Is Living Sacrifice an Oxymoron

Pentecost,  A p 16, August 23, 2020
Isaiah 51:1-6  Psalm 138

Romans 12:1-8  Matthew 16:13-20 

Lectionary Link

Translation from one language and one culture in another time is sometimes very challenging, and sometimes it is impossible to translate exact meanings.

I once heard a lecture by a Wycliffe Bible translator, a group committed to translating the Bible into all of the languages in the world.

And she mentioned a translation problem.  She was translating the Bible into a Polynesian language in a remote culture that had no access with the rest of the world.  So, here was the problem. How does one translate lamb or Lamb of God into a culture that has no sheep or lambs or even cows?  The translation solution was to go to their word for "pig" because they only had pigs that would correspond to the function of lamb in Hebrew Scriptures.  And how ironic and anti-kosher was that?  Behold the "pig" of God?  One can appreciate the translation dilemmas.

The Gospel writers had similar problems.  They had to translate oral traditions that arose in the Aramaic language of Jesus into other languages and at a much later period in different locations to many different people who had no knowledge or connection with the Palestinian situation in the lifetime of Jesus.

What did the writer of Matthew know?  He knew that the gathering around Jesus had grown into a Movement which initially tried to convince the members of synagogue that Jesus as the Messiah was the new teaching of Judaism.  This failed; the Jesus Movement was separated from the synagogues and became house gatherings, and there would have been multiple house gatherings in cities like Rome, and so the word ekklesia or church became the word of choice.  It had dual meanings; it meant "called out of," which is what followers of Jesus felt, but it also was a political term for geographical district in a city, what we might call a "ward."  Ironically, churches use the words parish and congregation for designating their gatherings and the LDS refer to their local gatherings as "wards."

What else did the Matthew writer know?  The writer knew that Jerusalem had been destroyed and that the Jesus Movement had become stealthily spreading into the cities of the Roman Empire.  The writer knew that Peter and Paul had become prominent leaders in the churches in Rome and that they had died martyr's deaths in times of Roman persecution.  What would be more expressive of the gates of hell than facing the persecution of a cruel tyrant Nero, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned and blamed it on the Christians.  Did the Jesus Movement die after the death of Jesus?  No.  Did the Christian Church Movement die after Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome.  No.  Did the gates of hell prevail against the church?  No.

This is what the writer of the Gospel of Matthew knew.  This writer knew like St. Paul, the experience of the Risen Christ through the awareness of the Holy Spirit.  This writer knew that the presentation of Peter as a disciple in the school of Jesus was a learning method for all initiates within the Christian communities.  Through experience, each Christian comes to make the same confession of Peter.  "For me, Jesus, you are the Messiah, God's anointed and you are the son of the living God."  Not like the son of a dead Caesar who was called son of a god, a dead god.

And for each student like Peter to come to make the confession about Jesus, therein is found not just the foundation of the church but the continuation of the church even to the city of Rome, and even Nero as the agent of the devil could not stand against the continuing success of the church.

Can we appreciate how the writer of Matthew connected his knowledge of the success of the church under the leadership of Paul and Peter to their encounter with Jesus Christ.

St. Paul believed that identity with the death and resurrection Christ gave a person the power of being a living sacrifice.  What does being a living sacrifice mean?  It means the experience of an interior power to die to unworthy selfishness and allow for the grace of ministry to enter one's life.  One ministers to other when one can "check one's ego at the door."  With the life of being living sacrifices, what happens in the community?  The orchestra of Christian gifts; prophecy, exhorting, teaching, generosity, leadership, diligence, compassion and cheerfulness.  How does the orchestration of Christian community happen?  It happens because people with encounters of the Risen Christ learn how to be "living sacrifices."  How can I continue to life in positive and serving way without dying?  By identifying with the power to cease to live selfishly and receive the power to live with generosity and acceptance of the equal value of the ministry of all within the fellowship.

Will the gates of hell prevail against the church of St. Mary's-in-the-Valley?  Will the pandemic?  No they won't.  Why?  Because we will continue to live in our confession of Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God, who makes us alive, here and now.  

