Saturday, March 31, 2012

Passion Sunday: Even When God Is Silent


Text put to music in an anthem by Sumner Jenkins

Even When God Is Silent

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not. 
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.  I believe in love even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even when God is silent.  I believe in the silence.

  This text in the anthem was found on a basement wall in Cologne, Germany.  It had been written by someone hiding from the Gestapo.
  The experience of God being perceived as silent occurs when we experience no apparent activity of God on our behalf to save us from events that stretch from being merely inconvenient to unpleasant to downright horrifying.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Risen Christ As a Trans-historical Protean Reality


5 Lent   B          March 25, 2012     
Jer. 31:31-34      Ps. 51:11-16        
Heb. 5:1-10        John 12:20-33     

  The writer of the Gospel of John records an agriculture metaphor from the mouth of Jesus is our Gospel reading today.  “Unless a seed of wheat dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”
  If I were to expand that metaphor to understand the various Christian social realities that have come into social expression during the last 2000 years, I might say that the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a seed has become an entire forest of trees.  The one acorn of the life of Jesus that developed within the community of Judaism has now become a great forest of community trees.
  We now live in an Anglican/Episcopal tree of Christianity with many branches that exists in a forest of other trees all claiming one acorn or seed person as the origin and inspiration of our corporate life together.  That there are different kinds of Christian trees in this great forest is seen as a scandal of division to some, but to others the diversity of trees has to do with the different kinds of success of the message of the Gospel in different times, different places with different people.  Should we be surprised that from one acorn an entire forest of trees can arise?  Should we be surprised that from one genius in human history, the genius of Jesus Christ, that an entire forest of Christian communities has developed?  For people who want a forced unity of a mono-lingual Christianity, a world-wide Christian Empire, the great forest of Christian diversity is scandalous division.  But for those who attribute the success of Christianity to the ability to become diverse expressions in different places, such people see this diversity as a major reason for the success of the Christian Gospel.
  The Gospel of John is written long after the life of Jesus of Nazareth but it uses narrative teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to teach the theological practice of an established Christian community.  The writer of the Gospel is trying to weave together the relationship of what had already happened within the community of beloved disciple with the oral tradition of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  The writer is trying to answer this question.  How did the fame of Jesus of Nazareth extend way beyond Jerusalem, Galilee and the Jewish Community?  The writer of John’s Gospel is also actually writing you and me into the Gospel.  How so?  The Gospel declares Jesus of Nazareth to be identified with the Word of God.  And so Word of God is a Person who speaks the oral words of language.  And yet the spoken words of Jesus had no infallible technology of memory; oral tradition is not very exact when compared with our recording technologies of today.  The writer of John’s Gospel used written words of language as a significant technology of memory. About the authors own words, the writer wrote: “These words are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”  This is where you and I enter into the Gospel of John because we are readers, and in reading the Gospel of John we help fulfill the Jeremian prediction of the laws of God being written or inscribed upon our hearts.
  The writer of John’s Gospel is tracing the fame or glory of Jesus.  How did this singular individual Jesus of Nazareth attain fame or glory beyond his time and place?  Why did this community of John continue to meet together in memory of Jesus even when Jerusalem had been sacked and leveled and when the followers of Jesus had scattered into many cities?  Ephesus is often believed to be the community of location for the writing of the Gospel of John, and it is far from Jerusalem.
  And so the Risen Christ was an always present oracle that spoke within the followers of Jesus, and the Risen Christ inspires a teaching in story form about the origins of his fame and glory.  The Greeks who came to Jerusalem saying, “We wish to see Jesus” are all of us who have come to manifest a curiosity about this person who is not really of our time and place.  We have been those who have said in various ways, “We wish to see Jesus…we wish to wonder about his relevance to our lives….we wish to share the relevance of his life to others.” 
  And so the writer of John’s Gospel is reflecting upon the origin of the fame and glory of Christ that was significant six to nine decades after Jesus was no longer present to see and touch.  How indeed can people have this trans historical experience and presume to know a person who is no longer present to sight and touch and face to face questioning?
  What we can say about Jesus of Nazareth in his appearances in the lives of people after he lived, is that Jesus is perhaps the most protean personality of all history.  Proteus was the Greek god who could morph into any form in order to avoid having to predict the future.  The word protean has come to mean, “becoming all things to all people.”  Jesus as the Risen Christ has truly become protean; he has become available in all of the forms that the words which are written on our hearts can become.
  Jesus as the Risen Christ has died to the limitations of being a historical person located in the body of Jesus of Nazareth so that his message and law of love can now be written upon the hearts of everyone who wants to partake of this protean presence of the Risen Christ.  Can any of us deny the protean reality and fame of Jesus of Nazareth?
  If we deny this protean reality of the glory and fame of Christ, you and I are to be most pitied for being at this altar today to find the Risen Christ in the bread and the wine.  And if we are finding the protean presence of Christ in bread and wine, where else are we finding the loving presence of God so lovingly communicated to us in such individual and personal ways that we are drawn to respond and worship and say, Thank you, O God in Christ?
  You and I may not hear audible angelic voices declare about Jesus, “I have glorified the name of God and will continue to do so for ever” but the proof of history as redounding to the glory and fame of the protean Risen Christ is more significant proof than angelic voices from heaven.
  The writer of the Gospel of John wrote his community’s experience of the protean Risen Christ as originating in the life of  Jesus of Nazareth and in so doing, he wrote your experience of Christ and mine, and everyone’s experience of Jesus into this Gospel too.  Viva la difference!  Viva the protean manifestations of the Risen Christ.  God’s glory has been achieved even as the law of Christ’s love and presence has been written upon our heart.  And to this we can only say, “Thanks be to God!”  Amen.

