addition, you are trying to do too many things with too few resources.
Therefore, I want you to try alternative marketing strategies and innovative liturgy, without losing the essence of what the church stands for. And I encourage you to understand one another and mix it up.
Dear Church of the Incarnation:
This is good: people are feeling welcomed with great vegan foods here. Reaching out to the women at the Living Room and the Open Table is a blessing. St. Andrew's keeps going, thanks to you! The choirs, and Numina, and small groups continue the ministry. Praise God for Father Matt.
However, it's been brought to my attention that people are not greeting with eye contact at the Peace. Others get the Farlander Blues: when they are new, no one talks to them. The number of young people and small children is low here. Where are they? What are we doing to make them feel unwelcome? The 8:00, 9:15, and 11:15 services don't have so many opportunities to meet each other - separate groups.
Therefore you should try to have a 5:00 pm service on Saturday evening or 9:00 pm Sunday - even though this has been tried, I encourage you to alter this and try again. Perhaps, more people would be available to meet up with the new ones in Farlander Hall? More vestry members or volunteers? A greeting at the door is good - but too short.
Dear Church of the Incarnation,
I praise you for caring for one another when one is hurting or burdened, being open about decisions made, being open and welcoming, being a safe home, providing a beautiful space, having a strong desire to reach out to the needy in the community, and for being faithful in worship and prayer.
However, it has come to my attention that there is fear amongst some that if you serve the needs of people outside of the church that you might get embroiled in controversy, and a fear that this controversy will destroy the church. There is a fear of leaving the boundaries of the church, fear of the church becoming divided, and people are operating based on fear not faith. Also some fear that reaching out will make this an unsafe place to come to. People are resisting change because they are satisfied with the church as it is, and they expect outsiders to conform to the church's way of being. While being open, your diversity could be better, and pledging could be better.
I hear that some people are cutting back on pledging based on rumors without making an effort to verify whether true. [Editor's note: this, also, may be more rumor than fact.]
I challenge you to give to the church in a way that is not based on partiality or personal taste. Ask yourself, "What is the Spirit trying to do with this Church?" This should be the primary question instead of asking what ideas can we come up with ourselves or what works now. So therefore think about how you can serve the church.
What is the Spirit asking the Church of the Incarnation to do in the community and how can you, as an individual, be part of that?
You need to be honest with yourself whether you are not being authentic to the call of the Spirit, whether you are impeding change.
Set aside your judgment. You need to not be afraid to challenge one another; open up the lines of communication. Be proactive in your communication with one another; if you know people are unhappy, speak to them. And if you are unhappy you must take responsibility and go speak to the people you are unhappy with. Do not be afraid to take that first step to communicate with one another. Step out in faith and away from fear.
Blessings to you and to God be the Glory!
Paul
Dear Church of the Incarnation:
I praise you for your wish for diversity, your hospitality, variety of liturgy, concern for the poor (Living Room and Open Table), small groups, and for encouraging differing beliefs and lifestyles.
However, you could be more diverse, especially in terms of the age of your congregation. You have too few younger people. And there seems to be division among the three services: each group is entrenched in their own liturgical style. In addition, you are trying to do too many things with too few resources.
Therefore, I want you to try alternative marketing strategies and innovative liturgy, without losing the essence of what the church stands for. And I encourage you to understand one another and mix it up.
Dear Church of the Incarnation:
This is good: people are feeling welcomed with great vegan foods here. Reaching out to the women at the Living Room and the Open Table is a blessing. St. Andrew's keeps going, thanks to you! The choirs, and Numina, and small groups continue the ministry. Praise God for Father Matt.
However, it's been brought to my attention that people are not greeting with eye contact at the Peace. Others get the Farlander Blues: when they are new, no one talks to them. The number of young people and small children is low here. Where are they? What are we doing to make them feel unwelcome? The 8:00, 9:15, and 11:15 services don't have so many opportunities to meet each other - separate groups.
Therefore you should try to have a 5:00 pm service on Saturday evening or 9:00 pm Sunday - even though this has been tried, I encourage you to alter this and try again. Perhaps, more people would be available to meet up with the new ones in Farlander Hall? More vestry members or volunteers? A greeting at the door is good - but too short.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
2012: The Revolution Has Begun... or not...
Good friends have sent me this video, called "2012: The Revolution Has Begun". You can see it by following this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvoRat-Tl_Q
Thanks for the video link, which I watched today. I love you for sending it, and I love you enough to give you my honest response to it.
I appreciate the attention this video brings to global warming, which is no joke, and to the mass extinction currently underway. I also very much appreciate the video’s challenge to us to choose love over fear. That is probably the most important thing we can all be saying right now, and I’m so glad they targeted Fox News and TV in general – I agree with all that. I also adore the love images in this video – the revelation of the heart of God through meditation is beautifully portrayed here. I could feel myself opening up and smiling when those came on. I’ve been to that place. That part felt like going home.