Let us continue to find ways to be "living sacrifices," totally alive because of the cheerful compassion we've learned from Christ.  Amen.

Canine Social Theology

11 Pentecost, A p15, August 16, 2020
Isaiah 56:1,6-8  Psalm 67   
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Lectionary Link

From today's appointed Gospel, I feel inclined to present a Canine Social Theology.  Sometimes animal metaphors are used to denigrate both humans and animals.  Some politicians refer to perceived enemies as dogs, using the ancient negative connotation of dogs, that derives in part from biblical and holy book traditions, even while in our society, dogs and other pets have achieved near sainthood status.   Our pets love us and are highly dependent upon us to feed them and take care of them and they bring us joy, support and companionship.

Dogs have not always and are not always held in such esteem.  I lived in a Middle Eastern Country for four years.  I witnessed children stoning young stray puppies in the river bed without conscience.  One had to be afraid of packs of wild dogs late at night on the city streets.  They scavenged the garbage left from the day.  I wondered where all of the dogs went in the day; and on a mountain hike above the city, I happened upon an entire pack of sleeping dogs.  Needless to say, I exited quickly, honoring that old cliche, "let sleeping dogs lie."  To curse at one's enemies one would issue a supreme insult, "Your father is a dog."  I guess that at least the female mother dog designation was not used, like it is so often used in our world today.  Can you tell me what is so bad about motherhood, that it is derogatory for a mother dog? Some dogs were prized in the Middle East.  I did find herd dogs when I visited and stayed with a nomadic tribe.  Those dogs were very useful and therefore given better status.

Biblical dogs were generally regarded to be like walking mammal vultures; they were scavengers, more like a pack of wolves rather than domesticated pets.  They, like the pig were designated as unclean and impure, not to be touched or eaten, and certainly that was their only good fortune.  Too unclean to eat.

The fact that dogs could be at a master's table during the time of Jesus, probably means that dogs had attained a semi-domesticated status.  Perhaps, they were good at keeping the rodents and other pesty animals away.  And they could be janitorial vacuum cleaners after a meal to clean up the floor, for scraps and the food that didn't pass the five-second rule.

With our modern day sensitivities and political correctness, we could take offense at the exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  "Jesus, please help my tormented daughter!"  "Ma'am, you know the the public stereotypes.  You're crossing boundaries.  Your people are regarded to be dogs, outsiders, scavengers  by my people.  Why are you presuming to cross those boundaries?"  "Jesus, as an outsider, a dog, I am happy to scavenge at the table for scraps to get my daughter healed."  "Woman, your faith has torn down the wall of separation and has given you access to health and healing for your daughter."

For the Isaian prophet, the Temple was to be a House of Prayer for all people.  What was the original intention of God the creator?  Each person created in God's image was to be a temple of God.  Each person had within the interior life a holiest of holy, a meeting place with God.  Such an interior temple had to be exteriorize into a Building Temple in Jerusalem within a certain people, as a strategy of the rehabilitation of all humanity, to once again realize each person's as a Temple of the Holy Spirit.

Israel and the Temple became a particular people and sacred building as a strategy for all of humanity to realize that each person could be God's holy nomadic tabernacle and dwelling for God's Spirit.

The early Christian leaders who came the heritage of the Hebrew Scriptures, believed that their Judaism could not become universally accessible as it was being practiced.   As it was being practice, God's message was cloistered within a single group of people living isolated lives from the people of the Roman Empire.

Very few of the dogs were getting scraps from the table.  There were too many outsiders?  Too many dogs who did not have access even to the crumbs of the Torah.  How can a God be known to be universal, if God is not universally accessible?  How can a pathway to God be locked off and not have the majority of the people of the world be invited?

If we appreciate this dilemma, we might understand Jesus of Nazareth and the early Jesus Movement resulted in a great great surprise.  What was the great surprise?  The mystical and spontaneous experience of the Holy Spirit began to happen in ways in which the religious leaders could not contain.  St. Paul, Peter, and the disciples  as Jews, found the Holy Spirit wildfire could not be contained within the existing religious structures of their upbringing.  What did they do?  They went with the flow, the flow of the Spirit.

