Dying to Live Again and in New Ways

2 Lent B      March 4, 2012

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25  Mark 8:31-38

Lectionary Link

  Imagine that you are a rabbi who has become a follower of Jesus Christ.  And not only a follower of Jesus but a missionary apostle of Jesus Christ.  Jesus was a Jew who lived within the religious setting of Judaism.  But Rabbi Paul came to proclaim the early Christian version of Judaism and he took the message of Jesus way beyond Judaism; he took the message of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.  And in so doing, an eventual split occurred as Christianity became a distinct faith community that was no longer regarded by the Jews to be under the umbrella of Judaism.   Saul who had his name change to Paul, was on his way to Rome and he penned a letter to the church in Rome, from perhaps the city of Corinth.  He had met people from Rome who informed him about the competition in the various church gatherings in Rome.  Some followers of Jesus were Jews who thought that all followers of Christ had to adopt all of the customs of Judaism.  Some followers of Christ in Rome were Gentiles and they did not think that it was necessary to conform to all of the Jewish ritual customs, such as the dietary rules and the practice of circumcision.

  St. Paul wrote a long letter to deal with the competition between Jewish and Gentile Christians.  He used extensive argumentation to appeal to both communities to keep them together.  St. Paul used history and reason to appeal to the Jews to show how the Torah actually provided for people of faith, who were not Jews.  St. Paul asked, “Was Abraham a Jew?”  Well, no he wasn’t because he pre-existed the birth of the Israelite people.  Did Abraham have a covenant with God, even before the Israelites had a covenant with God?  Well, yes, Abraham was before Moses and the giving of the Law.  So was the faith of Abraham, without the benefit of the Law, as valid as the faith of Moses and his successors who had the benefit of the Law?  Yes, of course.  Paul’s argument is really rhetorical because he is assuming the answers are accepted by his fellow Jews.

   So how can the outcast Gentiles be accepted into the faith without the benefit of following all of the practices of Judaism?  Well, the greatest Patriarch of all, Abraham had a name-changing covenant and so did his wife.  Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah and the changing of the names signified that they would be Father and Mother of countless people, who like them, would be people of faith.  They believed God and it was accounted as being pleasing and accepted to God. The Israelite heirs of Abraham who followed the Law and accepted Christ were pleasing to God, but also the Gentiles who accepted Christ, can be pleasing to God without following all of the laws of Judaism, since they in some ways are like Abraham.

  This letter of Paul became passed around and read and preserved and it was voted into the book of Books by the later church and so Paul’s letter when read in the church, has an epitaph, “The word of the Lord.”

  And we who are neither Jews nor even Gentiles in the ways in which the people in Rome were, wondered how infallible such specific words in a particular context can be?  Perhaps what is really infallible in the Bible is the godly intent of the writers, not the specific details of words that relate to the particular setting.

  Our efforts to live the life of Christ now are not infallible in the details of our words and action but they are infallible if our motive is love and good will.

  What seems to be the infallible essence of the Bible is that God in many ways and times and place is calling people into loving relationship with God and with each other.  The ways, deeds and words will always be less than perfect; what is perfect is the heart and deeds of people who want to be accepted by God, not in their own way but in the way that God presents to them.

  The Christian or Christians or Christo-Jews who wrote the Gospel of Mark were writing a narrative form of a spiritual reality that had become practiced in their community.  How was Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?  And was it important to have the correct answer?  Peter represented the one who is a Jew who confesses Jesus to be the Messiah but does not understand what kind of Messiah he was.  Many Jews believed that the Messiah had to be a triumphant conquering king like David who would intervene with great power for his people.  The writer of the Gospel of Mark was certain that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, but not because he would be a conquering king; rather he was a suffering servant on behalf of the world.

  And the suffering servant, Jesus, who suffered even unto death upon a cross, would provide the spiritual metaphor for everyone who wanted to change their lives for the better and find acceptance with God.

  So, taking up one’s cross and following Jesus became the metaphor, the teaching and catch phrase for the method of spiritual change that was occurring in the lives of the early Christians.

  These were people who wrestled with perennial questions that face each and every soul?  How can I become better than I am?  And if I know I am to become better, where do I get the power to make it happen?  And how do I become better without it simply being a matter of being proud about my own accomplishments?  How do I get better without ruining the accomplishment through a supreme act of pride?

  The method is dying to ourselves so that we might live again in a new and better way.  One Greek word for life is psuche and this refers to the interior life of the soul; our soul life has to let go of habits of mind, emotion and will, to take on new ways of thinking, feeling and acting.  And in taking on these new ways of thinking we attain to a more abundant life, called in the New Testament, zoe  life.  And this life is experienced as God’s gift to us; it is experienced as the presence of God’s Spirit within us as a higher power to help us become our fuller selves through surpassing our selves in future states.

  The people of the community of the Gospel of Mark, believed that there was power in the dying of Jesus on the Cross that could become the power in their lives in dying to what was keeping them enslaved.  They also believed that the power that God granted for Jesus to live again is the same power that allowed each person to renew their lives with new living, new joy, new possibilities.  The Gospel writer of Mark encoded this spiritual reality in the Christ narrative.

  And this narrative was relevant to their community; it was relevant to the Roman community, and it is relevant to us.

  What this means is that there are no outcasts?  Not Gentile, not Jew, not male, not female.  Why?  Because in acknowledging the power of the death of Christ as a grace and power within our own souls, we in any condition can humble our selves to receive a higher power to overcome what controls us, and receive resurrection higher power to take on a new experience of abundant life.

  And we need not get complacent or stuck in any form of abundant life; since the process is on-going.  We live in this process of dying to our tendency to make idols in our habits of mind and feelings.  We also live in the process of resurrection freedom to take on new habits of mind, feeling and choice.  And this process is open to anyone and since it is open to all, there can be no outcasts. 

  Would that we at St. John’s would be devoted more to this process of grace in our souls, than to any particular ritual style that we might prefer.  Our ritual only celebrates the grace in our souls.