However, I also have some serious issues with this video, which I regard, overall, to be more mythology than fact. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in mythology as an agent of social change, and that’s a big reason why I’m a priest. I just think it’s important to also keep your facts straight. For example, the startling claim about the GOES satellite and the electromagnetic spike on 9/11 – I notice there is no source for this graph given and I strongly doubt this claim. A quick check on the GOES’s own website says nothing about electromagnetism as something they measure. I think it is highly likely this is a fraudulent claim.
I don’t have time to research the claimed earthquake spike, but despite recent earthquakes, I’m skeptical of the veracity of that chart as well.
I also get a little pesky when people completely misrepresent the Bible, as this video does by referring to Mt 6:22 as having to do with meditation. Sorry, but that’s ridiculous – an example of something that happens all the time – the appropriation of a religious text into terms that fit someone else’s paradigm. A responsible use of Scripture honors the intent of the original author, or at least grapples with the difference between what it actually says and what we want it to say.
But the more substantive issue I have with this video is the notion, which has been around for a long time now, that through meditation the world will be transformed into a heavenly realm. The idea that a revolution in consciousness is just around the corner, and depends on our own individual spiritual practice for it to happen, is, in my opinion, a myth. As myth, it is very powerful, and like other myths it may motivate a lot of people toward life-changing behaviors that would be good for them and for the planet. I just don’t believe it’s true, factually speaking. Christians have been predicting the coming of Christ for a long time, too – that idea comes from the same impulse and the same longing as the one expressed in this video - but all efforts to predict when it will happen have been in vain, and the responsible Christian has to accept the possibility that this is more a statement about our own longing than a statement of fact.
Like I said, I honor and respect the power of myth. I proclaim “Christ will come again” as a mythological statement of ultimate trust, but connecting that to any earthly calendar (including the Mayan) is a very well-documented mistake. What happens when we get attached to those predictions is that we lose sight of the real source of that prediction, which is our own inner longing for it to be true, despite all (actual) evidence to the contrary; and then we open ourselves up to manipulation by people who want to exploit our longing.
That longing is a real thing, though, and over the centuries it has sparked all sorts of visions and proclamations, including violent and non-violent uprisings against an oppressor (Jesus was, in my opinion, caught up in, and also struggling against, the dark side of such a movement). People have been manipulated by this longing for a long time.
Which leads me to my last comment, which is that I don’t like the manipulation in this video. Even as it decries TV for its sensational fear-mongering, it uses that very same medium to make us afraid, and then exploits that fear to choose a more satisfying spiritual resolution. This then feeds a meditation workshop industry which employs many people who benefit from videos like this.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they are intentionally committing fraud or anything like that. I do think there’s some naivete going on here though. And for all the complaints that are made against Christians and organized religion among many of the folks who would love this video, this video is not much different from how priests and pastors have used fear of hellfire to emotionally manipulate their congregations, and then offering, as a satisfying alternative, the saving love of Jesus. Out of sheer relief that they are not going to burn in eternal hellfire, they readily accept the alternative, without employing the healthy skepticism they would otherwise bring to the conversation. And, how convenient that this also builds up their churches and makes the preachers fat and happy! Again, naivete plays a role here: most of them, I’m sure, sincerely believe in hellfire – but nonetheless they exploit that fear so that people will uncritically accept the very attractive alternative they offer.
This video is nowhere near that on the evilness scale – in fact, as mythology I think it’s powerful in a good way, and may well motivate people to seek inner peace and work for the good of the planet. That’s all good. I just think the idea that meditation will spark a global revolution in consciousness and bring about an era of social justice is little more than magical thinking; and I really don’t trust that guy with the hair, talking about electromagnetic fields.
I would love to be wrong on that one, by the way. What an amazing thing, if true!
So it’s not all bad. I choose a different mythology, however – a mythology that has many compatibilities with this one – but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Thanks for listening, ML+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvoRat-Tl_Q
Thanks for the video link, which I watched today. I love you for sending it, and I love you enough to give you my honest response to it.
I appreciate the attention this video brings to global warming, which is no joke, and to the mass extinction currently underway. I also very much appreciate the video’s challenge to us to choose love over fear. That is probably the most important thing we can all be saying right now, and I’m so glad they targeted Fox News and TV in general – I agree with all that. I also adore the love images in this video – the revelation of the heart of God through meditation is beautifully portrayed here. I could feel myself opening up and smiling when those came on. I’ve been to that place. That part felt like going home.
However, I also have some serious issues with this video, which I regard, overall, to be more mythology than fact. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in mythology as an agent of social change, and that’s a big reason why I’m a priest. I just think it’s important to also keep your facts straight. For example, the startling claim about the GOES satellite and the electromagnetic spike on 9/11 – I notice there is no source for this graph given and I strongly doubt this claim. A quick check on the GOES’s own website says nothing about electromagnetism as something they measure. I think it is highly likely this is a fraudulent claim.