The faith of Christ broke down boundaries and borders and would not let there be outsiders.  St. Paul wrote that in Christ, there is no Jews, Gentiles, males, females, but a new creation.

The dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is an origin discourse for the ultimate success of the Jesus Movement beyond the boundaries of Judaism in the Gentile peoples of the Roman Empire.

The Gospel for us is that through faith we can over come boundaries to the experience of God's favor and love.  

The dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman shows us that Jesus is one who pushes us to have faith and stand up with it.  The use of the word "dog" as the pejorative for outsider is revealing.  The Canaanite woman had faith to challenge whether ethnic and religious barriers should keep us from the health and salvation of God.  This story illustrates how bias and bigotry turn people against themselves.  The woman was willing to accept the designation as an "outsider dog" just so that she might have the crumb of the grace of God from the Master's table, from God's table.  Jesus used the stereotypical "dog" word, to cajole the woman to get beyond her own self image as an outsider to God.  And it was her faith which helped her leap over the barrier.

For us, we need to have faith no to let anyone or anything separate us or anyone else from the love of God in Christ and God's salvation for us.  If St. Paul were here today, he would be writing, "In Christ, there is no East or West, North or South, Black, White, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ....we are all one in Christ.  No one can excommunicate anyone else from the equal love of God.  Period.

May the witness to faith in the Gospel, inspire us not to misrepresent God and God's love and access to everyone.  And may we not let the history of our own victimhood, make us think that we have to grovel to another group of people for grace.  And may, we also redeem the use of the metaphor of the word "dog" and the degrading female term for dog that comes so easily to people's mouths today.

If we have come to have regard for animals to be our pets and friends, and there is a gap between the human and animal kingdoms, can we come to appreciate that God invites everyone to be God's favorite pets in the kingdom of heaven.

This is the secret of the Kingdom of heaven.  God is whispering into everyone's ear: "you are my favorite pet human child, and my grace gives you more than crumbs.  My grace is an invitation to the main table.  Amen.

Jesus As a Surfing Dude?

10  Pentecost, A p 14, August 9, 2020
1 Kings 19:9-18 Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15,  Matthew 14:22-33

Lectionary Link

The Bible gives us clues about how to read it.  And we should follow the invitation to read it as spiritual poetry.  We have been intimidated by modern science, modern historical writing and modern eyewitness journalism.   Modern scholarly practice have caused many biblical interpreters to fall in the trap of reading the Bible as though it is modern accurate journalistic reporting with the scientific standard of empirically verifiable events.

The Gospel writers took up the symbolic poetic order of the Hebrew Scriptures and used the metaphors as ways to present in narrative form the spiritual and mystical meaning of Jesus Christ.  Why?  People were having Holy Spirit mystical experiences.  They had sublime experiences and they needed to know how these experiences were connected to this special person Jesus.

How do we understand this sublime?  And how is it connected with an incarnation of God in the person of Jesus who became inseparable from these post-death and resurrection experiences of the Risen Christ?

How do we understand these sublime experiences and teach their meaning?  And how do we teach a program of orientation into the mysteries of the sublime experience of the Holy Spirit?

To be born of water and the Holy Spirit, means that there exists a parallel realm within each initiate through which one interprets the exterior and landscape events of life.

Narratives of the landscapes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth were presented in the Gospels to illustrate the meaning of the Risen Christ found within each Christian.

Where can we find the Risen Christ to accompany us in our lives?  According to the Gospels:  Everywhere.  The Gospels present some material situations where the Risen Christ can be found to accompany us.

What has always been some of the greatest conflicts for human life?  They have occurred with events of Nature.  Why the conflicts?  Human schedules and Nature's schedules are sometimes in conflict.   A great storm on the Sea of Galilee would be just plain impressive, unless the schedule of fishermen conflict with the schedule of Nature to put the fishermen in harm's way.