Puppet Show: Seed Cemetery


Gospel Puppet Show
March 25, 2012


Pam, the gardener, Stuart as Jesus, Catherine as Miriam, Caroline as Gully the sea gull


Pam is in front of the theatre, hoeing her garden.  In her garden there are little tomb stones in a row.  One Tomb stones reads, Beans: RIP.  Another tombstone reads: Peas: RIP.  Another reads Corn: RIP

Miriam: Hi, Miss Pam what are you doing?

Miss Pam:  It is spring time and so it is time to prepare my garden.  And as you see my garden is like a graveyard.  I have done lots of burying in my garden.

Miriam:  Burying?  Does that mean someone has died?

Miss Pam: Well not someone but something is going to die soon.  That is why I put up the tomb stones.  I’ve made one for the peas, the corn and the beans.

Gully:  Hi, Miss Pam, I hope you didn’t bury all of the seeds.  If I see a seed, I will fly down and eat it.  While you are hoeing the ground could you dig up some worms for me to eat.  Yum, yum, I like worms.   Do the children like worms;  I hope not because that will be more for me.

Miss Pam:  Gully, you stay away from my seeds.  I’ll have to put up a scare crow to keep you away.  But I do have some bread crumbs for you to eat.

Gully:  Thanks, Miss Pam.  But I’m like Miriam I don’t understand why you have tomb stones on the rows in your garden.  For me a garden means life, not death.

Miriam:  Yes, I still don’t understand your tomb stones in the garden.  It is kind of sad or silly.  Please explain what you are doing.  This is spring and it is not like Halloween when we do spooky things.  Why are you doing spooky things in your garden?
  

Miss Pam:  Well, I bought packages of little seeds.  And they are very tiny and I bury them in the ground.  And when I put them into the ground, the seeds are going to die.

Miriam: They are not going to die; they are going to become roots, stem and plants and vegetables.  How are they going to die?

Miss Pam: In two weeks if we were to dig into the ground here would we find the seeds?

Gully:  I don’t know what we would find? 

Miss Pam:  Did you know that Jesus talked about seeds dying in the ground and he said that his life would be like a seed that would die in the ground?

Miriam:  That sounds like a riddle to me.  How can we understand this riddle?

Miss Pam:  Maybe we could pray and ask Jesus to help us learn the meaning of his riddle.

Gully: Okay, Dear Jesus, please come and help us to understand your riddle about the seeds.

Miriam: Yes, Dear Jesus, please come.  We want to know the meaning of the dying seeds.

(Jesus appears)

Jesus:  Hello, Miss Pam, Gully and Miriam, I heard your prayers.  Did you call for me?

Miriam:  Yes, Jesus, we want to know the meaning of your riddle about the dying seed and your life?

Jesus:  Okay, I did say that my life was like a dying seed.  And this is what I mean.   Look at the pictures of the seed in the ground.  See in the first one, the little seed breaks and out pops a little tail.  Do you see it?  Do you know what happens to this little tail?

Gully:  No, what happens?
 F
Jesus:  It becomes the root.  And the root drinks in water and food from the ground called minerals.  And then look what happens, the top of the tail breaks out of the ground and it becomes a green shoot.  But the case of the seed is now like a hat on the head of the plant.  And when the head of the plant grows leaves then the seed case falls to the ground.  And the case is dead just like a cocoon is dead after the butterfly has left it.

Miriam:  But Jesus, how was your life like a dying seed?

Jesus:  Well, Miriam, you know that I died upon the cross?  But when I died did the world forget all about me like they would forget about this dead case of the seed?

Gully:  No, Jesus, you weren’t forgotten.  You became more famous after you died.

Jesus: Yes, that is true, Gully.  You see I was like the seed that became the root and the plant and the leaves.  Why?

Miss Pam:  Is that because you came back to life again?

Jesus: Yes!  And now I am alive in the lives of everyone who invites my Spirit to live in them.  I have become like a great tree; I am not like the seed anymore.  My life died but now I live again like a great tree, because I am now with all people who invite me to be in their lives.

Miriam:  Thank you Jesus for explaining the riddle for us.

Gully:  Boys and girls, do you understand the riddle now?  Do you see that a seed that dies becomes much more life in the root and the leaves?

Miss Pam:  That’s right!  Thank you Jesus for explaining the riddle to us.  Okay, I have to get back to burying my seeds!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Collecting Seeds or Growing Plants?