I don’t have time to research the claimed earthquake spike, but despite recent earthquakes, I’m skeptical of the veracity of that chart as well.
I also get a little pesky when people completely misrepresent the Bible, as this video does by referring to Mt 6:22 as having to do with meditation. Sorry, but that’s ridiculous – an example of something that happens all the time – the appropriation of a religious text into terms that fit someone else’s paradigm. A responsible use of Scripture honors the intent of the original author, or at least grapples with the difference between what it actually says and what we want it to say.
But the more substantive issue I have with this video is the notion, which has been around for a long time now, that through meditation the world will be transformed into a heavenly realm. The idea that a revolution in consciousness is just around the corner, and depends on our own individual spiritual practice for it to happen, is, in my opinion, a myth. As myth, it is very powerful, and like other myths it may motivate a lot of people toward life-changing behaviors that would be good for them and for the planet. I just don’t believe it’s true, factually speaking. Christians have been predicting the coming of Christ for a long time, too – that idea comes from the same impulse and the same longing as the one expressed in this video - but all efforts to predict when it will happen have been in vain, and the responsible Christian has to accept the possibility that this is more a statement about our own longing than a statement of fact.
Like I said, I honor and respect the power of myth. I proclaim “Christ will come again” as a mythological statement of ultimate trust, but connecting that to any earthly calendar (including the Mayan) is a very well-documented mistake. What happens when we get attached to those predictions is that we lose sight of the real source of that prediction, which is our own inner longing for it to be true, despite all (actual) evidence to the contrary; and then we open ourselves up to manipulation by people who want to exploit our longing.
That longing is a real thing, though, and over the centuries it has sparked all sorts of visions and proclamations, including violent and non-violent uprisings against an oppressor (Jesus was, in my opinion, caught up in, and also struggling against, the dark side of such a movement). People have been manipulated by this longing for a long time.
Which leads me to my last comment, which is that I don’t like the manipulation in this video. Even as it decries TV for its sensational fear-mongering, it uses that very same medium to make us afraid, and then exploits that fear to choose a more satisfying spiritual resolution. This then feeds a meditation workshop industry which employs many people who benefit from videos like this.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they are intentionally committing fraud or anything like that. I do think there’s some naivete going on here though. And for all the complaints that are made against Christians and organized religion among many of the folks who would love this video, this video is not much different from how priests and pastors have used fear of hellfire to emotionally manipulate their congregations, and then offering, as a satisfying alternative, the saving love of Jesus. Out of sheer relief that they are not going to burn in eternal hellfire, they readily accept the alternative, without employing the healthy skepticism they would otherwise bring to the conversation. And, how convenient that this also builds up their churches and makes the preachers fat and happy! Again, naivete plays a role here: most of them, I’m sure, sincerely believe in hellfire – but nonetheless they exploit that fear so that people will uncritically accept the very attractive alternative they offer.
This video is nowhere near that on the evilness scale – in fact, as mythology I think it’s powerful in a good way, and may well motivate people to seek inner peace and work for the good of the planet. That’s all good. I just think the idea that meditation will spark a global revolution in consciousness and bring about an era of social justice is little more than magical thinking; and I really don’t trust that guy with the hair, talking about electromagnetic fields.
I would love to be wrong on that one, by the way. What an amazing thing, if true!
So it’s not all bad. I choose a different mythology, however – a mythology that has many compatibilities with this one – but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Thanks for listening, ML+
Monday, March 14, 2011
Innocent Killing
We are all praying for the victims of the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I’m sure we’re looking for ways to help; if you have a checkbook on you, or can find an envelope in which to put some cash, just write “Japan” on the memo line of your check or on the envelope and we will make sure that it gets to Episcopal Relief and Development, which is rushing assistance to the Diocese of Tohoku, which has been hit hard by the disaster.
When I heard about the tsunami on Friday, I turned the TV on and watched the stunning footage with disbelief, as I’m sure many of you did. The bit of video I still can’t get over was the sight of a fairly large ship, swept onto its side and rolling around, carried by this massive influx of water like a plastic toy in a bathtub, and you could see it headed toward a building. It looked to me like there were people, bobbing up and down, also caught in the same current, between the boat and the building, and I thought about the lives that were hanging in the balance, completely at the mercy of the random action of the water. I could see that if the boat revolved slowly it would hit the building broadside and crush those people; but if the boat turned just a little more quickly it might not hit the building at all and maybe the people would survive. Then the frame shifted and I couldn’t see what happened next.
As I was watching that massive, unrelenting destruction I found a voice within me rising in protest: This isn’t right, it was saying. I found myself begging the wave to have mercy on those caught in its grip – as if the wave could hear me; as if it cared. And then it hit me with renewed force just how brutal this world can be.
It sounds stupid now even to say something so obvious, but what the video captured for me was just how unthinking this killing was: that wave was not conscious of the people in its path; it was dumb, silent, unfeeling; the worst kind of monster – one with no reason, no mercy or pity.