As organisms with the prolific abilities to grow and become parasitic on other life, like cancer and Covid-19 and a large hosts of bacteria and viruses are very impressive.  And if their life and growth could be totally isolated from human interaction, we could be awed observers.

But these living organisms in nature interact with human schedules in time  in our bodily lives and they frighten and they reek havoc, because they cause sickness, suffering and death.

God who is perfect freedom, presides within a world which shares in this freedom.  And because of our love of science to make every an external observable event, we have been tempted to exteriorize the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel.  The Jesus of the Gospel is written to illustrate in a graphic way the profound interior rising of the Risen Christ who can co-exist with all of the freedom which we face in our lives.  And in faith, we need to realize that we are never exempt from the conditions of freedom.

And because we are not exempt from the conditions of freedom, we use probability theory to anticipate and predict.  We want to negotiate our lives in the safest way through the conditions of freedom.  Sometimes we are safe because of wise behaviors that we can learn from science and our biblical tradition.  But in many other things, we find we are not exempt from an entire array of events, sublime, marvelous, good, ordinary, bad, horrendous and evil.  In life's conditions of freedom, we are not exempt from a continuum of events of what might happen to us.

So what is the Gospel for us? If God and Jesus honor freedom and we know that they are not exempt from the array of freedom, how should we live?  We can either live by faith or by fear.  We can be Murphy Law devotees, fearing more of what can go wrong, than enjoying and savoring the vast amount of goodness.  

The ancient God moved by the Spirit on the deep waters of chaos to created through God's Word.  For Elijah, God was not in the earthquake, wind and the fire; God was in the peaceful stillness which co-existed with wind and the fire.

The Gospel writers believed the experience of the Risen Christ was graphically presented in Jesus walking on the stormy waters faced by his friends.  How does one walk in the middle of the stormy sea?  With faith?  Yes and according to gravity, one sinks into the waters.  And who is with us as we sink?  The hand of the Risen Christ.

And when we sink into the ocean of our eventual death because Time and freedom govern our bodily lives, who will be there?  The hand of the Risen Christ to lift us up.

Let us practice knowing the still peace of God within us and the ever rescuing hand of the Risen Christ who truly walks in the storms of Nature with us.    When some of us see the crashing ocean waves, we think awesome frightening power.  But what does the surfer see?  Heavy waves, now that's a challenge.  Jesus is the model for us of a life surfer.  He sees the waves and says, "Heavy waves Dude! now jump on my board!"  Amen.

Leftovers Anyone?

8 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 13, August 2, 2020

Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 17: 1-7, 16

Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

Lectionary Link

One of the best things, the day after a meal is leftovers.  I've said hundreds of time, "wow, this soup or sauce tastes better today than when I served it last night."  And so the obvious question is why don't I have the discipline to serve things a day late so that the flavors can marinade longer and taste better?  Well, I'm not that disciplined and also not everything tastes good as a leftover, like a soggy salad.

 

I'm fascinated with the accounts of the multiplication of loaves stories in the Gospels.  They all include leftovers.  Why do all of the authors make sure to report leftovers but they never write about what is done with the leftovers?  Are the leftovers recorded to imply the abundance of God's blessing?  Are the leftovers recorded to indicate that the work of distribution remains for the disciples to feed people who were not present for the original meal?

 

Is the multiplication of loaves story the cryptic insertion of the Eucharistic practice of the early churches with the invitation that the leftover bread is the renewal supply of God's holy bread for the people of this world?  If MacDonald's have served billions of burgers, how many billions of people have been fed with the continual leftovers from the Table of the Lord in the history of the church?

 

The leftovers reported at the multiplication of loaves event is an indication that the feeding of people with bread and the word of God is still not finished.  It is a reminder to us that we cannot divorce Eucharist as an event of Word and Sacrament from the needs of the hungry people of the world.  We are challenged to devise creative economies to get the leftovers from the abundance of God to us to those who need food and the things for necessary subsistence.

 

Let us look at a theology of leftovers in the story of salvation.  One might say that the intent of God was to bless all with abundance and have the leftovers of abundance be continually shared to new and more people.  The leftovers are the evangelism, the invitation to join the main table of blessing which God desires for everyone.