5 Lent   B          March 25, 2012     
Jer. 31:31-34      Ps. 51:11-16        
Heb. 5:1-10        John 12:20-33     

  Several times in the Gospels, it is written that Jesus did not have honor in his own home, in his own time and in his own country.  And that is usually true of great innovators; they encounter great resistance in their own time and place.
  I have tried to use that same argument with my wife and children in the past—brilliant but misunderstood—and they tend to cite my cantankerousness rather than my brilliance.
  Another truth of history is that when we die, we become something other than what we were in our own time.  Why?  Because context changes everything.
  In their own contexts, Jesus and Paul did not get that exorcised over the common practice of slavery.  For many, many years, Americans did not get too exorcised over slavery or women’s rights; there was no context for a message of equal justice to be heard.  So contexts can indeed change drastically the meaning a person’s life and the meaning of their values.
  I believe that the New Testament books are proof of how contexts changed the meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  In short, after Jesus was gone, he became much better known than he ever was when he actually lived.  So, the fame of Jesus after he was gone superseded the fame that he had in his own time.  And the Gospel writings involve the attempt to connect his post-resurrection fame with the oral traditions of his actual life.   And we never really know how much of his actual life we are reading about or how much of the lives of his interpreters.  It is all mixed together and it is very hard or impossible to sort out.
  What we can observe historically is that a major shift in understanding Jesus occurred when Gentile followers of Jesus began to outnumber vastly the Jewish followers of Jesus.
  Since Jesus was a Jew with a message for Jews in his own time, how can the future Gentile context for Christianity be interpreted and seen in the life of Jesus?  If we understand this, we understand a major motivation for all of the New Testament writings.  If this were not the case, then Rabbis in synagogues today might be reading some of the New Testament writings as commentaries upon a particular messianic interpretation of Jesus.
  So the Gentile context changed the understanding of the significance of the life of Jesus Christ.  And we see that the writer of the Gospel of John understands this in writing close to the end of the first century and into the early second century about 6 -9 decades after Jesus.
    In John’s Gospel we have read about Greeks who came and wanted to see Jesus.  This occurs right after the account of the resurrection of Lazarus.  It is not surprising that Gentiles or that anyone would be interested in resurrection.  Resurrection is the El Dorado, the secret to eternal life.  Resurrection was the founding event of Christianity.  When the Greeks came to seek Jesus, the writer of the Gospel of John pens the discourse of Jesus about his glory or his ultimate fame.   And of course the ultimate fame of Jesus happened after he was gone.  The Gospel writer is trying to explain how the potentially famous Jesus became the actually famous risen Christ.
  And when one talks about potentiality one can use the metaphor of the seed.
  When someone invites you to their home to show you their gardening ability, they don’t take you into the garage and show you a massive supply of seeds that they have been keeping on the shelf.  They show you the results of the seeds; they show you the plants, the flowers and the trees.  They show you the plants that can reproduce many more seeds out of the one seed that was planted in the ground and died.    When one seed dies, it provides the next generation of life and many, many future generations of life.
  Why didn’t Jesus get left in the forgotten museum of history?  The purpose of Roman crucifixion was to make a person forgotten forever to the life of people.
  Jesus was lifted up on the Cross.  The Romans thought that by lifting Jesus up on the Cross, they could create a spectacle and so discourage any devotion to him.   On the cross the Romans lifted Jesus up to public ridicule; but when the seed of his body was planted in the ground, his resurrection gave birth to the Christ-life within the hearts of countless millions of people who came after him.
  The Roman and Gentile context that killed him, eventually was totally converted by him.   When we read the Gospel passion story, the writers seem to blame the Jews more for the death of Jesus, when it really was the Roman authorities who had all of the power.  This is an indication that by the time the Gospels were written, the Roman citizenry were the ones who were filling the ranks of the Christian communities.
  We come into an understanding of the phrase: Losing our lives to save them.   If a seed remains a seed forever, it has effectively lost its life.  So conserving is dynamically opposed to the nature of life.  We never make our potential actual, if we try to conserve a static state.  It is only through that continual loss of former states to gain future states that we can activate the dynamic gift and purpose of our lives.
  The message Jesus is very much in opposition to museum religion, where we try to hold things as static artifacts of the past, and we end up making our lives museum pieces that are alienated from the realities of our actual lives.
  So context changes everything.  Jesus, the Christ, became something else in the Gentile world than he was in his original Jewish context.  The New Testament writings, focus their interpretation on a suffering messiah in contrast to other interpreations of the messiah in the Jewish community and so the writings exist as a result of the split between Judaism and Christianity.  The New Testament chronicles the gradual shift of seeing Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew amongst Jews, to seeing the risen Christ as a Son of humanity and Son of God amongst all of the people of the known world.
  In the history of Christianity, we have seen many changes in the last two thousand years.  Historical contexts change the application of Christian meaning and yet still claim the original Jesus as the chief source of inspiration.
  In the history of my own life, the changing context of my life means that I understand Christ differently now than I understood him when I was sixteen, yet I am the same person who encompasses the diversity.
  I have become different in my later states than what I was in my former states.  So I have lost a lot; I have died to former states of how the understanding of my life has been constituted; but I have gained new states of understanding.
  The seed dying in the ground and giving rise to new generations of life is a metaphor for the life of Jesus becoming the life of the risen Christ.
  It is also a metaphor for the process of life itself.  Life is moving; pretending that we can remain static is but a state of denial.  Another word for this process of renewal is called repentance.  We are constantly being challenged to give up former states of how we constituted the understanding of our lives and take on new understandings and new purpose.
  The witness of Jesus Christ invites us to a realistic view about change in life; it invites us to expect the losses caused by change.  But the witness of Christ also offers us the hope of great gain in what we will yet become.  And this hope is anchored on the resurrection of Christ.
  Let us embrace the hope of great gain; the seeds of the past has split their sheathes and become surpassing life.  This kind of self-surpassing life is the life of repentance to which we are invited by the witness of Jesus Christ.  Amen.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Puppet Show: The Serpent Lifted Up


Gospel Puppet Show
March 18, 2012


Asha, Moses, Jesus, Nicodemus,   Boy: Asa,  


Asha: How many of you like snakes?  It is very easy to be afraid of snakes, since some of them are poisonous.  Today, I want us to learn something from our Bible stories.  And we have stories about snakes and about Christ.  But I’m going to have the puppets help me tell the stories.  Moses, are you around?


Moses: Here I am, can I help you.  I’m quite busy now.

(Release the snakes over the front of the puppet theatre)

Asa:  Ouch, I am so sick;  I got bit by a poisonous snake.  Can you help me Moses what shall I do?


Moses: Asa, you need to go over to the clinic; I prayed to God and God sent us a cure for the snake bites.

Asa:  Okay….ooooh this hurts so much and I’m getting drowsy.

Moses:  Hurry over to the clinic.

Asha:  Moses what happened?

Moses: We had some people who were complaining so they decided that they wanted to take a short cut and sure enough they walk right into a valley of poisonous snakes.

Asha: What did you do? 

Moses:  I prayed to God and he told me to make a snake out of bronze and put it up high so everyone can see it.  And he said that everyone who was bitten by a snake could look up at the bronze snake and ask God for help.

(put up the snake pole)

Asha:  What happened?

Moses: Well, you can see that I put the bronze snake up on a tall pole and sure enough when people look up they are being cured.  Well, I’ve got to go.

Asha: Thank you Moses.  I hope everyone prays to God for a cure.