The wave moved along in blissful ignorance of the destruction it brought. The wave, like the rest of the natural world, was in that way innocent, even as it killed.
This state of innocence is the elemental truth found this morning in the ancient story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden (Genesis 2:15-3:7). Sometimes we might find ourselves thinking that this is a story about a non-violent paradise – but it’s really a story about the innocence of a world that has no self-consciousness. It’s a story about the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – which is the difference between us humans, and that tsunami.
Unlike that wave, we can see the destruction that we cause, and we know it’s a bad thing. We have eaten of that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; for us, unlike that wave, killing can never be innocent.
When I was a child I saw my adorable standard poodle tear across an open field, chasing down a rabbit, and kill it cleanly with a snap of the neck. Then she came trotting back to me, the bloody rabbit between its teeth, and she was as happy and as proud of herself as a child coming home from school with straight A’s.
I never looked at her quite the same after that.
In the wild – the Garden of Eden, where there is no self-consciousness, no knowledge of good and evil – there is no remorse, no guilt. Until we came along, the world spun about on its axis for millions and millions of years, species evolving and going extinct on the principle of kill or be killed, and all of it as un-self-consciously innocent as that wave that hit Japan.
And then we come along, with our knowledge of good and evil, and with this gift we are categorically separated from the rest of creation. We are cast out of the garden of innocence: the Garden of blissful ignorance, the Garden of simple animal existence, the Garden in which death and life is all the same, and poodles chase down rabbits in perfect bliss.
So then: what do we do with our guilt? How do we release ourselves from it?
Well, we begin by inventing the law; we make distinctions between good and bad; and we try to enforce the law as best we can. But we discover to our dismay that the law does not restore us to the Garden of innocence; that as much as we try to live our lives in obedience to what we believe to be good, we are still animals, but guiltily; we are still killers; and there is no paradise, no place that will restore our innocence. In Paul’s terms, with the law there is always, also, condemnation.
So what do we do?
Well, along comes Jesus, who creates for us, if you will, a third stage in our evolution. If the first stage is the Garden of Eden, and the second stage is this guilt and this sense of alienation from the rest of creation, the third stage is what Jesus brings.
Consider: when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) he was offered all the elements of evolutionary advantage: abundant food; physical invulnerability; limitless power. If he had been an ordinary alpha-male, just another strong man seeking advantage, he would have seized upon those advantages. He would have become the ultimate Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But instead he saw a new path.
As the world all around him was fulfilling its evolutionary destiny, seeking more strength; more power; more resources; seizing the advantages and opportunities offered to them, Jesus answered a call to a new way of being. Not a return to the old Garden of innocent violence, but a new place – a new creation that he called the Kingdom of God.
Jesus invited us into an evolution toward compassion and peace, rather than ruthless competition. Jesus would rather have fasted for the sake of mercy and compassion than to have eaten like an animal whatever food was offered to him. He would rather have served humanity than dominate it.
If there is a tsunami here, it is a tsunami of love, accessible to us through our relationship to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Ironically, it is the very consciousness that separates us from creation, the very same capacity for choice that cast us out of the Garden, that is our pathway to this new creation.
Because unlike the rest of the natural world, we have the capacity to choose love.
When Jesus rejects the advantages that are offered to him by the devil, he is not making choices that any self-respecting animal would make. No, these are the choices that a god would make. The same choices available to us, through Christ who lives in us.
As we are called to follow Jesus, we are called into the perfection of our humanity. We are called into a new paradise: made real through him; a paradise in which the sum total of all our vain striving, the sum total of all our evolutionary struggle, is brought to fulfillment and perfection in love.
Now our purpose is no longer merely to survive. Our purpose is to love. Our purpose is to serve. And to that purpose we dedicate our lives, our hearts, our souls; even, perhaps, our genetic heritage.
Now, more than ever, we are called to choose love over evolutionary advantage.
Because it is our evolutionary advantage that is leading us to extinction. Our ability to dominate and to kill is now so advanced that we threaten the very survival of our own species.
Now, more than ever, we need to follow the example of Jesus in the desert. Calling upon the power of God, made manifest in compassion and reason, we need to learn how to renounce resources, not seize them; we need to learn how to let go of our power, not impose it; so that we might live in greater balance with the earth. We need to develop our capacity for compassion for all species, because they are the key to our own survival.
And so like Jesus in the desert, we stand before God and we say yes to our humanity.
We declare that in Christ, the new creation is fulfilled. The new Adam has arrived. And in defiance of millions of years of self-serving behavior we declare, with Paul, that in Christ we live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, that we may find our perfection in him, who lives and reigns, now and forever.
… Amen.