 

The biblical story of salvation is that God wanted to deliver the blessing of abundant living to all people in this world.  As God's creation, God wanted the human creatures to have an "owner's manual" on how to best operate human living and how to troubleshoot if problems arose.

 

The delivery system was the selection of a people who would build a house of prayer for all people to be invited into the ownership manual for best behaviors and living.

 

We have read today, the story of the transformation of a single family man into the corporate personality.  Jacob wrestled with God and he, died as the last Patriarch, but he received a new Corporate Name, the name of Israel.  In this name, a people would be readied as a divine strategy to deliver the owner's manual for human beings to this world.  Israel became the corporate name for a people with a divine mission.  And the mission had some successes and some failures.

 

The mission was successful in forging a continuing identity for the Jewish people by rules which segregated them from the other people of the world.  Everyone can theoretically become a member of an Amish Community, but the rules are so inaccessible from the normal practices of modern people as to make Amish practice an impossible universal practice.  What became obvious in the time of Jesus and Paul is that Judaism as it had come to be practiced was not adaptable to the conditions in Palestine and to the majority people in the cities of the Roman Empire.  Even though Judaism permitted proselytes to convert, one could say that evangelism was not a major mission of the Judaism which was practiced at the time of Jesus and Paul.  The most effective way of Jewish evangelism was birth of a child within a Jewish family.

 

In the letter of Paul to Romans, Paul, a Jew, mourned the fact that his Jewish faith community did not have evangelical wisdom.  How could the people of the world know that God's blessing was intended for all if there was no strategy for sharing.  Paul believed that the blessing of God to the Jews had plenty of leftovers.  The offering of these leftovers to the Gentiles people was the evangelism of the Jesus Movement within the Roman Empire.  The earliest churches derived from the synagogues and were a Christ-centered Judaism to the people in the Roman Empire.  And to be more accessible, the Jesus Movement were led by the Spirit to dispense with the ritual purity requirements of Judaism to reach the Gentile peoples.  And this caused a painful separation of the Jesus Movement from the synagogue.  Evangelism of the Jesus Movement believed that one was not distinguished by ritual purity, as important as it might be, one was distinguished by the inner presence of the Holy Spirit to change one's life toward the moral perfection of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, self-control and faith.

 

Leftovers might seem to be like second-hand clothing that we give to the thrift store.   But when it comes to food, leftovers can be the better tasting food due to mature marinating.  And that is what evangelism is in the Jesus Movement; it is the leftovers of the blessing of the main meal which has marinated our faith lives in maturity so that we can make a more tasty presentations of our good news to the people in our lives.  Why?  Because we want everyone invited to the main table of God's love and blessing.

 

May God give us wisdom to distribute the wonderful leftovers of God's blessing in our lives, so that more people can know that they are invited to God's main table, God's welcoming feast of life.  Amen.

Use Your Words

8 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 12, July 26, 2020
1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39   Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

 

Teachers and parents tell their toddlers and preschoolers to "use your words."  This is a diversion technique because kids from sheer instinct use their body language words to hit, bite, scream and show all manner of frustrated chaos.  "Calm down, use your words."   But we know that just using words should not give license to use our words in terrible ways.  We have lots of public figure using their words all of the time, and some in  badly ways meant to hurt other people.

 

One could say that the coming of the Torah, the law to humanity was God's way of saying to humanity, "Use your words; you cannot just live from impulse to impulse.  You need to have some words that provide the best recommended behaviors to bring order and impulse control.  You need the language of the law to train your body language to do the very best deeds for living."

 

And just because humanity was given the good words of the law, it did not mean successful behaviors prevailed in the lives of God's people.  They forgot and needed continually to be reminded to "Use their words, God's words in good and right behaviors."

 

What do we call using good words in political governance?  When Solomon became king of Israel, he asked God for good judgment and wisdom in governing the people and discerning between good and evil.  Certainly this is still what all political leadership needs; wisdom to serve people with profound discernment.  If Israel was supposed to be the kingdom of heaven on earth under their kings, we know that it failed.