      And now I think this will help us with our story about Jesus.  Remember that the snake was lifted up on a pole and everyone who looked at the snake and prayed to God got better.


(Nicodemus appears)

Asha:  Well, hello!  Who are you?

Nicodemus:  My name is Nicodemus.  I was just talking with my friend Jesus.  Jesus, could you come and meet my friend Asha, and all of the boys and girls?

Jesus:  Hello, Asha and boy and girls.  I hope you are here today to learn something.  Did you learn about the snakes from Moses?

Nicodemus:  Jesus and I were talking and he told me that God really loved this world.

Jesus:  That is true Nicodemus.  God does love this world.  God created the world so God loves the world.

Nicodemus:  But how much does God love the world?  There are lots of things that are sad that happen in this world?  How does God love a world with people who are sometimes sad?

Jesus:  God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son to this world.  And just as Moses lifted the bronze snake to save the people from their snake bites, the Son of God will suffer by being lifted up on a cross.  And anyone who looks with faith in Christ’s love for us will live again even after they die.

Nicodemus: Well, that’s really salvation.  One kind of salvation is being saved from snake bites, but the saving of our lives after we die is a most wonderful salvation.


Asha:  Wow!  That really is salvation.  And that means that God really loves us.  Girls and boys, can you remember how much God loves us?  Let us all say together, “Thank you God for loving us!”  “Thank you God for sending your Son Jesus.”  Amen.

John 3:16 As Evangelical Graffiti?



4 Lent             March 18, 2012  
Numbers 21:4-9  Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10   John 3:14-21


  

  Probably anyone who has watched a televised sporting event has at times seen a spectator holding a sign: John 3 colon 16.  Or John 3:16.  Tim Tebow, a quarterback has worn John 3:16 as eye shade when he plays football as a way of telling people about his personal Christian beliefs.  Displaying John 3:16 is a way for an avid evangelical Christian to mix a love for sports with the requirement of his piety to always be evangelizing.  So while watching golf shots, home runs and touch downs, the evangelical Christian sports fan can be evangelizing. (One may often wonder if in our sports crazed culture whether people actually love their sports and sports heroes more than Christ).   The most famous John 3:16 sign man was the rainbow man who wore a rainbow wig in the 70’s and 80’s and a John 3:16 tee shirt to major sporting events.  Of course in a biblically illiterate culture Jn period 3 colon 16 might be a foreign language.   But it is a code reference to all evangelical Christians about perhaps for them the most important verse in the Bible.
  I would not disagree with evangelical Christians about the importance of this verse and I think that all Christians are called to be evangelical in the sense of being ready to live in their lives and speak with their lips the good news about God’s love in Christ.  Each of us has a different way to be evangelical and we can share the good news in ways that are compatible with the gifts of our personalities.  Evangelical can be regarded to be a negative word if it means that you have to be “hell fire and brimstone” preachers or if you have to be persons who are obnoxiously wearing one's brand of religion on one's sleeves in a very pushy way.  It is something oxymoronic to be presenting “good news” in an off putting way. Some evangelicals do seem to have bad news.
 What we can say from our Gospel lesson is that the writer of the Gospel of John was evangelical, that is, the writer used a narrative about Jesus to present good news.  The target audience included non-Jews, followers of the sect of John the Baptist and other Jews who had not yet come to embrace Jesus as the Messiah.
  Since the Gospel of John was the last Gospel to come to textual form it includes some significant differences from the other Gospels.  In John there are no exorcisms, which probably means that such a practice was not a familiar method of healing for their readers.  There are no miracles in John; John uses a different word, he calls the special acts of Jesus, Signs.  As signs, the teachings about Jesus that occur within the story are more important than the particular uncanny event of the story.
  Also, there are more red letters in the Gospel of John.  In some Bibles, the words of Jesus are printed in red letters.  John’s Gospel has long discourses of Jesus with highly developed theological thinking.  Logically, one might assume that the earliest Gospels and sources would include more words of Jesus than Gospels that were written later.
  Since John’s Gospel was written much later than the other Gospels, the writer had to account for the fact that world had not yet ended with the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds.  The coming of the kingdom of heaven in the earlier Gospels has become in John’s Gospel an already happened parallel kingdom of God which was known by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  And so in the Gospel of John Passion narrative, Jesus can confidently say to Pilate, “If my kingdom were of this world, the world of Roman military power, then my angels would come and fight in your world of soldiers.”
  The Kingdom of God as having already arrived is the Good News of the Gospel of John.  Jesus promised Nicodemus that a person could be born into this kingdom by water and the Spirit. 
  In the Gospel of John, there is a great contradiction that is presented in this way.  Jesus said that his followers were to be in the world but not of the world.  They were not supposed to love the things of the world.  But in our famous Bible verse that we’ve read today, it states that God so loved the world that God gave his unique Son so that whoever believes in the Son will have everlasting life.
  So how is it that God can love the world and we cannot?  The way in which John’s Gospel deals with this contradiction is to propose that people can experience another kind of life or world within this world.  The Kingdom of God is no longer portrayed as an end of this world; it is a parallel world of God’s Spirit that we can know in this life.  So within our natural lives, we can experience abundant life, or the life of God’s Spirit, whom to know is also everlasting life or eternal life.
  The Gospel of John, like no other Gospel, presents Jesus as a person who represents most fully the life of parallel existence.  Jesus is the Eternal Word of God but he is also Jesus of Nazareth.  He is proclaimed to be the coincidence of God and Humanity in one person.  And the way that John states the good news is to inform us that we as human beings need to know how to live in parallel worlds simultaneously.  We need to live in the world of Spirit and Word as members of the Kingdom God, even while we live in very earthly and external kingdoms of this world.  The truth of this presentation is the truth of our lives; all of us have to come to know our interior lives in certain ways and their relationship to our exterior worlds. 
  The Gospel of John is trying to convince us that we can know in a significant way that our interior life is an experience of the comforting presence of God’s Spirit.  And in knowing this, we can relate to our exterior world with a motivation of God’s love for us and the comfort of God’s peace.  And even when the challenges of life present themselves, we can experience the Signs of living from our birth into the Kingdom of God.
  So here is the logic of John’s good news; God so loved the world.  How much?  He gave his unique Son, just as Abraham was willing to give his only son Isaac.  How much was God’s love?  How much was God willing to be identified with human experience?  Well, lots of people would say that death in some way expresses the completeness of natural life.  And God loved the world so much that God was willing to take a complete identity with human death.  And if God could deal with human death, then we would have an ensign or a symbol for us to look at as each of us contemplates the deaths of our loved ones and ourselves.
  So the death of Jesus was an elevated symbol of the fullness of God’s identity with human experience and gives us a place to glance to know that life continued after the death of Jesus.  There is an afterlife to Jesus. It is the Risen Christ known through the Spirit of God.  And there is an afterlife for us, because we know that there is something greater than death.
  The healing experience, the saving experience for the children of Israel who were plagued by poisonous serpents was to look at the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole.  The plague of the snakes came because of their disobedience; but the gift of healing came simply by looking in faith upon the uplifted bronze serpent.
  The writer of the Gospel of John took this story of the lifted bronze serpent and stated, “this is how the cross of Jesus functions for our spiritual lives.”  God’s life in the divine Son dies before our very eyes and yet only initiates another order of healing or salvation life, the life of resurrection, the life of the Holy Spirit, abundant life, eternal life even now as we live.
  This is the good news of the Gospel of John: we can know that God loves the world better than we can.  When we love it, we have the human tendency to linger our love into idolatry and we can lose our enjoyment of the world.
  And so in knowing a birth by God’s Spirit we can love our world in the Spirit without falling into the idolatry of addiction, and we can learn proper enjoyment so as to be able to discover what is truly good in our world and in our lives.
  Today, let us embrace perhaps the six most positive words of the entire Bible: “For God so loved the world!”   Now you don’t have to go around wearing John 3:16 signs but these six words can help us live with optimism and make us good Episcopal Evangelicals whose favorite words might be: “Preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words!”  Amen.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

