Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Hearing the Good Shepherd

4 Easter   C       May 12, 2019          
Acts 9:36-43 Ps.23
Rev 7:9-17  John 10:22-30

Lectionary Link

The selection of Bible readings for each Sunday are supposed to be consistent with the themes of the season, but in the most recent RCL lectionary, in the attempt to add more selections, the themes don't always seem to be so obvious in how they match up and reinforce each other.

Today, is one of those baffling days for the preacher; it seems as though the lectionary maker had a bad day and got devious: "I'm really going challenge the preacher.  I am going to slap together 4 desperate and different topical readings like a avant garde collage and then chuckle under my breath to the preacher, "Take these and try to explain how they go together....ha, ha, ha."

Liturgically, it is Good Shepherd Sunday featuring the 23rd Psalm and in popular culture it is of course Mother's Day.  So, what words of Jesus do we read on Mother's Day?  "The Father and I are one..."  The oneness of Jesus with the Father is very theologically lofty.  What Jesus could have said is:  "For nine months of gestation, my mother Mary and I were actually one."  That is not theological; that is actually physically true.

The Psalmist found the role of the shepherd to be a fitting metaphor for the Lord, the Almighty God.  The Psalmist probably regarded himself to be a good shepherd to his sheep and from that he saw himself in relationship to God that could be poetically illustrated as a shepherd sheep relationship.

What we did not read in John's Gospel today, is the earlier portion of the Good Shepherd chapter in the Bible. In it, Jesus said, "I am the Good Shepherd."

But Jesus provides a derivation of the metaphor of the Good Shepherd.   If God, the Almighty, the Father is a Shepherd and Jesus and the Father are one, then Jesus too is a Good Shepherd.

But on Mother's Day, let’s not get hung up on gender with regard to God or shepherds.  Mothers are perhaps the best living examples of what good shepherds look like.  Shepherds are a combination of nurturing persuasive kindness, but also, they had made up of faithful grit and toughness, especially when it comes to protecting their sheep.  And who is more like that than a good mom?

We must honestly confess that the mothers of this earth got more of the share of the grace of good shepherding than did men, and we honor our mothers today as profound shepherds in our lives.

One of the main topics of our reading and Collect today has to do with hearing.  The sheep hear and know the voice of their shepherd.  Hearing is something that we can do without seeing or touching.  How do we know the voice of mom and dad?  Because we live with them; we keep coming home and we are in relationship with them.

In the church of the Gospel of John, nobody was seeing Jesus anymore.  But many people were hearing the voice of Jesus as their shepherd.  The church was founded by people who had found their spiritual ears opened.

Even though people did not see Jesus and even faced some very difficult situations, they still heard the voice of the Risen Christ within them and within their midst.  And what did the church hear from their shepherd?  They heard what Peter heard from Jesus, "Feed my sheep.  Be a shepherd to those who need you.  My Father is a Shepherd.  I am one with Father so, I too am a Shepherd.  And if you hear my voice, you will hear me calling you to be a shepherd too, because you are one with me in mission and purpose."

But what about all those sheep who went unprotected; the ones that got eaten by the wolves and the lions?  What about all  those persecuted people who gave their lives in obeying their shepherd?

The Book of Revelation provides visionary images of what a future hope of justice might look like.  Jesus was the chief martyr as the Lamb of God.  And this model Lamb of God in the afterlife is presented as the shepherd who will lead all the martyrs to blessed place of redemption for their suffering and deaths.

How was St. Peter a shepherd?  He spoke words of healing to the lifeless Dorcas.  And Dorcas heard the words of Peter and she was healed.  We who have heard the voice of Christ, are called to speak the words of healing in our world today.

Today on Good Shepherd Sunday, we are invited to develop our relationship with God and Christ and be one with them in the shepherding mission which is needed in our world.  We are to develop our prayer lives so that we can hear the call of Christ to be healed of our spiritual deafness. When we hear the call by God the Great Shepherd of the universe and Jesus the Good Shepherd we are commissioned to be shepherds who are called to bring the words of the healing of spirit, soul, mind and body to all who need our help today.  Amen.


Sunday, May 5, 2019

Conversion and Rehabilitation



3 Easter          May 5, 2019
Acts 9:1-20       Ps. 30
Rev. 5:11-14        John 21:1-19    

Lectionary Link
A few years ago, a Baptist preacher wrote a book entitled, "Love Wins."  And it was controversial for many in his faith community because he proposed that the Bible indicates that Christ is eventually persuasive for every creature.  For those who think that making hell less than eternal takes away the moral hammer to frighten bad behaviors, Rob Bell was regarded to be heretical.

The love wins view is found in the reading from the book of Revelations: John the Divine in his vision, heard every creature in heaven and earth blessing the Lamb on the throne.   If everyone blesses the the sacrificial love found in Jesus Christ, that would mean that such love eventually wins and persuades everyone.

It is not easy to say that in the end love will win and persuade everyone.  By saying this, it seems to be impossible to prove and it can seem to minimize the willful evil conduct of so many people who seem to never want to be persuaded by love.  It is such a great ideal that from our lives of living in a world full of willful evil, it is hard to believe.

But such an ideal does express what is desirable.  Wouldn't it be nice if in the end love wins and love reconciles all things?  For all people, for our nation, for our parish, our families and our own life.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone used their freedom to affirm that sacrificial love in Christ is the greatest?

What does it mean for love to win us and persuade us?

