Getting Ready for an Important Guest

1 Advent  Cycle B      November 27, 2011

Is. 64:1-9     Psalm 80:1-7

1 Cor.1:1-9   Mark 13:24-37

  Do you ever ask you mom or dad,  "When is my birthday?"  And you are so excited about your birthday arriving that your mom puts an X on each day as you count down the days until your birthday.

  In the church we do a count down to Christmas because whose birthday is Christmas?  It’s the birthday of Jesus.

  Today is the First Sunday of Advent.  This is the first day of the Christian New Year.  So Happy New Year to you.

  And in Advent, we have a special way of counting down till Christmas.  We use the Advent Candles on the Advent Wreath.  You can make one of these for your home too.  It is a good way to count down the time till Christmas.

  There are five candles here.  And we light one new candle each week.  And on Christmas Eve we light, the big white candle in the middle for the birthday of Jesus.

  The season of Advent is a Season of practice.  It is when we get ready to welcome the most important guest in the world.

  When does your house usually get cleaned the best?  When you have some guests coming for dinner or for a visit, right?  When a guest is coming, your parents ask you to clean up your room real well, don’t they?

  In the Season of Advent, we are supposed to be getting our world ready for a visit from someone very important.  We are supposed to be getting our world ready for a visit from Christ.

  How do we get our world ready for the visit of Christ?

  We get ready by showing God how much we care for one another.  We get ready by showing God that we love one another, by helping the poor and the sick and the people who are sad and suffering.

  So we have four weeks to get ready for Christmas.  Let us do some special things in these four weeks to show God that we are ready for a visit from Christ.  Amen. 

Hope's Visualizations and Pain Management

1 Advent Cycle b      November 27, 2011

Is. 64:1-9     Psalm 80:1-7

1 Cor.1:1-9   Mark 13:24-37

Lectionary Link

  When does your house get really cleaned? Well, my house usually gets cleaned the best when we know that someone is coming for a visit, when someone is coming for dinner.

  Horror of horrors….we don’t want people to know the conditions that we tolerate on a daily basis.  And a drop in visitor exposes the scam that prevails regarding having the house in order.

  I think that every family needs an eccentric aunt or uncle who is a constant threat to drop in at anytime for a visit.  Just the threat of such a visit would help to keep the house perpetually clean and that would be cheaper than hiring a cleaning service.

  Imagine that the greatest guest of all, God, might be the surprise visitor who could drop in at anytime for a visit to our earthly home.  What sort of conditions would our surprise Visitor find in a visit to our earthly home?

  If that Visitor were to come now, what would be found?  A country and world in economic woes…A world with wars…A world with terrorists who believe the developed countries are an Empire that must be struck at by targeting innocent people…a world that has genocide, starvation and the pervasive presence of disease, a world of people protesting crooked governments and economic structures.  A world that could use all of its energy fighting natural disasters and human caused environmental disasters but fearfully over- invests in weaponry. 

  Do we really want our divine Visitor to make a sudden visit to our greatly disordered house?

  The salvation history contained in the biblical writings is a history of God’s people trying to make sense and purpose in a world that often experienced disorder.

  Natural disasters were so great and so difficult to explain that the ancient people often attributed them to God’s wrath.  That tradition continues today with certain preachers.  The problem is this: How can anyone be certain about whom the wrath is directed towards?  Some preachers are so sure that they know who the bad guys are.  The problem is that natural disasters are not accurate smart bombs; lots of children and innocent people get harmed in the “collateral” damage.  One does not see pin point accuracy towards the bad guys in natural disasters.  And we, as merely human, make our judgments about who is good and who is bad and sometimes we are very biased in our judgments.

   The Old Testament explanation of disaster and suffering was to posit that such disaster was an expression the wrath of God.  If God indeed is such a powerful God and one who is always interfering in the affairs of the world through such disasters, then the wrath of God is a logical interpretation of why bad things happen to us. 

  But it is a mistake to use events in nature as a sign of God’s wrathful power; It is better to acknowledge the significant freedom that is abroad in the created order.  It is a mistake to underestimate the significant freedom that humanity has to cause pain and to relieve pain.