  So during Lent, we take up our cross in the circumstances of our lives, because we are hopeful that the power of the death of Jesus will also be a power in us to leave what we need to leave, and take up the new and abundant life that is promised us by the presence of God’s Spirit.

  By taking up our cross and following Christ, we are not outcasts to God; and since it is offered to everyone, we can never make anyone an outcast from God’s grace in Christ.  Amen.

The Good as Temptation from the Better or the Best

1 Lent B      February 26, 2012

Gen. 9:8-17           Ps    25:1-9   

1 Peter 3:18-22         Mark 1:9-13

Lectionary Link

  The Gospel of Mark, the earliest written Gospel, does not give us the Christmas story with the narratives of the birth of Jesus.  It begins with the baptism of Jesus, an event when His Father declared in a loud voice that Jesus is His Son.   The voice of God the Father spoke to Jesus about his very identity.  God the Father said, “You my beloved Son!”  And God the Father said to Jesus, “I am well pleased with you.”

  And what does the third member of the Trinity do?  “The Spirit immediately drove Jesus into the wilderness.”  He was there for forty days, he was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.  The Gospels of Luke and Matthew give us more details of the temptation, but not the Gospel of Mark.

  In the Eucharistic preface for the Lenten season, we profess a belief about Jesus that is expressed in the letter to the Hebrews: “He was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.”  Jesus was tempted as a sign of God being with us in our temptations in life.

  Our belief that Jesus did not sin does not mean that we believe that he could not sin.  We might question as to why he submitted to the baptism of John the Baptist which was a baptism of repentance from sin.  If Jesus had no sin to repent of, why did he need to be baptized?  It was not so much a need to be baptized as his choice of solidarity within that particular community of John the Baptist.  We have learned to read the Gospels from the view point of a risen, cosmic, global Christ, and we need to set that view aside as we return to the details of the narrative of the particular events in the life of the historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth.

  While we have standards or rules that govern sin, such as the Ten Commandments, often the laws and rules have more to do with the practice of each community adjudicating in the ways in which they believe justice and community order can best be implemented.  But the law of perfection as presented by Christ has less to do with avoiding public penalty and more to do with the individual path of excellence that each of us is placed upon in finding out what God’s will is for our lives.

  The sin for Jesus was to be tempted into taking alternate routes in his life.  Jesus could have chosen lots of good and great things in his life, but if they were not the will of God the Father, they would have been sin.

  The temptation of Jesus in wilderness, perhaps, was to get Jesus to do other good things in his life that were not the will of God the Father.  It is harder temptation to be faced with good things in our lives that are not the best thing for our lives.  I suspect that the decisions that haunt us the most are the decisions where we chose good things in place of better things.  In our vocations we can make good decisions based upon good reasons of financial security but our souls can end up being burned out in jobs that do not gives us the excitement of creativity.

  The will of God the Father for Jesus was his ministry and how his genius was to be expressed in his life work.  The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was to be a time of preparation for his life ministry.  During his time of preparation he was to face within himself a simulation of lots of alternative routes for his life.  Where one possesses genius, one can be tempted towards megalomania or inflations of the ego.  One can easily be tempted to do things from the wrong motives.

   We assume that Jesus did not have human companionship when he was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.  But we are told that he was not alone.  He was with the beasts.  Jesus was tempted to fear the dynamic of predator-prey relationship that is found in the natural orders.  He was faced with the reality that this world is not always a natural friendly place to be.

  Jesus was also tempted by Satan.  Satan is a personified figure who appears in the interior life to accuse.  Satan is the one who tried to convince Jesus to go down other paths of success.  “Jesus, you are so brilliant; with Machiavellian brilliance you can persuade and outwit others and become a political leader.  Use your genius as an expression of political power.”  In other places Satan is called the devil, or diabolos (hence the Spanish Diablo).  A diabollo is the opposite of a symbol.  Diabollo means to throw into or generate confusion. The reality of Satan is the experience of maladjusted relationship between our interior life and exterior life.  It is literally “ a voice within myself turned against myself” in what is best for me and for my world.

   Symbollon means to throw together.  We get the word “Symbol” from this Greek word. A symbol is a type of sign; it puts together an action with an icon.  When the confusion of chaos can be funneled into a symbol or sign, then one has meaning, a direction and a message.  The ministers of the symbol for Jesus in the wilderness were the angels.  The literal meaning of angel is a messenger.   The angels waited upon Jesus in the wilderness.  In the midst of the confusion of many paths offered to Jesus the sign was offered to him about the direction for his life.  He was able to sort out from the confusion of many interior confusing interior voices, the will of God his Father.

  Today, we need to take a lesson from the temptation of Jesus.  How can you and I become the hero of our own interior lives?  How can we live with ourselves in such a way that we find God’s messages leading us to relate our interior lives with our exterior lives in peaceful and creative ways?  How can we learn to choose what is better for our lives over what appears to be merely good for our lives?

  We may feel good in our lives for not killing, not stealing and not lying, in the juridical sense of those activities.  But where is the excess of my lifestyle diminishing the lives of others?  Where is my excess a robbing of the bare minimum for others?   Where is my failure to learn more allowing me to simply live in “partial truths?”  Living in partial truths because of our refusal to learn is a different sort of lie that we easily absolve our selves of.

  What we can learn from the temptation of Jesus is the continual internal dynamics from which can arise new paths of excellence for us in our lives and surely those new paths of excellence include the betterment for the people in this world.

  We have begun the forty days of Lent.  Let us see where the Spirit of God drives us in these days.  Let us confront all of our good options in our lives that may be hindrances to what is better for our life and our world.  And let us find God’s angels, God’s messengers, to help us choose what is better for us as we are in the process of always remaking our lives through the transformation known as repentance.  Let us look to the once tempted but now risen Christ who stands as symbol of each of us surpassing our self in excellence in a future state.  Amen.