A Saving Glance at the One Lifted Up



4 Lent    B         March 18, 2012  
Numbers 21:4-9  Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10   John 3:14-21
  We are familiar with serpents and healing because the American Medical Association uses the symbol of two serpents entwined around a rod.  This came from the Greco-Roman medical tradition.  The ancient myth of Aesculapius encounter with a serpent healing another serpent is the origin of the association of serpents and healing.  The habit of a snake literally resurrecting itself from it dead skin could be the inspiration for the regenerative powers associated with the snake.  The Greek word pharmakon can mean both poison and remedy.  Certainly the theory behind vaccination is to take some of the “poison” and it is a remedy in that the body builds immunity to the actual disease.
  Whether the healing serpent of Moses is related to the Greek mythological notion of the healing serpent, can not be ascertained. 
  The people of Israel, while they wandered in the wilderness toward the Promised Land, are portrayed as immature sheep and always ready to mutiny against God and their leader.  For their mutiny and their rebellion, they are often punished.  One of the punishments was a plague of poisonous serpents.
  Moses, the leader, is the patient father, who is always interceding with God on behalf of the rebellious people.  And when the plague of snakes occurred, Moses was given the remedy.  He was to place a bronze likeness of the serpent on a pole in the middle of the camp.  And those who looked at the serpent were to be healed.  “That’s stupid Moses!  Why would looking at the serpent cure me?”  The cure was not based upon rationality; the cure was based upon simply accepting God’s healing provision.
  One of the consequences of being biblically illiterate is that one misses the symbolic system that functions between the Old and New Testaments.  And if we don’t understand the symbolic system, then we cannot make sense of the meanings and methods of what the Gospel writers were trying to communicate to their communities.
  In the long discourse that is presented between the Pharisee Nicodemus and Rabbi Jesus, there is a comparison made between the cross of Jesus and Moses’ serpent upon the pole.
  Just as God wanted the Israelites to recover from their rebellion and resulting punishment by simply looking at God’s healing grace given for them, so the early Christian believed that God did not condemn people in their sin, alienation and rebellion; rather God wanted people to simply look in the direction where they might be saved or healed.
  So looking at Jesus lifted up in his death upon the cross was viewed as God's way to bring us health and salvation.
  It is a rather irrational act.  Foolishness to the wisdom of the Greeks; A stumbling block to the Jews, as St. Paul said.  It may seem ridiculous to us.
  But the essence of the Gospel is that God acts with grace to let us know that we have found favor.    We would rather say that we deserve God’s favor because we are good and we have done some good things.  It is admirable to be as good as we can and to do as much good as we can, but it isn’t our “good natures” or our “good deeds” that qualifies us in God’s sight.  God created us good, so goodness is an act of God, and when we depart from goodness in our nature and acts, it does not remove from us the original goodness in which we were made by God.
  So seeing Jesus upon the cross is simply understanding that God’s creation and God’s redemption are but God’s affirmation of our goodness and favor and acceptance.  That means it is up to us to accept the grace of God both in creation and redemption.
  This portion of John’s Gospel contains the most popular evangelical bible verse of all time: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”
  I think that the people who push the born again experience often do something that shifts the focus from God’s grace to the importance of the human decision.
  If someone offers me a million dollars; what is more important, the generosity of the giver, or my decision to take it?
  Some times the born again people think that we should celebrate the fact that we receive God’s grace even more than the generosity of God who offers us the grace.
  Yes, it is important that we receive God’s grace and it appears to be a very irrational decision to do so.  We would much rather believe in our own ability and circumstances for our salvation; but the experience of the generosity of God, and our acceptance of it is the very essence of the Gospel.
  So today, let us trumpet and highlight the grace of God’s creation and redemption, and let us simply accept it, and not trumpet our acceptance except with thankfulness to God who is the giver of all.
  God’s generosity does not make us proud Christians who are certain that our choices and ways are best; God’s generosity humbles us with thankful hearts and with joy that comes in an indescribable way.  And that is the experience of the Good News.  God in Christ is the Good News and we have the privilege to be caught up in that.  For us to reduce all of this to my church is better than yours, or my salvation is more complete than yours, is to misunderstand the generosity of God.
  Let us proclaim a generous God, who simply asks for us to give a receptive glance toward the divine grace today.  Amen.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Game Show between Moses and Jesus