On the way to love winning all, which we cannot yet see, there many experiences of human freedom.  Two of those experiences are conversion and rehabilitation.  Conversion and rehabilitation are exemplified in lives of Peter and Saul of Tarsus about whom we've read today.

Now every experience of conversion and rehabilitation may not be as dramatic as Peter's and Paul's, but conversion and rehabilitation are events for us on our way to be completely won by God's love.

Conversion happens even to religious people. We are always committed or converted to the values of our lives.  No one was more zealously religious than Saul of Tarsus.  He was so religious that his belief included persecuting the people whom he thought were heretics.  Saul of Tarsus thought that the followers of Jesus were heretics; what do you do with heretics?  You persecute them and for most of history heretics were killed.  Heretic usually means "something that you believe that I don't approve of."  But wait?  Isn't there a commandment of God about not killing?  How could Saul of Tarsus be religious and be pursuing people to their deaths for mere religious disagreement?  Saul of Tarsus snapped.  He had a conversion experience.  Saul had the first Damascus Road experience, because after he had it, it became a metaphor.  Saul had an experience of the Risen Christ who asked Saul to quit persecuting him.  Saul became the apostle Paul.  He was a very religious person who had one of the biggest conversion events of history.  You and I have perhaps been raised within religion, even to the point of being religious people.  But we can still have conversion experiences.  I have had quite a few conversion experiences, events which brought about significant paradigm shifts in how I have seen and defined the meaning of my life and my actions.  As long as we are not completely converted to the God of love, we will continue to have conversion experiences, if we are sincerely seeking.  We as individuals, as family members, as a parish and as a country are always in need of our next conversion as we wait for the love of God to become more winsomely persuasive.

Peter had what I call a rehabilitation experience with the risen Christ.   Peter denied Jesus during his trial three times.  In the resurrection appearance of Christ to Peter, Jesus allowed Peter to replace his three denials with three affirmations of love.  This was an experience of rehabilitation of Peter.

We are often in need of rehabilitation.  Sometimes we can become lazy in the practice of some important values that once were honored.  Sometimes we disappoint ourselves by thinking that we are more committed than we actually practice.  Peter loved and followed Jesus for about three years.  He was proud and brash about his loyalty to Jesus.  Yet when he feared for his life and when Jesus turned out to be a suffering servant Messiah and not a Military General Messiah, Peter sinned against his love for Jesus.

What did Jesus do?  He rehabilitated Peter again in his love, grace and favor.  How?  He entrusted Peter to be a shepherd.  He rehabilitated Peter by saying, go, and teach because you have learned from your mistakes.

As we are on our way to being fully persuaded about the sacrificial love of Christ, we will need moments of conversion and rehabilitation, as persons, as family members, as a parish family and as a nation.

Let us be thankful for these two repeating experiences of the Risen Christ.  Conversion and rehabilitation toward the love of God.  Let us be ready for conversion and rehabilitation in the love of God in Christ when it comes.  Amen.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

From Jesus of Nazareth to the Risen Christ

2 Easter Sunday  Cycle C      April 28,2019 
Acts 5:27-32 Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8  John 20:19-31

Lectionary Link During the season of Easter, we study the process of how the followers of Jesus became weaned from the physical presence of Jesus of Nazareth and how they began to accept the validity of the presence of the Risen Christ which came to them in many forms.

One of the major experience of new parents is the experience of sleep deprivation.  Why?  Because the newborn baby wants the perpetual presence of mom or dad, but mainly mom for obvious reasons.

New parents might celebrate with Champagne, the very first time that they get an entire night of sleep.  A baby before she or he is weaned from Mom's milk has to be weaned from the actual physical presence of mom or dad.

Imagine the journey of a baby; she goes from being inside of mother, one in closeness with mom, and then she is evicted from the maternal body at birth.  What can replace being totally one with mom and inside of mom?  Initially physical touch and closeness to the maternal body or other body is an indication of Mom's presence in the life of her child.  But mom has a life, in addition to mothering; she had other roles and occupations.  She cannot be perpetually close and connected to her baby.

Mom has to begin the process of weaning her baby from her presence.  She goes from holding and touching and allowing her baby to taste her, that is her milk, and she speaks or sings to her baby.  She lets her baby see her without actually having to hold or touch her.  And I imagine a baby can smell her mom, too, probably as much as mom and everyone can smell baby by-products too.

How can I convince my baby that I am still present with the full attention of my love even when I don't have immediate sensorial connection with my baby.  How can my baby know that I am still present even when she's in her crib in the next room?

If we understand the weaning of a baby from the maternal presence, perhaps we can understand the insights of the Doubting Thomas story.

This Doubting Thomas story is being written in the community of the Gospel of John, perhaps 5-6 decades after Jesus.

What is the issue for many followers of Christ who lived when most the eyewitnesses of Jesus were dead and gone?

Most people in the Gospel of John community did not walk with Jesus, or see him or talk with him.  Yet there was an impressive community of people who had other experiences of the Risen Christ.  What is the status of those experiences?  Were they inferior to the experiences of the 12 disciples?  They were not inferior; they were different and they were, according to the words of Jesus, blessed experiences.  "Bless are those who have not seen and yet who have believed."

The Doubting Thomas story was written to affirm the validity of the many kinds of experiences of the Risen Christ.  They were not only valid, they were blessed and they were mystical experiences of Christ.

What was the nature of the experiences of the Risen Christ?

The disciples experienced appearances of the Risen Christ.  St. Paul had a mystical experience of the Risen Christ on his way to Damascus to persecute followers of Jesus.  Many, many other people had a mystical experience of the Risen Christ, which they called the baptism of Holy Spirit.