  Scholars think that the church that wrote the last version of Mark’s Gospel was a church of believers who faced martyrdom in time of the Emperor Nero.  And so the Marcan church was in need of some “pain management.”

  I think that it would be safe to say that the Bible is a book full of “pain management,” since many of the people in Bible times had to deal with situations of incredible pain and suffering.  They needed a vision of a light at the end of their dark tunnel of pain.  They needed to believe that justice would triumph in the end.  They needed to know that their brave witness of faith was not offered in vain.

  In the Bible there is a type of literature that is called apocalyptic, or visualizations about the end of life as we know it.  The apocalyptic genre of literature was generated in suffering communities.  Its presence marks the visualizations of suffering community as they try to give their hope a specific narrative. 

  A child at a cancer treatment center is encouraged to visualize by drawing pictures of his fight with cancer.  And one can see that the imaginations of children create heroes to fight for them.  Armies and angels are imagined in the fight against the unseen but very real cancer.

  Adults too, are encouraged to “visualize” endings of their pain.  They too need to imagine angelic heroes fighting a fight against the pain of their lives.  We use creative visualization to provide a narrative for hope to help survive some difficult times.  Our visualized images are less significant than the truth of the hope that we have in such times of suffering.

  For the early Christians, the pain was real for certain people who faced persecution, but not all Christians faced persecution.  Since the persecution was unevenly spread, the fear of persecution must have been as bad as the persecution itself.

  How are people who are living with real threats to their lives and with the fear of threats to their lives….How indeed are these people supposed to live by faith and hope?

  The answer was given:  If one is going to fear, then fear one who is truly worthy to fear. Fear God and God’s sudden coming as the Son of Man.

  Can you see the strategy of the Gospel words?  If Christians were taught to fear God and the suddenness of the divine coming, then with the preparation of their hearts and minds they could cope with the suffering and the fear of suffering that was so much a part of the early Christian communities.

  So the Advent message for us today is this:  Be prepared.  Live in a state of alertness, because the divine guest could arrive at anytime.

  So what will the divine guest find on a sudden visit?  Will the Son of Man find us caring for one another?  Will the Divine Guest find us taking good care of our environment?  Will our future Judge find our earthly home in order?

  Just as we want our home to be ready and presentable to entertain a sudden drop in guest, so too we should live our lives as those who are ready for the Divine Guest to visit us.

  And the respect that we have for the Divine Guest should be so great, that we honor the divine presence more than we honor wealth or fame or fear in our lives.

  If God is our end, and a sure future guest, then we need not live in fear of being the potential or actual targets of the collateral damage that can happen to us in this life.

  Fear God and God’s possible visit and be prepared.  If we live in this state of readiness, we will find ourselves better suited to face the ambiguity of the events of our lives.

  The Gospels called people of old to a state a readiness in their dire straits.  The Gospel still calls us to a state of readiness to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man.

  Visualization was good for pain management then; it is good for both pain and pleasure management today.  And so the Gospel is this: Be prepared and always visualize God as coming as a surprise Guest.  Amen. 

This Too, Is My Body!

 Lectionary Link

Click for Audio >Sermon.11.20.2011

Last Sundy of  Pentecost: Christ the King Cycle A  proper 29 November 20, 2011

Ezek. 34:11-16, 20-24     Ps.100       

Eph. 1:15-23      Matt. 25:31-46

  Imagine a King who becomes aware of the lack of welfare and civility in his kingdom.  The nobility use their positions of proximity to the royal family to mistreat, ignore and neglect the poor peasants who work the land and provide the revenues for the wealthy.

  Imagine an enlightened king who is troubled by the conditions in his kingdom and so he decides to sneak out of the palace and disguise himself as a poor peasant, just to see how a peasant gets treated.

  And what he finds is that some people treat him well and some treat him with cruelty in his disguised role as a peasant.

  He returns to the palace and calls to the palace each person with whom he interacted as a peasant in disguise.  And he confronts some about their bad behavior.  And he says to one why did you shove that poor peasant to the ground when all he was doing was asking for directions?  I want you to know that I was that poor peasant whom you shoved to the ground.