When I heard about the tsunami on Friday, I turned the TV on and watched the stunning footage with disbelief, as I’m sure many of you did. The bit of video I still can’t get over was the sight of a fairly large ship, swept onto its side and rolling around, carried by this massive influx of water like a plastic toy in a bathtub, and you could see it headed toward a building. It looked to me like there were people, bobbing up and down, also caught in the same current, between the boat and the building, and I thought about the lives that were hanging in the balance, completely at the mercy of the random action of the water. I could see that if the boat revolved slowly it would hit the building broadside and crush those people; but if the boat turned just a little more quickly it might not hit the building at all and maybe the people would survive. Then the frame shifted and I couldn’t see what happened next.
As I was watching that massive, unrelenting destruction I found a voice within me rising in protest: This isn’t right, it was saying. I found myself begging the wave to have mercy on those caught in its grip – as if the wave could hear me; as if it cared. And then it hit me with renewed force just how brutal this world can be.
It sounds stupid now even to say something so obvious, but what the video captured for me was just how unthinking this killing was: that wave was not conscious of the people in its path; it was dumb, silent, unfeeling; the worst kind of monster – one with no reason, no mercy or pity.
The wave moved along in blissful ignorance of the destruction it brought. The wave, like the rest of the natural world, was in that way innocent, even as it killed.
This state of innocence is the elemental truth found this morning in the ancient story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden (Genesis 2:15-3:7). Sometimes we might find ourselves thinking that this is a story about a non-violent paradise – but it’s really a story about the innocence of a world that has no self-consciousness. It’s a story about the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – which is the difference between us humans, and that tsunami.
Unlike that wave, we can see the destruction that we cause, and we know it’s a bad thing. We have eaten of that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; for us, unlike that wave, killing can never be innocent.
When I was a child I saw my adorable standard poodle tear across an open field, chasing down a rabbit, and kill it cleanly with a snap of the neck. Then she came trotting back to me, the bloody rabbit between its teeth, and she was as happy and as proud of herself as a child coming home from school with straight A’s.
I never looked at her quite the same after that.
In the wild – the Garden of Eden, where there is no self-consciousness, no knowledge of good and evil – there is no remorse, no guilt. Until we came along, the world spun about on its axis for millions and millions of years, species evolving and going extinct on the principle of kill or be killed, and all of it as un-self-consciously innocent as that wave that hit Japan.
And then we come along, with our knowledge of good and evil, and with this gift we are categorically separated from the rest of creation. We are cast out of the garden of innocence: the Garden of blissful ignorance, the Garden of simple animal existence, the Garden in which death and life is all the same, and poodles chase down rabbits in perfect bliss.
So then: what do we do with our guilt? How do we release ourselves from it?
Well, we begin by inventing the law; we make distinctions between good and bad; and we try to enforce the law as best we can. But we discover to our dismay that the law does not restore us to the Garden of innocence; that as much as we try to live our lives in obedience to what we believe to be good, we are still animals, but guiltily; we are still killers; and there is no paradise, no place that will restore our innocence. In Paul’s terms, with the law there is always, also, condemnation.
So what do we do?
Well, along comes Jesus, who creates for us, if you will, a third stage in our evolution. If the first stage is the Garden of Eden, and the second stage is this guilt and this sense of alienation from the rest of creation, the third stage is what Jesus brings.
Consider: when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) he was offered all the elements of evolutionary advantage: abundant food; physical invulnerability; limitless power. If he had been an ordinary alpha-male, just another strong man seeking advantage, he would have seized upon those advantages. He would have become the ultimate Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But instead he saw a new path.
As the world all around him was fulfilling its evolutionary destiny, seeking more strength; more power; more resources; seizing the advantages and opportunities offered to them, Jesus answered a call to a new way of being. Not a return to the old Garden of innocent violence, but a new place – a new creation that he called the Kingdom of God.
Jesus invited us into an evolution toward compassion and peace, rather than ruthless competition. Jesus would rather have fasted for the sake of mercy and compassion than to have eaten like an animal whatever food was offered to him. He would rather have served humanity than dominate it.
If there is a tsunami here, it is a tsunami of love, accessible to us through our relationship to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Ironically, it is the very consciousness that separates us from creation, the very same capacity for choice that cast us out of the Garden, that is our pathway to this new creation.
Because unlike the rest of the natural world, we have the capacity to choose love.
When Jesus rejects the advantages that are offered to him by the devil, he is not making choices that any self-respecting animal would make. No, these are the choices that a god would make. The same choices available to us, through Christ who lives in us.
As we are called to follow Jesus, we are called into the perfection of our humanity. We are called into a new paradise: made real through him; a paradise in which the sum total of all our vain striving, the sum total of all our evolutionary struggle, is brought to fulfillment and perfection in love.
Now our purpose is no longer merely to survive. Our purpose is to love. Our purpose is to serve. And to that purpose we dedicate our lives, our hearts, our souls; even, perhaps, our genetic heritage.
Now, more than ever, we are called to choose love over evolutionary advantage.
Because it is our evolutionary advantage that is leading us to extinction. Our ability to dominate and to kill is now so advanced that we threaten the very survival of our own species.