The story of the Doubting Thomas provides us with insights about the reality of the presence of the Risen Christ?

First, you experience the command of peace from the Risen Christ.  Life can be experienced as conflict, loss, pain, suffering, anxiety, fear and uncertainty.  How can we know the Risen Christ in the midst of all of these?  The Risen Christ brings peace to us within and it has the power of a command.  And it also means peace within the community; it means we have the ability to live together in peace.  In our weekly liturgy, we pass the peace in direct continuity with the salute of the Risen Christ to his disciples.  Let us remember when we pass the peace that it comes with the power of the peace of Christ if we sincerely identity with the significance of this liturgical gesture.

Next, we experience the presence of the Risen Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus breathed the Spirit upon them.  The speaking of Jesus was his breathing of the Spirit.  Remember the words of Jesus in John's Gospel:  "My words are spirit and they are life."  We know that John's Gospel declared that Word was from the Beginning and Word was God and that Word became flesh in Jesus.  How can Word be spirit?  Spirit is like the inner mood created by the word context of our lives which provides the framework for us to know and interpret our lives and the best meanings of our lives.  The very best meaning of our live is the witness of the Risen Christ.

Thirdly, we can know the presence of the Risen Christ through the practice of forgiveness.  In a world of conflict and the clash of egos, it can seem easier to retain the sins of other people.  Jesus said to his disciple you have the choice: you can retain sins or forgive them.  Forgiveness is the evidence of the Risen Christ giving us power to live together because we don't require anyone to be perfect except God.  We forgive each other for not being completely finished Christians.  Forgiveness works best when we ourselves are willing to confess to God and to each other our faults in acknowledging that we have more perfection to attain in our lives, so that we can't hold it against others who are not yet perfect either.

Finally, you and I can know the presence of the Risen Christ in the written word of the Gospel.  Did you notice how the writer of the Gospel of John, plugged his own writing.  "But these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that in believing you may have life in his name."  The Word from the Beginning is God; it became flesh in the living deeds and spoken words of Jesus of Nazareth.  The Words of Jesus are spirit and life.  When the oral chain of command died with the death of the last eyewitness of Jesus, the written word became the technology of memory to keep the word of Christ alive and it still has the ability to evoke the presence of Risen Christ to bring people to belief and life changing experience.

The Gospel writer wrote that there were many other signs that Jesus did that were not written about.  You and I could also write our own book of signs of the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives.  Maybe you and I have treated the signs of Risen Christ in our lives as anonymous; maybe we have not credited the Risen Christ with the sublime blessings that we have known in many of the events of our lives.

If you and can learn to be honest to the Risen Christ, we may be able to come to confess, with St. Paul, that Christ is all, and in all.  Amen.

Sunday, April 21, 2019

We Are an Easter People and Alleluia Is Our Song

Easter Sunday  C   April 21, 2019
Isaiah 65:17-25  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26  Luke 24:1-12

Lectionary Link

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.  Amen.

When a newly engaged woman wants to show proof of her engagement, what does she show?  Does she flash the palm side of her hand to show the underside of her new diamond ring?  Of course not.  The ring is called a diamond ring.  It is not called a gold or silver band mounted with a shiny stone.

The famous metamorphosis cycle that we learned in elementary school is not called the egg cycle or the larva cycle or the caterpillar cycle or the chrysalis cycle.  No, it's called the butterfly life cycle.

All things are not treated with equal value in the cycle of life.  Some things stand out and define the process or the item.  It's the diamond ring.  It's the butterfly life cycle.

And today we say about Christianity:  It's the Easter Cycle of life.  Friends, today is diamond ring day.  Today is butterfly day.  Today is resurrection day.  And it is from the resurrection that we define our meaning in life.

Are we being naive and pollyannish optimists as those who choose to anchor our lives of faith on the resurrection?

I think not.  The butterfly does not deny the chrysalis, or the caterpillar or the egg stages.  The butterfly is all inclusive of what came before; the butterfly also includes what will yet be in a possible future, because the butterfly does what cannot be done at other stages; the butterfly can lay many eggs.

We are Easter people not because we are not realistic about everything else in this life, including pain, sickness, innocent suffering, evil, drudgery, loss and death.  We are Easter people because we can be poignantly realistic about everything else in life and still experience hope as the chief value of our life.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

If we are Easter people of hope, then futurism is our claim.  We profess that we will always have a future.  We confess that we will always have an afterlife.  There will be you and me after there is you and me now.  And this will always be so.  We can't be so precise about how you and me will be in our continuous afterlives but we will be.

Why do we profess this belief in our afterlives?  Because Jesus Christ had a definitive afterlife and promised us the same.  There were moments in the life of the followers of Jesus when they did not think that Jesus had a future.  When they saw him captured, tried and put to death.  Surely, if Jesus was gone forever, as good as he was, then there's no hope for us to continue to be after our deaths.  But when Jesus lay in the grave, he continued to be profoundly in the hearts of his friends.  He was there as an infallible memory, a profound memory which created deep, deep grief.  Their infallible memory of Jesus in their hearts allowed for the re-appearing of Christ in their lives in such an indelible way that the resurrection reality of the church was born and has never died.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

The witness of the people of the New Testament is that the Risen Christ was made known to them in profound re-appearances.  And since they discovered that Christ lives on forever, they knew that the rest of us could also ride on his coattails to foreverness.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

As hopeful as we are about Easter, let us not think that it is based upon a childish naivete.  Easter is not magic; Easter is based upon a faith that is continuously being educated by hope, love and justice as the chief values which are worthy for us to live for in this life.