Roary's Yacht or Noah's Ark?

1 Lent B      February 26, 2012

Gen. 9:8-17           Ps    25:1-9   

1 Peter 3:18-22         Mark 1:9-13

Puppet character: Roary the Lion

Prop: Picture of Noah's Ark and rainbow in the sky

R: Roar..Roar…Roar…Roar….I’m Roary the Lion. My mom told me not to roar; she said that it spread my bad breath when I roared.  When I sing I only know one word…Roar….Do you want to Roar with me?

R: I got a picture here that I keep in my cave bedroom.  It is picture of a big boat.  In fact it is a ship.  It like a big ocean liner.  Do you know what call this boat?  I call it Roary’s Yacht.  Yes, that’s Roary’s Yacht.

Fr. P: That’s not true Roary.  That big ship is called Noah Ark.  Please tell the true story about Noah’s Ark.

Roary:  Father Phil, Now stay down in your hole and don’t come back out.

 

Fr. P:  Okay Roary but just tell the truth.

R: Okay, this boat is not Roary’s yacht, it is Noah’s ark.   Noah was a man who lived a long time ago.  He heard God tell him that there was going to be a great flood.  But God told him to build a big boat so that he could live through the flood.  God told Noah to build the boat big enough so animals could stay alive too.  Do you think that means that God loves animals?  

Anyway, when it started to rain, Noah loaded his family and lots of animals on his ark.  And it started to rain and rain and rain.  It rained for 40 days and nights and the water floated this big ark.  But Noah’s family and all of the animals lived safely on the ark.  We were safe on the ark but it was not comfortable like an cruise on an ocean liner.  Can you imagine the smell living on a boat with hundreds of animals?  Have you ever heard a hippopotamus snore?  Now that really does rock the boat.

When it stopped raining, we waited for the water to go; and soon there was no water to float the boat and it was time for everyone to get off the ark and build new homes and find new places to live.

But do you know what happened after we got off the big boat.  We looked into the sky and we saw this carpet of colors.  Do you know what that carpet of color is called?  Look behind me in the sky.  This carpet of color is called a rainbow.  And I love rainbows.  Rainbows make me very happy because they have all of the main colors.  Can you say, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and violet.  Those are the seven colors of the rainbow.

But Noah said that rainbow was a special promise from God.  He said the rainbow was God’s promise never to destroy the earth.  Why, because the earth is God’s creation and God loves the earth.

God loved the world so much that he sent his Son Jesus to help us to live better. 

Jesus did some very difficult things in his life.  He faced some very hard tests.  And he did so that we can face the hard tests of our lives.  Since Jesus passed all of the hard tests of his life, he can help us to pass the hard tests of our lives too.  Can you remember to pray and ask Jesus for help when things are hard or difficult in your life?  Okay, Fr. Phil, it time for you to come out of your hole…..bye, bye even…Remember the story about Noah and always be thankful for rainbows and remember God’s promise of love.

Lent, Voluntary and Involuntary Ordeals

1 Lent B      February 26, 2012

Gen. 9:8-17           Ps    25:1-9   

1 Peter 3:18-22         Mark 1:9-13

 Lectionary Link

  Why does Lent last for 40 days, not including the Sundays?  (I don’t like to tell people that Sundays are not included in the 40 day count, because then they think that they can loosen up on their Lenten disciplines on Sundays).  So why does Lent last for forty days?  It all has to do with biblical numerology.  And in biblical numerology, the number 40 stands for the time of testing, trial or the ordeal.  In the great flood, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.  The people of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before entering the Promised Land.  And Jesus fasted for 40 days and was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.  And so Lent lasts for 40 day because it is an annual simulated time of testing that the church has adopted as a discipline to remind us that the ordeal is a reality of life.

  The ordeal is a reality of life; is that like the lyrics of the old Blues song, “If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all?”  Do we understand ordeal in a Darwinian sense of the “survival of the fittest?”  Is the natural life only for the fittest who can survive the greatest hardships of life?  Does the notion of the ordeal go hand in hand with the quote from Nietzsche: “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger?”  Frankly, most of us would probably want an easier life and would rather not be made stronger by the tests and trials in life.

  Some apologists for God say that God is the Supreme Teacher and God is using the ordeal to teach us important lessons in life.  But what lesson is taught to the poor kid starving in this world?  If the ordeal in life is to teach a lesson, there are many who suffer ordeals and are not given enough time to learn the lesson.  I don’t think that I buy that explanation for why God allows the ordeal to happen.

  When we use the word ordeal or test, we have already made an interpretation about the meaning of some trying events that have occurred.  We could simply say that the natural order includes events that involve loss, hardship, pain and sadness for people.

  But it is not enough to say that bad things happen to good people and bad people.  It is not enough to say that good things happen to bad people and good people.  Things bad and good get distributed amongst the people of this world in ways that we don’t fully understand.  We can understand probability; the insurance actuarial people study the statistics of what is likely to happen to people at certain ages in certain circumstances.

  Is the ordeal but an actuarial statistic?  An actuarial statistic means something else when something bad is happening to me; when it is happening to others far from me, it is a statistic.

  The ordeal is all about coming to some meaning as to why certain things happen to us.  Some things happen to us because we see the connection between a habit and an action that brings a directly observed consequence.  Others things happen because of a more seeming random freedom of events for which we see no direct willful action of our own, and those are more baffling events for us.

  I think that people speak of an ordeal because we suffer and it is very human to believe that there is some meaning to our suffering.  I think for ages people have been trying to find meaning for their suffering.  To be human is to look for meaning in our suffering, even when cause is lost in an endless regress of the genetics of the family tree and the proclivity to certain disease and illness.