Now, more than ever, we need to follow the example of Jesus in the desert. Calling upon the power of God, made manifest in compassion and reason, we need to learn how to renounce resources, not seize them; we need to learn how to let go of our power, not impose it; so that we might live in greater balance with the earth. We need to develop our capacity for compassion for all species, because they are the key to our own survival.
And so like Jesus in the desert, we stand before God and we say yes to our humanity.
We declare that in Christ, the new creation is fulfilled. The new Adam has arrived. And in defiance of millions of years of self-serving behavior we declare, with Paul, that in Christ we live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, that we may find our perfection in him, who lives and reigns, now and forever.
… Amen.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Enduring Judgment
Sermon February 27, 2011
8th Sunday after Epiphany
For the last few weeks we’ve been hearing from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where he tries to help his brothers and sisters in Christ hold together despite a deep and growing rift in their community.
In fact, the schism in his church has become so intense that in today’s reading Paul addresses the topic of being judged by the members of his church:
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
(1 Cor 4:3-4)
Kinda makes you wonder: what the heck did Paul do to get everyone so mad at him?
When Paul arrived in Corinth, probably around 52 AD, he found one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the Roman Empire; a city placed right in the middle of the global trade routes between Europe and Asia and so a city teeming with commerce.
And because it was in the middle of this global crossroads, Corinth was incredibly diverse. There was an enormous variety of ethnicities: Romans, Greeks, Asians, Jews; and it had a stunning religious diversity too: followers of every sort of cult, from worshipers of Apollo and Aphrodite and all the other Graeco-Roman gods, to devotees of the Egyptian gods like Isis. Poseidon was a very popular god there, thanks to the town’s shipping and fishing industries. Shrines for these different gods lined the streets of the city, populated the harbors and ran along the roads leading to and from town.
Then along comes Paul, who for the first time in human history tries to build a religious community that embraces everyone, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, rich and poor. We have to remember how unheard of this was, this attempt to have all these different people from all over the world speaking the same language of the Spirit.
As far as we know, this is one of the first efforts at “finding unity in diversity” ever made.
It’s not surprising, then, that divisions and conflicts would have erupted. Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half and by the end of that time he had developed a solid, thriving Christian community. He planted the seeds; and this other guy, Apollos, stayed to water the seeds. And then, because they were still infants in Christ, the people started choosing sides – I’m for Paul; or I’m for Apollos.
Factions developed; whatever minor differences there were between them were exploited and exaggerated; people were made to choose sides and before long the community was in danger of splitting.
That’s why Paul was hearing about all kinds of judgments being made against him – nasty rumors, lies, and innuendo spread by people who just couldn’t resist the temptation of spreading the latest dirt, whether it had any basis in truth or not – not out of malice, of course, but, well, they were just so engaged and passionate and mad!
In the previous chapter, Paul addresses this conflict head on:
For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Cor 3:3-7)
In other words, Paul is saying to those who were splitting the community, You seem to be under the delusion that you are in charge. But none of us are in charge – it is Christ who lives in us who is in charge.
Now, on one level, this is one of those things that we hear all the time from the pulpit – yeah yeah, Christ is the head of the church, we’ve heard it before – but what Paul is saying is not just that Christ is the head of the church but that Christ is the head of each of us – each of us, individually. The unity or disunity of our church begins and ends with the unity or disunity within our own souls. Paul is not just talking about how a community works – he’s talking about how each of us work – about what’s going on at the level of our minds and hearts and souls.
We can’t begin to understand what Paul is saying about the unity of the church until we first come to understand this unity with the divine that exists within ourselves – that’s the first and most important question.
One of the great scholars of Paul’s letters puts this in modern terms by calling it “the egocentric delusion” – this delusion that we all carry within us that makes us think we are our own masters. This delusion that comes from the very structure of our minds; because we have this gift of self-consciousness; we can hear ourselves think; we watch ourselves making decisions and exercising choices and having preferences for this thing or that person and it all combines to make us feel like we are in charge of ourselves.
But we’re not - when we're living in Christ.
Consider, for example, the simple question, “Who am I?” Ask yourself that. “You are you?” And of course the answer seems obvious: “I’m me! I’m Joe Jones; I live in a little blue house at 4th and Elm; I’m the son of George Jones and Sally Smith; I love the Giants and the Raiders and my favorite color is blue. What? That’s who I am.”
That kind of answer is what Paul is talking about when he says in today’s reading that the Corinthians are being “merely human.” They are accepting who they are on face value. As one writer puts it, “They are living for themselves; seeking their own pleasures, regarding others as a means of satisfying their own desires.”
“You going to watch the Oscars tonight? What you cooking for dinner? I’m thinking of making a stew. I like stew. Can I borrow some potatoes? Yeah, I’m thinking of using Cindy’s recipe – do you like that? Did you see her hair today? I really think she’s dying it.”
And so it goes, on and on, this incessant chattering monkey mind, day in and day out... until we keel over dead.