  To another he said, why did you share your meager meal with that poor peasant who knocked on your door?  And you did it without even knowing that in fact you were feeding your king.

  This scenario is akin to the parable of Jesus that we have read today and in this parable we have a metaphor of a truly sacramental event.

  The church proclaims sacraments as ways to experience the presence of Christ.  But often in practice they have become religious rules so that the church can organize and administrate its membership for the benefit of the church.

  This parable of Jesus gives us a different metaphor for the experience of the real presence of God and the Real presence of Christ.

  Jesus presents God as one who confounds us with counter-logic.  God sees incredible suffering and inequity in this world so what does God do?  God says, “I am going to take a complete identity with those who are powerless and marginalized and those in need and then I am going to see how those with wealth and power and ability respond to my disguised presence within the needy.”  And we might have to admit our easy religious behaviors:  “But God, it’s much easier for me to experience Christ in the little wafer at the altar on Sunday.  After all Jesus did say, this is my body!”

  Well, apparently Jesus is also saying about the needy people in this world, “These are my bodies, my suffering bodies, please come and experience my presence with the suffering people of this world.”  And by the way, when we suffer, we too become the enhanced presence of Christ that begs to be experienced by someone who can provide us comfort and relief, and so know the presence of Christ in response to our suffering.  Christ is on both sides of suffering and relief.  Christ is present in the suffering one; Christ is present in the loving action of the one who responds to the one in need.

  This is the true dynamic of the sacramental life as proposed by Jesus of Nazareth.  And the reason we play church on Sunday with our sacraments, is so that we can get into the dynamics of the real sacramental life: Christ in one who suffers meeting Christ in the responder.

  This is how Jesus presented God’s agenda for our world.  And it is an agenda that is meant to inspire us to be the favorite way for God to intervene in this world, namely through the likes of you and me.  Now what kind of God would entrust us with such a responsibility?  The same God who inspired our baptismal covenant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?  The Answer:  I will with God’s help.  Let me hear you say that with conviction: I will with God’s help!  Amen.  

Kleptocracies, Fear, Faith and Investment

22 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 28,  November 13, 2011

Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13

Lectionary Link

God be in our heads and in our understanding; God be in our eyes and in our looking; God be in my mouth and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our thinking; God be at our end and at our departing.  Amen.

  Each day we are given an update on what is now just reduced to three letters: OWS, or occupy Wall Street.  In the complexity of our postmodern world, we are not really sure about cause and effect of a general resentment growing amongst diverse populations of people around the world.  One can note what is called the Arab Spring in the Middle East.  There have been worldwide movements against governmental and economic elites sometimes called kleptocracies, or social orders established that results in the few to be able to steal from the many.  We’ve seen kleptocrats fall in Algeria, Egypt and Libya.  And now with the rising influence of lobbyists in our political process, it could be that the so-call developed Western World is now experiencing their own varieties of kleptocracy.  Or at least that is how lots of people are beginning to characterize the situation.

  Now why would I as a preacher and not an economist want to wade into this volatile topic at all?  Well there is certain biblical permission given to a preacher, even in the lessons for today.  The people of the Bible were not strangers to oppression.  Deborah the famous judge came to prominence in a time of oppression.  This hopelessness of economic oppression is expressed in the Psalm for today: “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt.  Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.”   O God, too many people have been losing for much too long; please deliver us.

  But then we arrive at the Gospel of the day, and this wisdom teacher Jesus who we know to use nature metaphors, fishing metaphors, and agricultural metaphors in his parables, also uses a sort of Wall Street metaphor of investment.  And his parable does not seem to be very favorable for the timid investor.  There is a phobia called Plutophobia, the unhealthy fear of wealth. (I think my wife and children believe that I’ve had this phobia for years).   A related fear is Chrometophobia or the fear of money.  And so the poor soul who took his one measly talent and buried it in ground ends up having his talent taken away from him and given to the adventurous and successful investor.  And he did so because of his fear.  But was his fear, a fear of money or the fear of his master?  One might say that he suffered from tyrannophobia, an unhealthy fear that  his master was a tyrant.