Gospel Puppet Show
March 11, 2012
 Lent 3  Cycle B

Characters:
Moderator (stands in front of puppet theatre)
Moses
Jesus


Fr. Phil as Moderator:  Boys and Girls, you are invited today to a special game show.  Do you like games shows?  We have two special guests for our game show today.
And the name of this game show is: The Yes Challenge!   And what is the Yes challenge?  It is a game where you challenge a person to change a big NO! into a big YES!  And that is pretty hard to do.  Which word do you like best?  No?  or Yes?

Our first contestant is the most famous Lawman ever.  His name is Moses.  Let’s give a big hand for Moses, the Lawman!

Hello Moses, welcome to the show.  Tell us something about yourself.

Moses: Well I’m a Hebrew man who was born when our people were captive in Egypt.  But I was raised by an Egyptian princess and so I became a prince of Egypt.  But God called me to save my people from slavery in Egypt.   So I led all of my people out of the land of Egypt and God did some great things to save us.  And when we arrived at Mount Sinai, I went up and God gave me a set of rules and law for us to live by.  I have the 10 big laws written on these stones.

Fr. Phil:  Thank you Moses and good luck in the show.  And you are the great Lawman and you are on the side of the great NO.  Tell me about your challenge today.

Moses:  Well, the laws that I received begin with the most important word in the Law:  NO.  What is one of the first words a baby learns?  NO.  A parent has to say NO to a baby so a baby or child won’t hurt themselves.  So NO is the most important word in the Law.  

Fr. Phil:  And so Moses, what is your challenge today?

Moses:  My challenge is for someone to change my laws that say “NO, you can’t” into laws that say “Yes, you can.”

Fr. Phil: Your challenger today is the famous Jesus of Nazareth.  Let’s all welcome Jesus of Nazareth with a round of applause.  Jesus is not a stranger to any of us.  And he is also a good friend of Moses.  Tell us Jesus about yourself.

Jesus:  Well, I was born in Bethlehem into the household of Mary and Joseph.  But most people know me as God’s Son and Messiah.  I came to earth to tell people about God’s love.  Not everyone liked my message.  As you know, I died on the cross but I came back to life and when I left this earth I sent the Holy Spirit to be with each person.

Fr. Phil:  Jesus, you know that your friend Moses has a challenge for you.  He challenges you to change his “you can’t laws” into “you can laws.”  How do you think that you can change NO into YES?

Jesus: You know I added an eleventh commandment.  The eleventh commandments says, “Love one another as God has loved you.”  I think the way that we will turn the NO’s into Yes’s is through the power of love.

Fr. Phil:  Okay, Moses are you ready for your first challenge?  For 10 points what is your first challenge.

Moses:  My first challenge is this: Just say NO to many gods!

Fr. Phil:  That’s a good one.  Now Jesus how do you respond to this!

Jesus:  Just say Yes to the One God.  The word God means there is no one like the one.  So we can only say YES to the One God.

Fr. Phil:  (ding..ding..ding)  Good one Jesus, that’s 10 points for Jesus.  Good try Moses, what is your next challenge? For 10 points.

Moses: Don’t make any statues to worship.  Don’t worship anything in this life.

Fr. Phil:  Jesus what about not worshipping idols?

Jesus: Worship God the Creator.  If God created men and women and the world, how could anything that God created be greater than God?

Fr. Phil: (ding..ding..ding)  That a winner, Jesus!  10 more points.  What’s your next challenge Moses?  The score is 20 points for Jesus.

Moses:  You cannot work on the Sabbath, the day of prayer.  NO work on the Sabbath.

Fr. Phil:  Jesus, what do you say to this?

Jesus:  Say YES to prayer and worship and rest on the Sabbath.  Everyone needs a day of rest!

Fr. Phil:  Judges what do you say? (ding..ding…ding) Yes!  Another ten points for Jesus.  That’s 30 points now.  Moses, you’ve got a great law.  What’s next?

Moses:  How about this?  Just say NO to swearing and using God’s name in a wrong way.

Fr. Phil:  That’s are hard one.  What do you say, Jesus?


Jesus: Always use God’s name in the right way and live your life that shows that you believe in God.

Fr. Phil:  Wow!  (ding….ding…ding)  another 10 points for Jesus.  40 to nothing is the score.  Moses, don’t get discouraged.  What do you have next?

Moses: Well, this one isn’t exactly a NO!  Honor your parents!

Fr. Phil:  Honor your parents!  What do you say about that Jesus?

Jesus:  Well I agree with Moses.  Yes! Honor your parents.

Fr. Phil:  The judges are speaking in my ear piece and they say, “They’re both right!”  (ding, ding, ding, ding)  So both Jesus and Moses get 10 points for that Yes! Law.  The score is 50 to 10 now.  What next Moses?

Moses:  Well, I am going throw four quick NO….laws:  Don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t hurt people’s marriages!  Those are four big “NO-NO’s”

Fr. Phil:  Jesus, that is quite a challenge.  What is your anwer?

Jesus:  Say YES to life, respect all life!  Say Yes to Honesty and Truth!  Say Yes to respecting the property of other people!  And say Yes!  to respecting marriage!

Fr. Phil: (ding..ding..ding..ding)  That’s a clean sweep Jesus.  That Forty more points for you.  You now have 90 points.  Okay Moses, you are running out of time.