We can be people of skepticism and doubt today, with good reason.  We can have realistic fears.  As scientists we have to choose to call the life cycle the butterfly cycle and not the chrysalis cycle.  It would be reasonably valid to call the life cycle the egg cycle, or the larva cycle or the caterpillar cycle or the chrysalis cycle.  The events of freedom give each phase its due time and it might seem perfectly reasonable to define life from each state of immaturity or even from the appearance of death.   

But there is something intrinsically sublime about the bursting of the butterfly from the chrysalis state and from the experience of the sublime we declare that the butterfly event establishes the identity of the entire cycle.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

Yes we could be birth people, Christmas people only, or we could define ourselves by the experiences which afflict humanity because of the freedom for some very bad things to happen to us, including the event of death itself.  Just as a scientist wants to call the cycle of life a butterfly life cycle, so we Christians choose to call ourselves Easter people.  We choose in faith to anchor our identity upon the sublime possibility of our afterlives; a re-birth after our lives have ended.  Why do we do this?  We believe in love.  We believe that love would not use hope as a way to torture us with dreams of wanting to be more than we could ever empirically be.  You and I, from childhood could regard ourselves as people tortured by dreams of wanting things and experiences that will never be ours.  And would a God of love be such a one to use Hope to taunt to want things that can never be ours?

When Jesus died, his life was not finished.  He had more life to live but in a different way with his friends of his past and his new friends to be, including us.  And isn't it amazing, the Risen Christ got to live on to know us too.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

By faith we choose to identify ourselves with the Easter event.  It has a totally different kind of solemnity than do the phases of immaturity with even the event of death as the last state of human immaturity.  Why do we even arrive at death as immature?  Because there is so much left that we wanted to say and do with all of the people and in all the places in our world.  And what will our mature afterlives be?  Well, use your imagination.  I imagine it would be something like the movie, Ground Hog Day.  You know you wake up each day and repeat the new day having integrated all of the lessons from having lived it before so that finally you learn how to achieve a loving relationship with the one whom you have finally impressed by coming to know her in a winsome way.

The maturity of our afterlives is the maturity of hope's dreams finally having enough time to do it all because one is finally learning to be in love with God and with everyone.

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

Do you believe this?  Can you believe this?  Can you believe it enough to go forth to live and share the hope of the Risen Christ?

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.  Amen.


The Vigil and Being Made Christians

Easter Vigil     C  April 20, 2019
Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7
Rom.6:3-11         Luke 24:1-12

Lectionary Link

Probably the liturgy which could be called the marathon of all Christian liturgies, is the Easter Vigil.  A proper Vigil includes 11 biblical readings from Hebrew Scriptures, the Epistles and Gospel.  It also include 11 Psalms.  It also includes the option for sermons to be preached for each of the biblical readings.  And this is after the long sung prayer at the Paschal Candle.  Then there is Holy Baptism and the first Communion of Easter.  A full blown Vigil can last hours; it can begin at 9 in the evening and end after midnight into Easter morning.  During my seminary years, I did participate in three Easter Vigils which lasted three hours or so.

In our day of sound bytes and text messaging, we find it almost impossible to survive even a one hour liturgy, though we will watch a three hour football game.  Today, we assume general literacy and continual access to all modes of Christian knowledge and the omni-presence of word access means that the gathered occasions for inculcating Christian knowledge is truncated and done in more virtual ways.

You perhaps are relieved to know that we aren't doing a three hour Vigil tonight; we are doing but a remnant of the Great Vigil of Easter.  Why?  It is worth keeping the most important liturgy alive and observed even if it does not fit our modern lifestyles and time schedules.

The values of the Vigil are important for us.  The Vigil is the great event of transmission of salvation history in the life of the church.

Historically, the people who were preparing for various lengths of time to be baptized, intensified their preparation during the season of Lent.  And then in the Vigil, the catechumens were present to hear the important readings of our salvation history from creation to Christ and the church.  They were present to sing the psalms.  And baptism, the event of Christian initiation was held, and the newly baptized were received into the church and for the first time they stayed in the church after the liturgy of the word and they received their first communion, in the Easter Communion.  The Easter Vigil was the highlight event of Christian initiation.  It was a climax event, a graduation event for the catechumen who became marked as Christ own forever and was received at the family meal, the Eucharist for the very first time.

The Easter Vigil expresses the fullest expression of the meaning of being in Christ and being in the family of Christ.

It is good for us to continue this Vigil tonight to remember that we are responsible for passing on the tradition of Christ to the next generation of Christians.

Tonight is a night to be thankful for our heritage.  To be thankful for the mentors of our lives of faith who exemplified for us the very best of the love of God in Christ.

Why have we been initiated into the tradition of Jesus Christ?  Why are we still in the process of being made Christians?  Because the life of Christ is alive in us, in our world.  The life of Christ is a transhistorical personal experience.  The life of Christ has been transmitted through human history for 2000 years.  Why?

Allelulia! Christ is Risen!  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia!

Friday, April 19, 2019

The Cross As Providence and As Mystical Experience

Good Friday   C April 19, 2019     
Gen 22:1-18        Ps 22
Heb.10:1-25        John 18:1-19:37
When we survey the New Testament and the history of the Christian Church, we might ask the question, "Is Christianity about the Cross of Jesus or about the Risen Christ?"