  The ancient flood was an incredible event.  Most of the civilizations were built on large rivers where agriculture flourished in the rich silt deposits of the river.  But a flood due to rainfall and snowfall upstream could literally wipe out the known world of the people who inhabited these centers of civilizations.  The story of Noah is a story about seeking a meaning for why the flood occurred.  God’s anger at the extent of human sin was given as a reason for the flood.  I think that trying to find a connection between natural disasters and God’s intent was as wrong in the Bible as it was for some modern day evangelists to speculate about why Katrina happened in the “sinful” city of New Orleans.  The interpretation that I’ve come to take from the “rainbow” in the sky is this: The rainbow is a sign that what we are used to calling an act of God, is really not God’s act.  It is only a result of God allowing a true freedom to be active in creation.  And the rainbow was like a sign to Noah, that in fact, God did not and will not destroy the known world by a natural disaster.

  If natural disasters and diseases are not “acts of God,” then what are these ordeals of loss?  The spiritual meaning of loss, pain and suffering is not to be found in thinking that we know the cause; the spiritual meaning of loss, pain and suffering is found in dealing with what we do once we have loss, pain and suffering.  What do we do and how do we live after loss, pain and suffering?  How do we exert compassion and empathy for others who go through loss, pain and suffering, once we have been through it our selves?  The meaning of loss, pain and suffering becomes the meaning of the ordeal once we have accepted the loss and the pain, striven to survive it, returned to the normalcy of the freedom from pain, and studied ways of avoiding or ameliorating pain and suffering.  The redemptive meaning of the ordeal of pain and suffering only becomes fully known when we become those who share comfort with others who find themselves in loss or pain.

  The 40 day fast of Jesus and his temptation is another kind of ordeal.  Ordeals can be involuntary or voluntary.  The involuntary ordeals are those that come to us.  A voluntary ordeal is when we choose to afflict our selves so that we might be better prepared for our own involuntary ordeals; but more importantly, so that we might make a sacrifice to help alleviate the pain and suffering of other people.

  The fast and temptation of Jesus was his voluntary solidarity with humanity.  He was tempted in every way as we are; he proved to be God with us, for us, and one living on our behalf, not so we could escape pain and suffering, but so that we might come to meaning within our ordeals in life.  And what is the meaning? God created us and God loves us and God invites our freedom just as the freedom of events is fully expressed toward our lives.

  I do invite each of us to voluntary ordeals in life.  To enter a discipline is to take on a voluntary ordeal.  And why would we inflict ourselves with a voluntary ordeal?  Because we need to be prepared to face the involuntary ordeals that will come to us.  Also we need to realize the sacrifice that others have made on our behalf; other people have chosen loss so that we might have a better life.  We too should learn to sacrifice, to choose loss and deprivation, so that others can have a greater abundance and freedom from want.

  So Lent is 40 days.  It is a voluntary ordeal and we follow Jesus in that we choose loss and deprivation so that we can divert some resources for the gain and improved life style of those in need.

  Let us follow Christ in these 40 days and find some ways to deprive our selves so that others might attain some basic benefits of life.  Amen.

Lent, a Call to the Courage of Care

Ash Wednesday        February 22, 2012  

Is.58:1-12        Ps.103       

1 Cor. 5:20b-6:10    Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21

Lectonary Link

  Ash Wednesday is a day of public confession for the church.

  We confess that we as persons and as people in this world have not been perfect.

  Well, that’s not much of a scoop.  But even though we know that we are not perfect sometimes we live towards each other in judgmental ways and in ways of assuming we are “better” than others.  We also forget how much we are compromised with our social settings.  If there is corruption on Wall Street, it is not my fault even though my stock portfolio may have benefited.  In our group compromise we can easily absolve ourselves of any personal responsibility.  And how often do we absolve ourselves by thinking, “Well everyone is doing it?”  Everyone has set life styles that are harmful for the environment.  Everyone is doing things that will cause major problems for our children and grandchildren.  And we absolve ourselves by pleading the helplessness of our situation.

  Yes we do need a day when we confess both as persons and as community.   We need a day of acknowledging that in freedom lots of bad choices have been made.  We have inherited the results of bad choices.  We have inherited the results of ignorant choices.  And even when we are given the possibility of new choices offering us freedom from being determined by the past, it is still easy for us to stay in the rut of never wanting to change our lives in significant ways.

  One of the ways in which we tolerate our imperfection is to make an important confession about our human nature.

   Today, when the ashes are applied to our foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” we are reminded that there is something in our lives that is so unstable that it is always passing away.  The ashes on our forehead are like a fast forwarding of what our bodies will be like one day.  And we can’t put lipstick on ashes to beautify the ashen state.

  Maybe today we would like to shout out a reminder to God, “Remember God, that we are dust, and to dust we shall return, and what can you expect from people who are made with dust?”  We may want to use this day as a day of protest to God for being made in the way that we are made.  How can a dustly people ultimately be wholesome, healthy, preserved and saved?

  Can you blame us God for our imperfect lives because of the way in which we are made?  The power of our vulnerable mortality is so profound that we are tempted to live towards our future state of being but ashes.  And we really don’t want to get there too quickly.  And it seems sometimes as though we are swimming against the tide, even flailing in the waves in non-productive desperation.

  And as we mourn our dustly beginning and are ready to let ourselves off the hook for our many imperfections both personal and societal, perhaps we can hear the God of Pentecost say to us today:  “Remember that you are spirit and that you will be spirit forever!”

  In the creation story, we are told that the original human being was made of clay and that clay had the wind or breath of the creating Spirit blown into the clay figure and the result was the living soul.

  This reclaiming of our spiritual nature is what the journey of Lent is about.  Yes, indeed our mortal natures anchored by what we see when our bodies are decomposed does not seem to offer us much future hope for our health and salvation.  But we are also spirit animated by Holy Spirit to let us know that we can be inspired by ultimate health and ultimate salvation in the midst of the things of life that are passing away.

  It is our belief in spirit that reminds us that we have genuine freedom.  And that freedom must be inspired by wisdom.

   God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.  We are not going to change our mortal endings.  The fast forward state of the ashes remind us about what our bodies will ultimately be.