Moses:  Well, I’m down to my last challenge.  I’m losing by a score of 90 to 10.  Can I bet 90 points on this last challenge?

Fr. Phil: Let me listen to what the judges are saying….Yes you can bet 90 points on this last challenge.  If you win this challenge you will win the game.  What is your challenge?

Moses:  Okay, here I go!  Don’t covet!  Don’t be envious or jealous of other people or the things that they have.

Fr. Phil: Moses is going for the win!  What do you say Jesus?

Jesus:  Be content with what you have and be gracious about the good fortune of other people!

Fr. Phil: (ding..ding..ding..ding)  We have a winner.  90 more points to Jesus so he finishes the game with 180 points.  Great game!  You both were good sports.  What do you have to say Jesus?

Jesus: Moses and I just did this game as a  way of teaching these boys and girls about God and how they should live.  Moses and I are good friends;  When we hear the word NO in our lives, we need to find a way to say YES to all of the good things that God has given us to do.  I have sent the Holy Spirit to be in you to help give you power to say YES and do all of the good things for your life.  Boys and girls can you remember that you have power to do good things in your life?  Can you just say, YES!

Fr. Phil:  Thank you Moses and Jesus.  Let give them a big hand and thank them for what they taught us today.

The Christian Edifice Complex: Body as Temple of the Holy Spirit


3 Lent B      March 11, 2012
Exodus 20:1-17  Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25   John 2:13-22

  Doctor Freud was one who reached into Greek tragedy to name unconscious and repressed forces of what he called the Oedipus Complex.  Being one who is too easily entertained by puns, I, of course, can not resist naming the unconscious forces that influence what we feel about buildings.  That unconscious force would be called, with all apologies to Doctor Freud, the Edifice Complex.  Certainly architects in their love of buildings could be said to have an Edifice Complex but when we look at the history of Israel, we might notice an Edifice Complex in how the people of Israel have felt about their Temple.
  We might pose for us the question?  What is that makes a place, a building or a location sacred or special?  Why is that people have psychological and spiritually moving experiences in certain places or buildings?  We can talk about the sense of natural awe of places; the majesty of the ocean or of the mountains or of places like the Grand Canyon.  Nature awe makes certain places special because they can evoke a feeling of the sublime, a sense of our own smallness in contrast with great expanse and great power.  The sense of being dwarfed by a place makes a place special.  But what about things made with human ingenuity and hands?  What about a building?  What makes the Capitol building in Washington D.C. special?  What would Rome and the Vatican be without St. Peter’s Basilica?  What is it that makes us stand in awe when we enter a great Gothic Cathedral Church?  A Church building or Temple or Mosque is made with human ingenuity and craftsmanship and they create an enclosed environment that seems to be a microcosm of the great expansive universe.  When they are built and when they house the human activity of both private and corporate prayers they come to be called sacred space, and a place where prayers seem to have a greater sense of apparent validity.  And becoming sacred space, such buildings become very important symbols in the identity of the community of people who come to these spaces.
  If a place can become a sacred space, can it lose its sacredness?  What has happened to old stately Gothic church buildings in city neighborhoods that no longer have members to attend the building?  If they can’t become historic protected sites, they can become “secularized” or made non-sacred spaces, even though there may be people still alive who still regard their sacred experiences in those place.
  What is the nature of sacred space?  Is sacred space the special dwelling place on earth of God in a temporal location or building?  Or is it designated as sacred because of the experience of faithful people who come to gather to prayer in a certain place?  Historically probably both have contributed to the designation of a place being sacred.
  There is also something very practical about sacred places; they come into being because of what we call human institutions; such institutions are the overall organizations that can finance and develop the sacred building and provide for its up keep and for the worship activity associated with the sacred building.  Today, tourists can become very cynical when visiting the sacred places of the world.  Why?  One can go to Rome or Jerusalem and be put off by the apparent crass commercialization of all of the Holy Places.  Everything has a price and there is an entire trinket industry that lives off crowds who come to visit the sacred spaces.
  For the people who came to inhabit Palestine, Jerusalem became a holy city and what made Jerusalem a holy city was the Mount Zion where Solomon built the first Temple on the place where they believed that Abraham had been asked to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice.
  The Temple was completely destroyed when the Israelites were carried into captivity to the conquering lands of the East.  It was rebuilt under the direction of Ezra.  It went through many renovations and during the era of Jesus it was expanded as a part of a public works project supported by the Roman government.  So, lots of employment was provided for the people of Jerusalem in the Temple complex construction projects.
  Judaism and modern rabbinic Judaism had to develop different religious expressions in times when the Temple had been destroyed.  The followers of Christ developed into being able to thrive as a community of faith when the Temple was destroyed for the last time in the year 70 of the Common Era. 
  What did the sect of Christian Judaism become after the Temple was destroyed?  How did they understand themselves surviving without a Temple?  They understood that just like the Jews in a former time of being without a Temple, that God’s presence could not be limited or localized to a building.
  In the Gospel of John which was edited several decades after the Temple of destroyed, Jesus is presented as being offended by the crass commercialism of the Temple Complex.  Economics and Institutional politics were detracting from the worship focus of the Temple.  By protesting in such a way, Jesus was hitting at the source of revenue of many people in Jerusalem and such a protest would have offended both the Jews and Romans.
  Beyond our ability to know exactly what happened in the cleansing of the Temple, what we might discern is the purpose of reporting this event by the writer of John’s Gospel.  What this author is writing about in the early part of the second century is the process of mystification that took place in how the person of Jesus of Nazareth became the social reality of what we know to be the body of Christ or the church.  Here is the progression; the Temple of God’s dwelling on earth was transferred to the body of Jesus of Nazareth.  God’s presence dwelled most intensely in the body of Jesus whom Christians proclaimed as Messiah and Son of God.  And when the body of Jesus was no longer seen his body was mystically transferred to the fellowship or community of people who knew themselves to be in a continuing relationship with Jesus as the Risen Christ.  The Gospel of John states that Jesus is the Vine and his disciples are the branches as a metaphor for the inner relationship between Christ and the church.
  Today, we need not worry that much about our edifice complex with our holy places, unless they are distraction from the goal of being in communion with the risen Christ who dwells within us in a mystical way.
  Today, we are invited to know and experience the presence Christ in all of the times and places of our lives.  And following St. Paul, we are to know our own bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit.  So get used to being a nomadic temple to carry the presence of Christ into our world.  Amen.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Body of Christ; Temple of the Holy Spirit