And the obvious answer is, "Both."

But Good Friday is the day of the Cross of Jesus Christ.  We venerate the cross on this day, because that is what the practice is in church tradition  and it is also what the New Testament writers did.

Paul wrote, "May I not boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

The Passion Gospel of John's Gospel is the account which boasts most profoundly about the Cross of Jesus Christ.  The Gospel of John is written and attains a particular climax in the cross of Jesus.

Early in John's Gospel, Jesus told Nicodemus: "And I, if I be lifted up will draw the entire world to me."

So the cross is presented as the elevator of Jesus into the afterlife of his resurrection?

Why did the writer of John's Gospel write the Passion story with so much boasting confidence?  

John's Gospel was the last Gospel written.  The writer had lived the history of the success of the Jesus Movement.  The Gospel writer knew that the crucifixion of Jesus did not end the memory of Jesus as it was intended by the Roman authorities in Palestine.  The cross of Jesus had to be re-visited because the Risen Christ did not go away.  The Risen Christ kept re-appearing as a significant Spirit Force in the lives of so many people that the church had to proclaim the Cross of Jesus as the exalted and necessary Providence of God.

Can you imagine a person on the gallows saying to the executioners, "Guys, I'm just letting you do this to me.  If I did not want to be executed by you, I could escape.  Go, ahead and take my life because you can only do my will by doing so?"

The future re-writes the significance of  past events.  The resurrection of Christ re-wrote the understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus.

As you and I gather to venerate the Cross of Jesus today on Good Friday what meaning can we take from this day?

First, no matter how bad the present or past has been, the future will change the ultimate meanings of what has happened.  This can seem like a rather blatant trivialization of the evil that is often inflicted upon people.  It seems cruel to be so confident while evil is happening.  "Oh, this is just terrible now, but some day this will all be re-written as having been absolutely necessary for the future."  It is true that the present is an absolute link between the past and the future.  Faith because of hope about the future, does not justify the current evil.  We should resist forcefully evil in the present with all of our strength.  And when we lose to suffering, pain and death, let us not lose without a fight.  But let us have hope that in our future afterlife that God is large enough to provide us meaning for our suffering and to let us know that our suffering has been beneficial for the life of others in our world.  Today, we bring the current crosses of our lives and world and we cry out in pain for the suffering which does not yet have redemptive meaning.  And we ask for strength to resist evil and pain with all our might.

Second, and finally, we ask that we might have the mystical experience of the Cross of Jesus that St. Paul and the early Christians had.  Paul said that he was crucified with Christ and as a result of this mystical experience, Christ lived in and through him.  Paul said that in such an identity with cross of Jesus Christ, the world was crucified to him.  That is to say, he had attained the power of self-control whereby he no longer let anything in his life become a controlling idol.  He was freed from the power of addicting desire; he had an experience of a Higher Power to attain self-control.

Today as we venerate the Cross, we present with honesty all of the pain and suffering of our lives and our world.  We present all of the evil that is inflicting this world.  And we scream that we can find no good reason for such evil.  But we also offer a deep sigh of hope that the future will provide us with redemptive meanings for what now seems such a triumph of chaos.

Today, we also venerate the Cross as a request for the mystical experience of the cross of Jesus to provide us with the Higher Power to attain the self-control to resist all that is unworthy.

Come today, let us boast in the cross of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Two Chief Christian Values: Eucharist and Service

Maundy Thursday   April 18, 2019
Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15
Lectionary Link
The liturgy tonight highlights the practice of Holy Eucharist by the church.  And it highlights that service is the value that Jesus promoted for the survival of the Jesus Movement.

Even though the Eucharist is related to the Passover Meal, it is quite different.  The Passover Meal occurs once a year.  The Eucharist was recommended for each gathering of Christians.  

The Eucharist developed some of the themes of the Passover Meal.  The early church proclaimed Christ as our Passover Lamb who would take away the sin of the world, but his actual death on the Cross was the event of him being the Last Passover sacrifice.

The lamb was no longer needed for a Christian Passover meal; the meaning of the body of Jesus was transferred onto the elements of bread and wine in a meal to become the gathering meal of Christian for the ages.

Why was Eucharist to be frequent and not just an annual meal?  It was a communal eating, a public eating together.  Why?  What can be determined when people eat together?  It can be verified that everyone has enough to eat.  The early Eucharist was done within context of an actual meal, where everyone ate actual food.  The Eucharistic words were added to an actual meal to reinforce that the people who ate together were a part of the family of Christ, and those who cared for one another.

The Eucharistic words of Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church are actually words of warning and discipline.  People who gathered to eat together began to trivialize the holy significance of eating together; they were in fact forgetting the purpose of their gathering.  So, St. Paul had to give them some discipline orders for how they were to regard the special meal of the bread and wine and their association and identity with the body of Christ.  In the words of discipline about the practice of Eucharist by the Corinthian church we can find the first written Eucharistic words of the New Testament.

From the actual practice of Holy Eucharist by the early churches the Gospel were written with the account of the Last Supper to show the derivation of the Eucharist from a Meal event in the week of the death of Jesus.  The early church confessed that the practice of Eucharist derived from a command, an institution by the word of Jesus.  We commemorate this institution tonight.

If the church survives by the command to continue to gather and celebrate the Eucharist of Christ, what other value is the secret to the success and survival of the church?