  God grant me the courage to change the things I can.  Courage comes from our spiritual side.  And from our spirit, we do not mock our mortal natures; we cherish them as long as we can because we know that the only way that we can be spiritual is also to be in our bodies.  Our mortal nature are good because they are created by God.  And since we know the vulnerability of our mortal nature the courage of our response is the courage of care.

  Lent is a season of intensifying the courage of care for our mortal natures.  Lent is season of both personal and social care.  As longs as we are alive we endeavor to cherish our lives and the lives of other by practicing the best possible care.

  I would invite us to observe the season of Lent with the courage of care, care for our selves, care for the people in our world and care for our environment.  In the season of Lent we join together as a community to be intentional about how we can better care for ourselves and the people of our world.

  In accepting our ashes today, we accept the things we cannot change.  But in accepting God’s Holy Spirit on our lives, we embrace with courage to change the things that can be changed.  The courage of care for our lives and the life of people who need our care is the intentional invitation of our Ash Wednesday liturgy.  Let us have the courage to change our world with intentional acts of care during this season of Lent.  Amen.

Coming out of the Closet (of Prayer)

Ash Wednesday        February 22, 2012  

Is.58:1-12        Ps.103       

1 Cor. 5:20b-6:10    Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21

Lectionary Link

As a pastor and priest, I am very happy when my congregation gather to pray in our public gathering places on public street corners.  I want the people of St. John the Divine to be seen, as often as possible, praying on the street corner of Peak Avenue and Marcia Street.

There was a young man who suddenly stopped coming to church so when his pastor saw him in a store, he asked him why he had not been to church lately.   He said that he had read the Gospel and was convicted by the words of Christ to become a Tameion Christian.  The pastor asked, “What is a Tameion Christian”  The young man said, “Perhaps you have forgotten your New Testament Greek…but Tameion is the Greek word for closet.  And Jesus said we should pray in our closets and not on the street corners or in public places of worship.

Well that adds a new twist to our Gospel.  Did Jesus of Nazareth have a “Don’t ask, don’t tell policy about prayer?”  Did Jesus really want us to live in the closet about our prayer orientation?

Street corner public praying or closet praying?  Which is it?  Maybe I should be grateful for all of the people who are not coming to church to pray in public.  Maybe I really have lots of people who are praying in secret and that is well and good, but what does that do for my worship attendance record?

Should there really be a disjunction between private prayer and public prayer?

I would like for us today to consider the meaning of prayer.  Perhaps the season of Lent can be a time for us to learn about how prayer can be practiced in such a way that it brings us unity, congruence and authenticity in how we live our public and private lives of prayer.

What is prayer?  What is public prayer?  What is private prayer?  Perhaps if we can have some insights into prayer we can come to some insights on the Gospel words of Jesus.

What is prayer?  An answer to this question is found in the Catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer.   According to the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer, “Prayer is responding to God, with or without words.”

If our prayer orientation is primarily toward God, then we do not have to worry about the difference between public and private prayers.

Prayer is responding to God, with or without words.  Perhaps this definition is much too general for your taste.  The catechism also specifies the principal kinds of prayer: adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, petition, intercession and oblation.

Using this definition of prayer, we can at any time stop and ask our self the question:  Is my life prayerful right now?  Can I see my life right now as responding to God, with or without words?

If we have a limited notion of prayer, we can reduce prayer to the public performance of religious obligations.  And we can find ourselves in the role of the “public actor of prayer” or to use the Greek word from the Gospel, “hyprocrite.  Public prayer simply out of peer pressure is a motive of prayer that Jesus criticized.

But how can I always walk around being prayerful or having the attitude of prayer?  Prayer could get in the way of my work, if I have to have a conscious attitude of prayer at all times.

Perhaps, you’ve heard the exhortation wrongly attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words?”

The same can be said about prayer: Pray at all times and if necessary use words.  One of the principal kinds of prayers is called oblation.  What is oblationary prayer?  Oblation is when the deeds of our lives are performed in such a way as being a response to God.  Oblation is when our “body language” speaks louder than our words and prays the active prayer of love and kindness and moral and ethical behavior.  Body language, oblationary prayer is perhaps the most embracing form of prayer that we can practice.  It is much easier to schedule a time to practice meditative forms of contemplative prayer of praise and adoration, than it is to have the behavior of our bodies always be offering a prayer to God. 

Perhaps during the season of Lent we could open our selves to a haunting question:  Is what I am doing with my bodily action right now a suitable prayer to God?

The Isaian prophet was criticizing the separation of the vocal and public acts of devotion from the actual practice of kindness and justice.  And that is where our prayers of oblation are most important.  If my public acts and my vocal prayers are saying one thing but my actual deeds are saying something else then I am living a dishonest life of prayer.

That is the kind of dishonest prayer that both the Isaian prophet and Jesus were criticizing.

And the best way that we can begin to recover from dishonest prayer is to begin to look at the prayer of oblation or what might be called the doing prayer.  The doing prayer of oblation also needs to go with the “being prayer” of intercession.

One way in which we can begin to practice the prayer of oblation, is first to practice the prayer of intercession.  What if the first thing that we did when we experienced a headache, or an illness or a loss or misfortune, was to stop and say, “Wow, I am in solidarity with everyone else who has a headache, or an illness or a loss or misfortune and I offer my condition to God in prayer in solidarity with all who suffer the same condition.”  And instead of living in “woe is me” state of mind for not being exempt from certain things in life, we offer our particular condition to God with and for others.   And so with intercession one can begin to convert ones prayer into an expression of one’s life lived for and with others.

And from intercessory prayer we can then move to the prayer of oblation when we “do prayer actively with the deeds of our lives.”  And this doing prayer is what will make our vocal and public prayers honest and valid prayers.

I would invite all of us during the season of Lent to think about our lives as lives of prayer, “responding to God, with or without words.”

And because this world is full of people in need, the Lenten season provides for us plenty of opportunities for the prayer of oblation…doing prayers…the prayers of active generosity to those in need.