What Paul is saying is that the people in Corinth hadn’t yet figured out the depth of who they are – that God lives in them. The Spirit of God – moving beneath the surface of their consciousness, flowing into them like an eternal stream – that Spirit – the same Spirit that searches out the very mind of God – that Spirit is alive in us.
And if that Spirit is alive in us, then it is impossible not to submit to it.
As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “No one can serve two masters.”
And that changes everything.
In fact it changes things so radically that the question is no longer, “Who are you,” rather it becomes “What are you?” Which is how Paul puts the question: “What is Apollos?” he asks; “What is Paul?”
What are you, then?
Either you’re a servant of that Spirit of God, living inside you, or you’re dead already and you don’t even know it. Either you are rising to new life in Christ or you’re just marking time until the grave comes.
And if you’re a servant of that Spirit, if Christ is living in you and you’re living for Christ, you are no longer in charge.
And when these Spirit-filled people come together to worship their God, the Spirit speaks through them and moves among them and all of their divisions and all of their petty cultural differences fall away because they have joined the household of God.
Which is why, in today’s reading, Paul says we are “stewards of God’s mysteries.”
The stewards are put in charge of managing the estate – they are not the owner themselves. The work we do on behalf of God does not belong to us.
This church does not belong to us. The pew that you’re sitting on is not “your pew.” The fact that any of us even exist is utterly and entirely an expression of the glory of God.
To those who are judging him, then, Paul says, “We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.”
In human terms, Paul says, this is nothing but foolishness. In fact, by the world’s standards, by the standards of all those who would judge him or Apollos, they have become “a spectacle to the world.” A laughingstock; an object of contempt and ridicule. Yes, Paul says, “We are fools for the sake of Christ.”
It’s this foolishness in Christ – this complete submission to the Spirit of God living within him – that gives Paul, then, the ability to endure the judgments laid against him:
When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly.
This is the same unity with the Spirit of God that inspired Jesus, in last week’s gospel, to say, “You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It’s important to understand this: Paul’s advice to them was not just “play nice.” He didn’t say, “C’mon everyone, can’t we all just get along?” Instead, he challenged them to look more deeply into who they were, or more accurately, into what they were serving. By pitting Paul against Apollos, they were that they were still infants; still acting like children; and they had a lot of growing up to do.
It wasn’t Paul that changed their lives, it was God, working through Paul; it wasn’t Apollos whose spirit rang through them when he prayed with them, it was God, working through Apollos.
My prayer for us, as we all grow up in Christ, is that we will focus ever more deeply on the source of our joy. It is not me; it is not Melissa or Carol; it is not Harold or Leslie; it is not the organ; it is not this building; it is not this prayer book; it is not this hymnal. Tomorrow, in the blink of an eye, all this can be gone.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
I say this to you in the name of the one who lives and moves and has its being within us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
8th Sunday after Epiphany
For the last few weeks we’ve been hearing from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where he tries to help his brothers and sisters in Christ hold together despite a deep and growing rift in their community.
In fact, the schism in his church has become so intense that in today’s reading Paul addresses the topic of being judged by the members of his church:
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
(1 Cor 4:3-4)
Kinda makes you wonder: what the heck did Paul do to get everyone so mad at him?
When Paul arrived in Corinth, probably around 52 AD, he found one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the Roman Empire; a city placed right in the middle of the global trade routes between Europe and Asia and so a city teeming with commerce.
And because it was in the middle of this global crossroads, Corinth was incredibly diverse. There was an enormous variety of ethnicities: Romans, Greeks, Asians, Jews; and it had a stunning religious diversity too: followers of every sort of cult, from worshipers of Apollo and Aphrodite and all the other Graeco-Roman gods, to devotees of the Egyptian gods like Isis. Poseidon was a very popular god there, thanks to the town’s shipping and fishing industries. Shrines for these different gods lined the streets of the city, populated the harbors and ran along the roads leading to and from town.
Then along comes Paul, who for the first time in human history tries to build a religious community that embraces everyone, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, rich and poor. We have to remember how unheard of this was, this attempt to have all these different people from all over the world speaking the same language of the Spirit.
As far as we know, this is one of the first efforts at “finding unity in diversity” ever made.
It’s not surprising, then, that divisions and conflicts would have erupted. Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half and by the end of that time he had developed a solid, thriving Christian community. He planted the seeds; and this other guy, Apollos, stayed to water the seeds. And then, because they were still infants in Christ, the people started choosing sides – I’m for Paul; or I’m for Apollos.
Factions developed; whatever minor differences there were between them were exploited and exaggerated; people were made to choose sides and before long the community was in danger of splitting.
That’s why Paul was hearing about all kinds of judgments being made against him – nasty rumors, lies, and innuendo spread by people who just couldn’t resist the temptation of spreading the latest dirt, whether it had any basis in truth or not – not out of malice, of course, but, well, they were just so engaged and passionate and mad!