Service.  The value of service was demonstrated by Jesus in the washing of the feet of his disciples.  Jesus led by example, and he exemplified service.  He had the stature to be the boss and just give commands for others to serve him; but he led by serving.  And he told his followers to do likewise.  "Check your egos at the door or you will always live in contention and division."  Service is what the living death of sacrifice looks like.  St. Paul wrote, I urge you through the mercies of Christ to present yourselves as living sacrifice which is your spiritual service."

The foot-washing that we do tonight is embarrassing for us tonight because it is not a common practice of our culture; it was common to the culture of Jesus in a time of lots of walking in sandals creating dusty feet.  A good host would provide for the relief of tired and dusty feet.  The Maundy Thursday liturgy continues the foot-washing, not to recommend this as a modern practice, but to remind us that we present ourselves as living sacrifices to God and to each other when we serve each other.

Our parish, St. John's began with service, it has survived more than 60 years because of service, and it will only survive into the future through continued service.

Where is the future hope of our parish?  In the continued faithful practice of Eucharist and in the continue practice of service by the people of St. John the Divine.

This Maundy Thursday reminds us and calls us to Eucharist and to service tonight.  Amen.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Embrace the Passion Gospel Through St. Paul

Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday  C     April 14, 2019
Is. 50: 4-9a        Ps. 31: 9-16         
Phil. 2:5-11       Luke 23:1-49  
  Once again, we've got our donkeys to church for Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday.  And we are faced with the contrast between the Palm Procession crowd who cried "Hosanna" to their king and the Passion Gospel crowd that screamed, "Crucify Him."  Were they the same crowd?  Probably not.

The Hosanna crowd were probably the country bumpkins from Galilee who made their Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem and they wanted to make their hometown boy Jesus, the new king of Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem was controlled by the Roman authorities.  The Romans were invested in Jerusalem.  They in fact provided most of the jobs in Jerusalem.  They were building roads, bridges and aqueducts and they were actually building the temple complex as part of their public works program.  The Jewish religious leaders had to negotiate a place for their religious communities with the Roman authorities.  They could not have country prophets bringing their mobs and threaten the tenuous relationship with the Roman authorities.

So, one can understand how easy it was for the religious authority to gather a crowd of people in Jerusalem to help to get rid of Jesus who might threaten to bring down the wrath of the Roman soldiers and threaten the public work projects in Jerusalem which provided most of the jobs.

The two crowds can be explained with political and economic reasons.

But I am more interested in how the Passion Gospel functions in the life of the church.  We know it functions in our annual liturgical calendar.  The church calendar is a annual cycle of teaching curriculum tied to the events in the life of Jesus.  The church has divided the life of Jesus up into an annual cycle to teach and inculcate the values of Jesus to us and to the new people who are invited to our faith community.

But the Passion Gospels have often been dreadfully misused in church history.  Sometimes after the recitation of the Passion Gospel, enraged Christians used the Passion account to justify the persecution and harming of Jewish minority groups.  This is part of the shameful history of the use of the Passion Gospel.

When the Passion Gospels came to their last editions, the churches had increasingly become Gentile communities separated from the synagogues.  So in the presentation of the death of Jesus, the Passion texts seem to put as much blame upon the Jewish religious authorities and they seem to try to absolve Pilate and Herod as those who mere pawns of the Jewish religious authorities.  The fact is that the Romans were the ones in power for the awful spectacle of the practice of crucifixion.  It is most unfortunate that the Passion accounts have been used for anti-Semitic behaviors in the history of the church.

The reason it is so sad, is that the church has lost the mystical meaning of the Passion Gospels which was surely intended in the early church.

What is the mystical meaning of the Passion Gospels?  

St. Paul wrote before the Gospel were written.  He and others had a practice of the mystical transformation of their lives through an experience of identity with the Risen Christ.  The Risen Christ, re-lived a divine life within Paul.  Paul said that he was crucified with Christ and that he no longer lived, but Christ lived within him.  He said, he determined to know nothing except Christ, and him crucified.  He said that cross of Christ was a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greek and Hellenistic Roman community.  But the cross was the power of God to those who believed.  No Messiah for the Jews would be found on a cross; that was a stumbling block.  No king would be crucified; that was foolishness to the Greek-trained mind.

The early church wrote the Gospels as manuals of mysticism for people to identify with Christ; to know that Christ was mystically or spiritual born in each person and who lived and ministered within in each person.  Each person was to know an identity with Christ in his life, death and resurrection.  And all of this was coded in the Gospel narrative.

The death of the good and perfect Son of God, Jesus was regarded to be a good energy.  Each Christian in identity with the death energy of Jesus on the cross was given power, a higher power to die to what is unworthy in one's life because of selfish ego states.  In Christ, one could die to oneself, and allow the higher power of the Christ nature to be born within oneself.

The Passion Gospel readings are cryptic presentations of the mystical experience of Paul and others in identity with Christ.  Do you see how much the church has lost the mystical aspect of the Passion?  We reduced it mere historical events that we try to reproduce in Passion plays.  We tried to merely externalize the mystical event and in so doing we have lost contact with the mystical event.  We have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

Today we need the mystical power of the death of Christ to help us die to all that is unworthy in this life, to our addictive repetitions and to our selfish behaviors.

It much easier for us to just keep the Passion of Christ on a liturgical calendar as an attempt to act out an historical event.  We are happy to remain rubberneckers to this cruel event rather than take the invitation of St. Paul to be united in identity with Christ in his death and resurrection.

The event of baptism is a ritual that signifies this continual reality of dying and rising with Christ as the continuous mystical transformation of our lives.