Let us commit ourselves to prayer during the season of Lent.  Committing ourselves to prayer is our way of expressing our connection to God and to each other.

Should be pray in our closets?  By all means!  When we are alone let us practice meditation, contemplation, adoration and praise and petition.  Should we pray in public?  By all means!  But let us make sure that our public prayers are coming from those who also offer intercessory prayers and oblationary prayers.

In intercessory prayer, we accept the conditions of our lives in solidarity with other people in need.  In oblationary prayers we use the deeds of our lives to practice being loving responses to the human needs in our world.

During the season of Lent we are invited to learn intercessory prayer for others and we are invited to learn oblationary prayer of active generosity in responding to the needs in our world.  If we can beef up our intercessory prayers and oblationary prayers during the season of Lent, we will be able to be more honest in our public prayer lives and when we do, the Father who sees us in secret will show us the reward of living honest prayer lives.  Amen.

Transfiguration: Landscape and Inscape

Last Epiphany B      February 19, 2012

1 Kg 19:9-18      Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 Mark 9:2-9

Lectionary Link

   What if we for the purposes of this sermon were to call life in the external world, the life of our landscape.  And the life inside of us our inscape.  How is our landscape related to our inscape?  We really cannot ever see inside of us; only surgeons get the most literal physical view of our inside.  We can now put mini-cameras everywhere including inside of our bodies.  But there is a non-physical inside; the places of feelings and emotions and thoughts that we cannot see.  So we inherit from our cultures, religions, societies and families ways of talking about our inscape.   We use feeling words and we try to locate seats of feeling and thinking: The head for thinking and the heart for feeling.

   In religious language one can find the use of terms from geography, climate and physics to characterize spiritual insights or happenings that occur in our inscape.  A mountain top, clouds, light, and space travel are all metaphors that we can find in biblical literature to relate interior events.

  In common parlance one might say, “I had a mountain top experience” to characterize an exhilarating moment of the sublime.  A view from higher elevation gives one a greater panorama and a different perspective than what one sees in the valley.  When one speaks about the experience of mystery and not knowing or not seeing, one uses the metaphor of clouds.  The experience of being in the midst of fog or clouds on a mountain is the experience of a loss of perspective because of the loss of visibility.    Though we moderns think we invented space travel, space travel of other sorts has been a metaphor for crossing over into the afterlife.  Elijah’s chariot of fire ride to heaven stands as the most dramatic way in which a person was Assumed or raised into the afterlife and unlike Jesus, he did not even have to experience a death.

  Let us look at the metaphors from our biblical lessons that were appointed for our reading today.

  What do we fear when one someone very important leaves this world?  We fear the loss of some irreplaceable goodness, genius or excellence.  Don McClean’s  American Pie song laments about the “day that music died,”  referring of course to the plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa that took the lives of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens.  And more recently, can we say that music has died with the passing of Whitney Houston?  Did it die when Mozart or Beethoven or Bach died many years ago?  Indeed we fear the death of genius.   Will there is an iphone 16, now that Steve Jobs is gone?  Do any of us doubt it?

  Elisha was the prophetic protégé of Elijah and he was not sure that there would be prophetic excellence after his mentor was gone.  Elijah assured Elisha that the prophetic spirit would remain and be passed on to him and he said as a proof of this Elisha would be able to see his departure from this earth.  And after Elijah was gone Elisha began with confidence to exercise his prophetic gifts to prove that the prophetic gifts, like all really good things, cannot die out of this world.

  The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were related to the event upon the Mount of Transfiguration.  How does the Gospel reading end?  “As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” 

  The event of the transfiguration of Jesus was before his death and resurrection, but it could only be understood by the Gospel writer in hindsight.  And of course, all of the Gospels are about  understanding Jesus and his life in hindsight.

  What did the Gospel writers understand about Jesus?   They understood that he had a type of human genius that surpassed their great heroes of Moses and Elijah.  Moses went up a mountain to receive the law from God.  His experience on Mount Sinai made his face shine.  The prophet Elijah did mighty things upon mountains.  The Mount of the Transfiguration is about the disciples trying to sort out their understanding of Jesus.  Their encounter with Jesus represents the summit of their life experience.  It is an experience of clouds and fog; they are baffled by the mystery of this man Jesus.  Peter stammers with perhaps an uncomfortable ignorance.  And then there is light:  Light on Jesus and light that shines from Jesus.  Jesus is an experience of revelation of things hitherto unknown.

  But there is also a voice from heaven that says, “"This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  And when that happened, Moses and Elijah had departed.  If the disciples had any doubt as to whether Moses and Elijah and their Judaic tradition should keep them from following Jesus, this event was to dispel them of any doubts.  And also in this heavenly voice is a message for Gentiles and it would also prove to be a serious political statement as well.  God the Father said about Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved.”  People in the time of Jesus knew that Emperor’s son was called a son of a god, divi filius.  If people believed that Jesus was the Son of God, this title and belief would be a challenge and an affront to the emperor-worship cult of the time and so it would be a dangerous political confession as well.  The resulting persecution of Christians attests to the politics of believing that Jesus was the supreme Son of God.

  Beyond the context of the time of Jesus and the times when the Gospels were written, we have to deal with our own time.  The trouble in the world threatens us with doubt about the loss of a type of genius that can save and preserve our world, both on the global level and on the personal level.  We certainly don’t doubt the loss of genius; what we doubt is how the genius in the gifts of humanity are being used.

  How do the gifts of the world get transfigured so that they bless us and the life of the world?  How do our gifts get discovered and developed so that we can receive insight to live our lives with wisdom and use our gifts to bless this world?