  Can we take from this parable that Jesus would be on the side of the hedge fund managers of Wall Street?  After all, they are successful investors.  When we read this parable with the predominance of the words of Jesus on behalf of the poor, it seems that there is another meaning in this investment parable.  Remember Jesus said it was hard for the rich to inherit the kingdom of heaven.  He also said that one could not serve God and Wealth.  In various places he encourages people to give away their possessions to those who need them.  He also taught us to build up treasures for ourselves in heaven and not on earth.

  So what are we to make of this parable?  Does the parable make transparent the cruel dynamic of life known as the principle of atrophy?  Use it or lose it?  Natural and spiritual gifts are distributed in various forms to everyone and each person has the choice to go the path of development or atrophy.  Each community has the choice to go the path of development or atrophy.  In parish communities one often hears about the 80/20 rule.  And what this means is that 80 percent of time, talent and treasure are given and performed by 20 percent of the people.  This means those who do not exercise their time, talent and treasure lose their portion of grace to minister. The ministry ends being done by those who are willing to fully invest their time, talent and treasure.  That is often the how the investment dynamics happens within a community.

  We might want to look for the source of motivation in the development of our spiritual gifts.  In the parable we are told that the man who hid his talent did so because he feared his master.  That might point us to the ambiguous use of the word “fear” in the Bible.  In short there is good fear and bad fear; there is a paralyzing phobia fear or forms of anxiety that inhibit positive actions.  When it is written in the Bible, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” this kind of fear is a reverential awe based upon a deep respect of God.  In the development of our gifts, we need to convert our negative fears of life in order to take the risks needed to develop our gifts.  When religion promotes a fearful image of God that inhibits development then religion is misrepresenting God.  The opposite of fear is faith; faith is that attitude in living when we know that God is a loving investor in humanity.  If we can believe that God is a loving investor in us, we can with faith develop our gifts to their full capacity.

  I do not think this parable give carte blanche to those who use tyranny or laws to preside over kleptocracies to concentrate the majority of wealth into the hands of the few.  The gifts or talents are the heavenly treasures that we are given to develop so that we can bring things from the inner kingdom of love into our outer world.  If we are growing in love, joy, peace, faith, self-control and kindness, surely at the very minimum it means providing a fair access for everyone to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the basic forms of happiness that includes food, clothing, shelter, safety, health care and human dignity.  The rising of resentment around our nation presents us with the further challenge of Americanizing capitalism to further fulfill our own basic American ideals; but beyond that we are to develop our spiritual gifts to Christianize our economic system to be expressive of love, faith and kindness.  If we perform the free market system as an amoral  survival-of-the-fittest system where only the strong are allowed to survive; this is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ.  A system that has misanthropic effects ultimately plants the seeds of its own demise.

  Let us in our worship and faith know God as a loving God who has invested in the likes of you and me and who asks us to invest in each other for our common good.  Let us use the signs of our current public discontent to be the opportunity for us to become more Christ-like in the development of all of the gifts that God has given to us and to the people of our world.  Amen.

Does Luck Favor the Prepared?

Lectionary Link

21 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 27,  November 6, 2011

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25  Psalm 78

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13

  When we read the Bible it is important to know when and how to be literal.  If we are literal in the wrong way, we can come up with presenting biblical faith in some very unbelievable ways.

  In the Bible we can the find the writings of people of faith who were dealing with the great issues of life.  How do we express our faith when we are confronted with the great issues of life?

  The church members in Thessalonica in the time of the Apostle Paul were confronted with a faith dilemma.  They lived in a time when St. Paul had taught them that the Day of the Lord would soon occur.  But before this day occurred, some of the members of the Thessalonian church died and this troubled the surviving Christians.  What would happen to those who died before the Day of the Lord occurred?  Would they not experience the event of the Day of the Lord with those who still lived?   St. Paul wrote a letter to address the worries that the Thessalonians had about their faithful departed brothers and sisters.

  The issue of the death of our loved ones is always a poignant issue.   And it is hard not to think about their continued existence in some manner.