Today on Passion Sunday, you and I are invited to the power of the death of Christ, as an experience of the mystical transformation of our lives.

Let us not be rubbernecker to the Passion event today; let us embrace a full identity with Christ in his death as a way to end that which is unworthy within us.  Amen.


Sunday, April 7, 2019

PDA contrast: Mary and Judas

5 Lent   C          April 6, 2019
Is.43:16-21        Ps.126              
Phil.3:8-14        Luke 20:9-19      
  The letters PDA have come to be the abbreviation for the "Public Display of Affection," and this has become a more sensitive issue in the wake of the "Me Too" movement and the previous habits of encroachment on private space that have been too long tolerated because of assumed access by mostly men.

  More specifically though, PDA refers to mutual public display of affection between persons who are so in love that they cannot help themselves from expressing it even in public.  And the cynical and offended public say or think, "Get a room," because of embarrassment and because the outsiders are not the lovers in love.

  We have such an event of PDA in our Gospel for today.  Mary of Bethany is unembarrassed to display her unabashed affection and devotion for Jesus.  Even though she is in the privacy of her own home, she is in the company of friends.  And she obviously hoped that her friends would understand her act of excessive devotion.

  Mary is not embarrassed but who is?  Judas Iscariot.  Judas lived in a society where men and women did not touch or speak or interact; men and women were segregated.  And this is what is interesting about the presentation of the Jesus Movement; on various occasions Jesus is in situations of violating this rule of the segregation of men and women in Jewish society.

  Mary of Bethany, is certainly transgressing the social boundaries for women of her time.  And Judas is totally embarrassed and he used financial waste as his excuse for criticism.  Remember this is the one who is going to take a bribe for 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus.  Remember too, the infamous PDA of Judas with Jesus; a kiss of betrayal to initiate his seizure by the soldiers.

  Judas was not okay with Jesus allowing such an encroachment upon his body, particularly his feet.  Judas was implying that Jesus should have prevented Mary from even initiating such an act.

Why did Jesus permit such an act?  The feet of a person are at the lowest part of the body.  You can't get lower than the feet.  In Indian society an elder or guru might be greeted with prostrations and touching of the feet as a sign of respect.  I once did a baptism for some Indian Christians and the baptized person and his mother insisted on bowing and touching my feet.  Certainly in the American context, it seemed out of place even though one did not want to reject their way of expressing respect and gratitude.

The washing of feet was the duty of the host in the time of Jesus and if the home had servants, they would get the assignment.  Jesus himself, at the Last Supper, was not ashamed of being a foot-washing servant for his disciples.

In the narrative of John's Gospel, Jesus had just brought Lazarus back to life and it could be that Lazarus was the financial sponsor for his sibling sisters.  Mary was very grateful to Jesus for the return to life of her brother Lazarus.

  After we read this Gospel for the immediate face value of the words of this story, we further should ponder that this story was being written for the church of the community of John probably forty years after Jesus lived.  And we must ask, "What did the recounting of this story mean in the churches which gathered forty years after Jesus was gone?"

In the early church, Mary of Bethany and Judas Iscariot had become "types" of person known in the Jesus Movement.  We know from the Epistles of Paul that he had persons who had experiences of the Risen Christ and leaders in the church, yet they betrayed their callings.  There were people like Judas in the early church who were involved in the Movement but who could not identify with the experiences of devotion of those who had mystical experiences of the Risen Christ.  Mary of Bethany and Judas Iscariot represented contrasting personality of persons who were exposed to the experience of the Risen Christ, but with different responses.

As we read this for our lives today, we ourselves need to assess the places and situations where we have honestly come to express our devotion to Christ.  I think most people keep their mystical experiences of God private because they are so individual that they might be misunderstood if they are openly expressed.  We also can be worried about how someone else might characterize our experiences of devotion to God and so we are reticent to display our public devotion to God for being an intervening Higher Power at important times in our lives.

And that brings to what we are doing today in our liturgy.  Lots of people would observe our liturgy today and like Judas say, "What a waste of time and money.  Why can't you spend your money on the poor?  Why maintain a building and a property?  Why pay for clergy and everything that goes into keeping the parish going?  Why are you kneeling in church to nothing that you can see?  Why are you drinking wine and eating bread and thinking that you are participating in Christ's body?  Why are you praying to one you can't see?"

Many people forsake the liturgy because they have become embarrassed by such expression of devotion to God in public.  "I've got a private room; I can express that devotion at home."

We need to resist the cynical attitude of Judas regarding our expression of excess in our public display of affection for Christ in our "embarrassingly irrational" liturgies.

So why are we here today, expressing PDA for Christ?  Why are we being so silly?  We are being silly because we are recognizing how small we are when faced with the Plenitude of God and how that Plenitude gets expressed toward us.  And in our silliness, we are obliged to bow low before God's greatness and before Christ who made the greatness of God's love more readily knowable by us.

Let us today resist the cynicism of Judas toward worship and devotion.  Worship and devotion are something we need to do because of what God has already done for us and for for what we yet need God to do for us.

How did St. Paul characterize the person who had the mystical experience of the Risen Christ?  He said that their lives were like a fragrant offering.  As Mary of Bethany wanted to offer the very best fragrance to Jesus for his power to give new life, so we want to offer our lives as a fragrance to God in our hopes of being winsome in this world to the point of being able to cover the stench of sin and death and point to the hope of our future in God.