  The lesson for us is to seek transfiguration and walk upon the path of metamorphosis.  Repentance is metamorphosis; always seeking to surpass our self in excellence.   How can we progressively change ourselves to be more Christ-like and realize more fully what was proclaimed about Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration?  How can you and I listen well enough to hear the voice of highest insight tell us, “You are my beloved child.”  And isn’t that the purpose of the Gospel, to know ourselves to be sons and daughters of God and go forth and act in a way that shows that we are a member of God’s family with Jesus as our most illustrious sibling?  Amen.

A Phil-aphorism

Just because everything does not occur in our lives with accompanying Jesus subtitles, it does not mean that God has been absent from your life and from mine.

Transfiguration: Knowing the Extraordinary within the Ordinary

 Last Epiphany B      February 19, 2012

1 Kg 19:9-18      Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 Mark 9:2-9

Lectionary Link

  If we were arguing about the best home run hitter in the history of baseball, whose opinion do you think would carry the most weight?  What if Babe Ruth suddenly did a reappearance and did an interview and stated, “Well there’s no question about it; Barry Bonds is the best home run hitter in baseball.”  And what if Roger Maris appeared too and said, “That’s right, Babe, there has been no better home run hitter in baseball than Barry Bonds?”  If such a thing could occur, certainly Barry Bonds would be happy and the weight of opinion of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris would have to be respected.

  The opinions of what departed Hebrew heroes would be most respected by people who lived in the first half of the first century is Judaic Palestine?  Probably the two most revered figures in first century Judaism were Moses and Elijah, and King David, the Messiah would have been a third.  But Moses and Elijah were different from David; David had a recorded death but Moses and Elijah had very interesting ending disappearances in their lives and so there was a belief that they like Enoch, did not really die natural deaths; rather they were assumed into heaven.  Since Moses and Elijah had interesting Assumptions into the afterlife, there were Jews who believed that they would be important in reestablishing God’s will and order for God’s people in their futures.  There was a book written called the Assumption of Moses.  It is even written in the book of Jude that Michael the Archangel argued with the devil over the body of Moses.  A book entitled The Apocalypse of Elijah was also known in religious communities in the first century, indicating how important Moses and Elijah were as figures who could intervene and influence the opinions of those who lived many years later.

  So the two who were assumed into the afterlife were like space travelers.  They would return to be present in that visionary event that happened on the Mount of the Transfiguration where Jesus and his disciples, Peter, James and John had climbed.

  For you and me, to be honest,  this event of the Transfiguration is a literary event.  Why?  Because we only read about it in the text book of our Christian faith.  And the text book of our Christian faith in the Gospel section is about the identity of Jesus and the significance of his life.  The author of the Gospel is very interested in the association of Elijah and Moses with Jesus.  If Moses and Elijah have come to give their full endorsement of Jesus, then surely no self-respecting Jewish person could sit on the fence about Jesus of Nazareth.  But there was even a higher witness than Moses or Elijah; there was the divine voice that declared, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”  This was like the proclamation in the Psalms when the writer wrote about the Messiah: “The Lord said to my Lord, You are my son, today I have begotten you.”   When Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai, his face shone from his encounter with God and the people of Israel were asked to listen to the voice of God through the Law.  Elijah’s fiery departure was proof that the prophetic flame had passed on to Elisha.  But now on the Mount of the Transfiguration Jesus was seen as the one who surpassed Moses and the witness of the law and also Elijah and the prophetic word.

  For the Gentiles readers of this Gospel, they knew about becoming a son of a god.  When the Caesar became Augustus, a title of divinity conferred by the Roman Senate, then the son of Caesar Augustus was a divi filius or a son of a god.  For the Gentile reader of the Gospel of Mark, they could know that there were higher conferring authorities than the Roman Senate when it came to conferring divinity; Moses, Elijah and the voice of God were more reputable than the Roman Senate when it came to recognizing the surpassing divine excellence of Jesus.

  We have read about the Mount of the Transfiguration as a literary event today.  And so what does it have to do with you and me?  We are not that engaged by Elijah or Moses anymore except through Bible stories.  We probably haven’t heard the voice of God lately, or we wouldn’t admit to it if we did, since we would be declared “crazy.”  So what are we to make of this literary report of the event of the transfiguration today?

  We can say, “I have never experienced anything like this, so this lets me off the hook regarding my faith and my commitment to God and Jesus.  Because, if I had such an encounter, certainly I would be more devout.”  Are you and I letting ourselves off the hook because we’ve not had such poignant encounters.  Probably.

  It is convenient for the church to enshrine experience within the lives of the 12 disciples and the saints and put them on a pedestal, because then we are excused from having a God-experience validated or recognized in our lives that could actually change our lives.

 But what if the purpose of the Gospel is actually to help us locate and validate our own experience of God, then we would have to understand a fuller intent of the Gospel writings.

  The face of Jesus was transfigured; it had undergone a metamorphosis.  The Greek word that is translated, "transfigured" is also more directly translated, “metamorphosis.”  Jesus was ordinary enough to be recognized as a human being; but he was extraordinary enough to be recognized as God’s Son.  So the meaning of the metamorphosis of faith is to discover the extraordinary presence of God within the very ordinary occasions of human experience.

  Jesus is a revelation of the incarnation of God within what is human.  So the meaning of the life of Jesus is that human experience is elevated and validated as being the only way that you and I can come to know God.   God has always, already been extraordinary within the ordinary, only we have not always recognized it or validated it as God’s presence to us.

  Faith includes the attitude of being on watch for the appearances of God.  It happens in the awe of sunrise and sunset; the lovely green on the hill side, the love of spouse, children and friends, the touching chord of a piece of music, the tear provoking story in a movie or book, the pain and sacrifice that is redeemed because they contribute to the betterment of someone else’s life.  You and I are not let off the hook when it comes to God touching our lives.  Where have you and I failed to recognize God?

  Just because everything does not occur in our lives with accompanying Jesus subtitles, it does not mean that God has been absent from your life and from mine.

  The meaning of the transfiguration is that God has appeared to us in the ordinary course of human experience.  And with the practice of faith, we take time to smell the roses of God’s presence to us.