  As parents we often had to deal with questions about death posed by young children about a grandparent or a pet.  And what is the motive of our hearts when we try to comfort our children?  Our motive is driven by the desire to comfort our children, but what sort of language do we often produce?  Where’s grandma?  She’s now in heaven baking cookies.  Where grandpa?  Papa is playing golf with Peter in heaven.  And Rover, he’s retrieving balls thrown to him over and over again by St. John.

  And when we produce such language, where is the literal truth to be found?  How could we know about Grandma making cookies in heaven, or Papa playing golf with St. Peter, or Rover retrieving balls thrown by St. John?  We can’t know such things so where is the literal truth to be found?  The literal truth is to be found in the motive that we have to want to comfort our children; not in the statements that we produce.

  St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about the call of the archangel and the sound of the trumpet and the living and the dead being caught up together in the air to meet the Lord.

  But what is the literal truth of this writing of St. Paul?  Since a literal rapture did not occur in the time of Paul, it turns out that they just feared fear itself.  Is the literal truth found in the phrases of imagination or is the most literal truth of this writing Paul’s concern about his grieving friends?  I would assert to you that it is Paul’s desire to comfort his grieving friends.  With wisdom, we can discern what is truly literal about the Bible and in this case, it is Paul’s desire to comfort his grieving friends.

  With wisdom Jesus told parables about an issue for all people of faith.  Can we encounter God in our lives?  How does it happen?  Is it just a matter of good luck?  The literal meaning of the parables of Jesus was his effort to convince his listeners about the kingdom of God.

  One of the most important cultural events and rites of passage in any culture is a wedding.  Jesus told parables about weddings to give insights about the kingdom of heaven.  One can imagine that in his time people were most confronted by the oppressive kingdom of the Roman Emperor.  King David was just an ancient legend for the people of Palestine but who inspired imaginations about a future Messiah.

  Jesus taught the kingdom of heaven as an event of discovery which people could experience even while it seemed as though other kings controlled this world.

  He used the climactic event of the wedding to illustrate his point.  In a Middle Eastern wedding the party of the groom would go to the home of the bride to bring her back to his home.  One of the roles of the bridesmaids would be to form a gauntlet of light for the immediate procession into the home of the groom.  The five wise bridesmaids were prepared and had enough oil in their lamps to fulfill their duties.  The five foolish bridesmaids did not fulfill their duty because they did not have enough oil.  It does seem rather selfish that the five wise bridesmaids would not share their oil, but then it could be that if they had, the oil of all of the lamps may not have lasted through the grand entry of the bride and bridegroom.

  In sports, coaches often speak about luck favoring the prepared.  In any effort one needs to be prepared to take advantage of fortune and opportunity.  People who do not have the light of wisdom often cannot see the opportunity when it arises.

  There is a degree of serendipity in the special events of knowing the kingdom of heaven.  How does one prepare for serendipity in life?  How does one prepare for the good opportunities in the spiritual break through events in life?  It may have something to do with the famous saying by Thomas Edison about invention: "Invention is 98 percent perspiration and 2 percent inspiration."  One must be prepared and do the work to be in the condition to experience the inspired event. 

  The hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Ramsey taught at our seminary and when asked how much he prayed each day, he replied, “I pray about two minutes” (and while he was waiting for our jaws to get off the floor) he said with a twinkle in his eyes, “but I spend two hours practicing.”  Prayer too, involves practice and preparation.

  Christians have often tried to divide events of grace and events of good works.  It is true that we cannot earn God grace and favor, but we can work and prepare ourselves as a way of being able to perceive the event of grace when it happens.

  It is true that all that we do in the work of faith does not always seem inspired.  We can get weary in our prayers, in our corporate worship and in our outreach efforts and we can forget about luck favoring the prepared.  The event of grace favors those who are prepared.

  Today, let us not grow weary in our preparation for the God-events in our lives.  The literal meaning of the parable of the five wise bridesmaids and the five foolish bridesmaids is that Jesus is concerned that we be prepared for the serendipity of our next God-event.  Amen.