Go forth today and do something excessive for Christ and do something excessive for your parish too as a sign of your recognition of the Plenitude of God and the love of Christ.  Amen.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

A Parable As a Mirror for our Lives

4 Lent             March 6, 2016     
Joshua 5:9-12          Ps.32           
2 Cor. 5:17-21     Luke 15:11-32     

Lectionary Link
Catherine:  So, my friends how did you like the Parable of the Irresponsible and Prodigal Son?

Rylie:  Excuse me.  Don't you think it should be called the Parable of the Forgiving Father who could not practice "tough love?"

Sasha:  Excuse me.  Don't you think it should be called the Parable of the Responsible Big Brother who thought his dad favored his younger brother?

Catherine:  Whatever, you want to call this parable, if it were a play, which character would you like to play?  I personally, would not want to be the fatted calf.  You know what happened to him.  Perhaps it would be interesting to be one of the persons who attended the homecoming party.  But if this were a play, which part would you want to play?

Rylie:  I, would of course, love to play the loving and generous father who did not just rejoice when his son returned home, he threw him a big party, bought him a new tuxedo, even though his son had wanted to get far away from his dad and his home and never come back.

Sasha:  Do you really think that you would be that forgiving?  And why wouldn't you give the older brother some credit for always being faithful and staying at home to work for his dad?

Catherine:  That's true, I think everyone could understand why the older brother would have some very hurt feelings.  He was probably thinking?  What the use to be loyal?  There is no reward in being loyal.  So, Sasha, would you like to play the older brother?

Sasha:  Well, he was a bit unforgiving and jealous, but I think everyone can understand why he did not think it was fair.

Rylie: Does anyone want to play the irresponsible and rebellious son?

Catherine:  I would, of course, because playing the bad person would bring out more flamboyant acting scenes.  Can you imagine having all that money and blowing it all on spending sprees and parties.  Wouldn't that be a great role to play?

Sasha:  But what if you had to become a kosher pig farmer, who became so poor that you became jealous of the pigs food?

Catherine:  As an actor, the rebellious child would allow me to explore a full range of acting skills.  What actor wouldn't like that?  The lovable father might seem to be foolish with love.

Rylie:  Yes, he did allow the rebellious to take his inheritance long before he died.  And his son wasted all of his inheritance and then came crawling back home.  I guess I would like to know what Dad said to his son after the homecoming party?  He probably said, "Okay, Junior, the party is over now.  Remember that your older brother has been loyal and faithful.  You are going to have to behave in a way that allows our family to believe in you again.  Are you ready for a life of being responsible?"

Sasha:  Well, that's the part of the story that we do not hear.  The father can be loving and he can welcome his rebellious son back home, but he also can ask that his son change his future behaviors.  He can ask that his young son prove that he can be a good brother,

Catherine:  Well, we have had fun with the story, but it could be that Jesus used stories to teach his listeners.  A story is like a mirror.  If I look into the mirror and see a smudge on my face, then I know I have to wash my face.  If I didn't have the mirror, I would embarrass myself by going into public with a dirty face.

Rylie:  So the story of Jesus is like a mirror.  We can see ourselves in the loving father, in the rebellious son and in the older brother.

Sasha:  We can be loving and forgiving.  We also can be rebellious and sinful.  We can be in need of forgiveness.  We can need to be humble and go and admit that we made a mistake.

Catherine:  We can also be unforgiving like the older brother.  When we are good at something, we might be harsh when people are not good in areas of our strengths and ability.  So we can be judgmental.

Rylie: As people we can find ourselves in all three characters.  We can be loving and forgiving.  We can be rebellious and in need of forgiveness.  And we can be judgmental and jealous.

Sasha: There is one catch though.  God only plays one of the roles.  God is only in the role of the loving and forgiving father.  God is not like the rebellious son or the unforgiving son.  So God just plays one role.

Catherine:  So, today we have this parable of Jesus as a mirror for our lives too.  We can be rebellious and unforgiving, but we also have the ability to be loving and forgiving.  We can learn to be like the loving father.

Rylie:  When we are sinful, we know we need someone who forgives us.   And when we judge someone else we know that others need forgiveness too.  So the younger son and the older son need to grow up and become like the loving father.

Sasha: We too, are always on the path of growing up to be loving, kind and forgiving like God is.

Catherine:  And let us not forget why Jesus told the parable in the first place.

Rylie:  Why did he tell it?

Catherine:  Jesus was criticized by the religious leaders when they saw him eating with people who were not religious.  They did not think Jesus was very religious because they thought he was meeting with sinners and rebellious people.

Sasha:  Jesus came to teach that all people are the children of God.  Nobody has the right to say that someone is not worthy of God's love.  And how can people know that God loves them if someone does not tell them?

Rylie:  Jesus came to remind people that they are God's children and they are invited to come home to God's family.  God will give to everyone a loving welcome.

Catherine:  The Eucharist on Sunday is  God's party to welcome everyone to God's table.

Sasha:  And we all know that there are lots of empty seats at God's table. 

Rylie:  This means that we need to be like Jesus; we need to welcome as many people as possible to know God as our loving and forgiving parent.  We need to invite everyone to God's party.

Catherine:  So, people of St. John's; if Jesus welcomed everyone to God's party of forgiveness, we too need to welcome the people we meet to know God's love and forgiveness.

Sasha:  Amen.

Rylie: Amen.























Eucharist and Sign Value Crisis

Maundy Thursday March 28, 2024 Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25 1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15 Lectionary Link On Maundy Thursday, many Christi...