  God has enveloped your life and mine providing the occasions for the divine presence to be known to us.  That is the meaning of the Mount of Transfiguration for us today, and the heavenly voice is saying to us to us within our very ordinary human experience, “You, too, like Jesus, are my child, a beloved son and daughter.”  Amen. 

Christian Wellness as Salvation

6 Epiphany B  February 12, 2012

2 Kings 5:1-15ab   Psalm 42:1-7     

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Mark 1:40-45

Lectionary Link 

  I was at a clergy conference this week for three days at the Franciscan retreat center.  On the first day we had presentations from representative of the Episcopal Medical Trust.  The presentation was on Clergy Wellness.  The Medical Trust is interested in our wellness, so they send to us a fitness coach who went from almost 300 pounds to a svelte 160 pounds.  And they had a health statistics guru giving us the bad news; boomers have started to retire at an overwhelming rate and the health costs are going to be over the top.  The subtext: it is more cost effective to promote preventative programs now than to wait for all of the diabetes, hypertension and by-pass surgeries.  They gave a free six week program and promised to be our wellness police and help us figure out our Body Mass Index (not really flattering to use Mass and body together), count calories, exercise and keep sugar out of our diets. And I was feeling very guilty; we were asked to bring snacks for the evening social time and I took from my house some killer chocolate brownies and cookies.  I did not have a bag to hide them in so I left them in the car.  But on the second day, when the calorie police had left the building, I put the brownies and cookies into a bag and put them on the table.  And the next day, they were mostly eaten.  So there is a confession about clergy wellness.

  But this preventive trend in health is very important.  It may not be fun to break from habits of the kinds of comfort food and drink that we often avail ourselves of, but preventive health is important. 

  St. Paul was about preventive health.  He spoke about spiritual life as exercise: “I punish my body and enslave it.”   Preventative health at first seems like punishing the body in order to get it to obey and simulate tougher conditions so that when tough conditions arise, we are prepared.

  In a sense what we are about in the church is preventative health; living longer with strategies of health. 

  Why do I say that?  You and I understand the word health better than the word salvation.  Salvation is heavily coded religious term and yet salvation means health and preservation of our total lives.  And we are more or less concern about the preservation of our lives depending upon the preventative steps we take regarding our health.  The Gospel notion of salvation is a total notion of health since salvation is a concern about all kinds of well-being: preventative health, response to our diseases, social health, spiritual health and our health after we die, both for the departed and for those who continue to live.  Gospel health is concerned about life from cradle to the grave and after the grave.

  Let us consider some insights about health that are found in our biblical readings for today:  Health is a universal issue; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure;  health is about access to treatment; health most often is about doing lots of little easy thing; health is about honesty about weakness and disease;  health is about joyful recovery.

  Certainly it is a no-brainer that health is a universal issue.  We as human being are given an alarm mechanism to establish health as a chief issue; we have the gift of pain to send us a signal that we need to deal with the issues that cause us pain.  And pain of all sorts is what causes us to seek out what we regard to be the normal condition of life, namely the condition of health.  Pain is a blessing in that it tells us that the condition of not having pain is the intended condition of life.  Pain is given to us in order to be honest about our condition.   Pain is no respecter of race, age or religion.  The conditions of pain come to everyone and one of the important roles of civilization is to be able to respond to the pain of the members of human society.

  In ancient society leprosy was a condition that marred the appearance of the body.  Biblical leprosy was not the disfiguring variety that we know today.  It could be cured; it referred to a variety of different kinds of skin disease.  Since it was a condition of appearance, those afflicted were quarantined from society until they could be verified as cured by the priests of Israel.  It was quite a double-bind; how does one get the care one needs if one is quarantined and kept from society.  In the case of Naaman the Assyrian, he had to go across the border to seek his cure.  In the case of another leper, he had to be bold to approach Jesus or any person, since he was breaking the rules by approaching any person with his disease.  Both the prophet Elisha and Jesus responded to the faith of the lepers.  The lepers had hope for healing and they acted upon that hope; this acting upon hope is what we call faith.  By faith we may not always get what we hope for, but living with faith is its own reward.  I suspect that why what is called the “placebo effect” works because faith is an essential attitude of health.

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Sometimes we think that health is about all of the elaborate and expensive treatment responses.  Yet just as the Medical Trust has warned us clergy about the impending impossible health cost due to the large numbers of boomers who will be retirement age, part of the response to this involves the ounce of prevention: half hour of exercise a day, cut down on the sugar, count calories, eat in more healthy ways.  We can reduce health care costs with better prevention and prevention involves little and repetitive acts that become habits of health.  Naaman was offended to be told to wash in the dirty Jordan River; he wanted some mighty event of cure.  Preventative health involves little repetitive acts.  (Yes, preacher, heal thyself).  St. Paul spoke of buffeting his body as a way of building his spiritual life of faith.  Faith exercises of prayer routine, small life style changes and  physical exercise help us to maintain the optimal conditions of mind and body to be ready to respond to the variety of conditions that we often have to face.

  Finally, when do we discover the true importance and value of health?  The value of health is discovered in a very poignant way when we experience recovery.  Illness and pain can be so disruptive of life that when life returns to normal we feel like the psalmist: “O LORD my God,                              I cried out to you, and you restored me to health.  You brought me up, O LORD, from the dead; you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.”

  When we’ve recovered from being sick we often think, “I don’t want to experience that again.”  What recovery teaches us is to cherish health as the normal condition and to believe that is what God wants for us all.  God in Christ wants us to be a community of health, total health, often called salvation.  And this notion of health embraces realistically the conditions of pain and disease and it embraces even our death because we are given the hope that we will live in a new way beyond this life.

  Let us accept the fullness of salvation health; let us take steps in preventative health; let us be a caring community responding to those with health needs; and let us be thankful for joyful recovery.  The Gospel for us today is that we are invited to the Health of Christ, the Salvation of Christ, and it is an invitation to Abundant life.  Amen.