3 Lent B      March 11, 2012
Exodus 20:1-17  Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25   John 2:13-22
  What is the United States of America?  Is it a geographical location?  Is it the citizenry?  Is it the sum total of the historical events of all of her people?  Is it the flag and all of the symbols of this corporate fiction?  America is nowhere specifically but everywhere in general and as such is a mystical body.  How do mystical or corporate groups come into being and become even more than the sum of their parts?
  The earliest writings of the New Testament are the writings of St. Paul.  In his writings one can find the development of the symbolism of the “body.”  For St. Paul, the individual body of the believer is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  Remember St. Paul’s writings were written before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70.  St. Paul also wrote that together, the followers of Jesus were being built as a holy Temple unto the Lord.  St. Paul also wrote that the church is, “The Body of Christ.”  The Eucharistic bread is the body of Christ, and when we partake of the Eucharistic bread we are participating in the dynamic process of mystification whereby we constitute the continuing body of Christ.  The symbolism of Paul and Peter and other
Christians were then placed into narratives of the life and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.  This narrative or story was an effective way of teaching the beliefs of the early church about Christ and about the identity of the church.  These teaching narratives are what we call the four Gospels.
  This is but a prelude for understanding our Gospel reading from John.  The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written with portions of it coming from perhaps as late as the first two decades of the second century.  Since it is the latest, one can expect that the theological reflection and symbols of John’s Gospel are most highly developed.  The writer uses the same technique as a historical novelist; the writer writes later practices into a former narrative as a way to illustrate and explain the origins of certain practices.  The writer of John’s Gospel already knows what has happened in the 6-8 decades after Jesus lived.
  What did the church of John’s Gospel know?  They knew that the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed.  They knew that Christians had separated from the synagogue around the year 80.  They knew that their community consisted of both Jews and Gentiles.  They knew that they could no longer see and touch Jesus, but they were fascinated and baffled that his teachings and his Spirit could still be a current reality in their lives.  They were trying to make sense of how Jesus, who had died and could no longer be seen, could be such a vital part of their experience.  They were trying to teach and explain why the reality of Christ was so real even though Jesus of Nazareth could no longer be seen.  So they used the narrative and the sayings of Jesus as a way of teaching about the reality of their current experience of the risen Christ.
  The temple in Jerusalem was the sacred dwelling place of God.  If God resided anywhere on earth, in the Hebrew religion, God resided in the holiest of Holy in the inner sanctum of the temple.  But God’s people had to face a rather stark question?  Why would God let the residing place of God on earth be destroyed?  Why would God not protect the divine place of residence on earth?  The answer to this question had been given before by the prophets.  They said if God’s priests and people profane God’s house then God would not honor them with the divine presence.  In some way, when an old paradigm in religion does not work, then an explanation must be given for a new vision of faith, a new vision of what God is now doing in this world.
  So how do we understand the symbolism in the narrative of Jesus cleansing the temple?  The Body of Jesus of Nazareth was the place where the fullness of God’s dwelling could be found; and when this body was destroyed, it was rebuilt in three days.  The body of Jesus was resurrected and became known in the experience of each follower of Jesus, who knew his or her body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.  And collectively, the early followers of Jesus knew their gathering as the continuing presence of Christ on earth, because he was resurrected and alive in their midst.  Is this myth or fiction?  I would say it is mystification.  No less than the fiction of the reality of our country, but this is the spiritual reality of the church.  How can one deny the reality or the realness of this experience if we and billions of others throughout the age have partaken of this reality of the risen Lord?  If this is but myth and fiction, then it is pretty powerful stuff.  There has been no more powerful trans-historical reality than what we have called the body of Christ.  One may deny its relevance but it is sheer denial, because one is born into the reality of risen Christ whether one knows it or not.  Two thousand plus years of the realness of Christ in the lives of people from all around the world cannot be dismissed simply by personal denial.
   Today, you and I may not teach the reality of the risen Christ in our lives in the same way in which the early church did.  And we are free to look for new metaphors and new language to tell about the reality of how God’s presences have touched our lives.  Some people use the Bible to limit how we can talk about God and Christ; I believe that Bible provides us with early models of how to talk about the reality of Christ in the hope that you and I will be inspired to find the reality of Christ in our lives within the very tapestry of our history and life experience in our time and place.
  If this Gospel teaches us anything, it teaches about God doing new things.  The temple building may have been destroyed, but God’s residence within human experience did not pass away with the destruction of temple building.  The body of Jesus was crucified on the cross and placed in a tomb; where did God reside more intensely than in the body of Jesus?  But when the body of Jesus was taken from this life, did God lose the divine residence in life forever?  Indeed not, in fact a new understanding of God was born and in that understanding God resided everywhere but especially intensely in the lives of those who intentionally invite God to be found and known in their lives.  And so God dwelling in the temple in Jerusalem, gives way to God residing in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, gives way to God residing everywhere but especially in hearts that wish to overcome estrangement from God.
  I believe that this new teaching was the old teaching; why?  Because God’s residence with us has been from creation; it has just taken a very long time for us to come to know it.
  Jesus Christ made this intention of God from creation fully known and that is our Gospel truth.  God wants to make the divine reality known in each and everyone of us.  Let us today in this Eucharist be renewed in being the body of Christ, the continued presence of Christ in our time and place.  Amen.

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