In the previous chapter, Paul addresses this conflict head on:
For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Cor 3:3-7)
In other words, Paul is saying to those who were splitting the community, You seem to be under the delusion that you are in charge. But none of us are in charge – it is Christ who lives in us who is in charge.
Now, on one level, this is one of those things that we hear all the time from the pulpit – yeah yeah, Christ is the head of the church, we’ve heard it before – but what Paul is saying is not just that Christ is the head of the church but that Christ is the head of each of us – each of us, individually. The unity or disunity of our church begins and ends with the unity or disunity within our own souls. Paul is not just talking about how a community works – he’s talking about how each of us work – about what’s going on at the level of our minds and hearts and souls.
We can’t begin to understand what Paul is saying about the unity of the church until we first come to understand this unity with the divine that exists within ourselves – that’s the first and most important question.
One of the great scholars of Paul’s letters puts this in modern terms by calling it “the egocentric delusion” – this delusion that we all carry within us that makes us think we are our own masters. This delusion that comes from the very structure of our minds; because we have this gift of self-consciousness; we can hear ourselves think; we watch ourselves making decisions and exercising choices and having preferences for this thing or that person and it all combines to make us feel like we are in charge of ourselves.
But we’re not - when we're living in Christ.
Consider, for example, the simple question, “Who am I?” Ask yourself that. “You are you?” And of course the answer seems obvious: “I’m me! I’m Joe Jones; I live in a little blue house at 4th and Elm; I’m the son of George Jones and Sally Smith; I love the Giants and the Raiders and my favorite color is blue. What? That’s who I am.”
That kind of answer is what Paul is talking about when he says in today’s reading that the Corinthians are being “merely human.” They are accepting who they are on face value. As one writer puts it, “They are living for themselves; seeking their own pleasures, regarding others as a means of satisfying their own desires.”
“You going to watch the Oscars tonight? What you cooking for dinner? I’m thinking of making a stew. I like stew. Can I borrow some potatoes? Yeah, I’m thinking of using Cindy’s recipe – do you like that? Did you see her hair today? I really think she’s dying it.”
And so it goes, on and on, this incessant chattering monkey mind, day in and day out... until we keel over dead.
What Paul is saying is that the people in Corinth hadn’t yet figured out the depth of who they are – that God lives in them. The Spirit of God – moving beneath the surface of their consciousness, flowing into them like an eternal stream – that Spirit – the same Spirit that searches out the very mind of God – that Spirit is alive in us.
And if that Spirit is alive in us, then it is impossible not to submit to it.
As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “No one can serve two masters.”
And that changes everything.
In fact it changes things so radically that the question is no longer, “Who are you,” rather it becomes “What are you?” Which is how Paul puts the question: “What is Apollos?” he asks; “What is Paul?”
What are you, then?
Either you’re a servant of that Spirit of God, living inside you, or you’re dead already and you don’t even know it. Either you are rising to new life in Christ or you’re just marking time until the grave comes.
And if you’re a servant of that Spirit, if Christ is living in you and you’re living for Christ, you are no longer in charge.
And when these Spirit-filled people come together to worship their God, the Spirit speaks through them and moves among them and all of their divisions and all of their petty cultural differences fall away because they have joined the household of God.
Which is why, in today’s reading, Paul says we are “stewards of God’s mysteries.”
The stewards are put in charge of managing the estate – they are not the owner themselves. The work we do on behalf of God does not belong to us.
This church does not belong to us. The pew that you’re sitting on is not “your pew.” The fact that any of us even exist is utterly and entirely an expression of the glory of God.
To those who are judging him, then, Paul says, “We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.”
In human terms, Paul says, this is nothing but foolishness. In fact, by the world’s standards, by the standards of all those who would judge him or Apollos, they have become “a spectacle to the world.” A laughingstock; an object of contempt and ridicule. Yes, Paul says, “We are fools for the sake of Christ.”
It’s this foolishness in Christ – this complete submission to the Spirit of God living within him – that gives Paul, then, the ability to endure the judgments laid against him:
When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly.
This is the same unity with the Spirit of God that inspired Jesus, in last week’s gospel, to say, “You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It’s important to understand this: Paul’s advice to them was not just “play nice.” He didn’t say, “C’mon everyone, can’t we all just get along?” Instead, he challenged them to look more deeply into who they were, or more accurately, into what they were serving. By pitting Paul against Apollos, they were that they were still infants; still acting like children; and they had a lot of growing up to do.
It wasn’t Paul that changed their lives, it was God, working through Paul; it wasn’t Apollos whose spirit rang through them when he prayed with them, it was God, working through Apollos.
My prayer for us, as we all grow up in Christ, is that we will focus ever more deeply on the source of our joy. It is not me; it is not Melissa or Carol; it is not Harold or Leslie; it is not the organ; it is not this building; it is not this prayer book; it is not this hymnal. Tomorrow, in the blink of an eye, all this can be gone.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
I say this to you in the name of the one who lives and moves and has its being within us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
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