 

In the time of Jesus, One might say that the words of the law, the Torah, were not that successful in the world at large.  In actual practice, they became the way in which an oppressed and occupied nation kept their separate identity.  They became the words which kept Jews living throughout the world of the Roman Empire, maintain a very separate identity.  How could God's best words be shared and given to the entire world, if they were locked within a very small community of people to keep them as separate like perhaps the Amish are in our country today?

 

God's word came into a different kind of mission in Jesus Christ.  The written words of God of the Torah in their practice were not successful enough to enough people to satisfy a more universal mission.

 

John's Gospel proclaims that Word was in the beginning of human life as we know it.  And the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And the Word did not just become writing.  The Word became flesh in the person of Jesus.  And Jesus spoke words and he said that his words were spirit and life.

 

And many of his words came in parables and metaphors about the kingdom of heaven, the nuance of the realm of heaven that can be known in our human and earthly experience.

 

What do earthly kings and presidents want to do?  They want to make a big flashy show.  They want popularity; they seek popularity for their own legitimacy.  What did Jesus say?  God's heavenly kingdom is accumulatively subtle; it like a tiny mustard seed, insignificant alone and unplanted, but when planted it slowly takes over the landscape.  The kingdom of heaven is the accumulation of each deed of faith and kindness which grows to become a knowable presence of God's uncanny love and goodness.  Don't worry about the big show of your faith; do the small deeds, one by one, kindness upon kindness and know that the survival of this world actually happens because it is supported by the hidden scaffold of all of the deeds of kindness done by people who don't do things for show or politics or money or power.  Believe in the profound preserving effect of this hidden and subtle kingdom of kindness.  

 

Leaven or yeast is small and tiny but with a little time it can double, triple and quadruple the size of dough.  Why can we still smell the wonderful aroma of fresh yeasty bread out of the oven in the midst of the woes of this world of war, fighting, injustice and pandemic?  Because the aroma of the kingdom of heaven calls out the winsome normalcy of health, of life, liberty, happiness and kindness.  The suffering of the world seems so severe because the aroma of the kingdom of heaven is so wonderful.  And we as people need to follow the wonderful aroma of the kingdom of God.

 

The kingdom of heaven involves having the wisdom to sort out lives in retrospective.  We haul in the net of the occasions of our experience and we sort out meaning and value.  We retain what is worthy and we discard what is not even as we have to give up some bad things that we've loved too much in our bad habits.  The kingdom of heaven is the promise of the ultimate success of justice and clarity about our human experience.

 

The kingdom of heaven is like having delicious insider information.  Like finding a gold mine in a garage sale because the seller does not really know what value of what just seems to be ordinary.  The kingdom of heaven is akin to finding supreme value in the middle of what seems to be so natural and ordinary.  It is to find the deep groaning and sighing Holy Spirit within oneself co-existing with our lives surviving everything that can possibly happen to us, and experience the seeming impossible, the experience of feeling loved by Christ through the presence of God's Spirit.

 

Further the kingdom of heaven is the discovery of the gift of finding something so important that it is worth living and dying for.  For me the value of the Word as God, is the supreme value discovered because it will accompany everything that I ever will do, be, know, speak and write.  A person who knows the kingdom of heaven is the person who has discovered the telling value of one's life, the image of God upon one's life.

 

And to sum it up, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is knowing how to "use our words best," by being good scribes.  What is a scribe?  A scribe is a writer.  Writing is the expression of facility in using words in the very best way, not just being literate and able to scribble characters upon the page.  A scribe of the kingdom is one who has learned to use one's words best.  And how does one do that?  Each person seeking to be this scribe of the kingdom of heaven, is one who strives to find one's unique voice, to live, speak, write, and behave the wonderful kind values of the kingdom of God, and do it as it can only be done through each person's unique gifts.

 

In the Hebrew tradition of the Torah, the Torah was regarded to be a living word tradition, because the Torah travelled through time and had to be interpreted again and again to new situations.  The work of interpretation as scribes of the kingdom of heaven is to bring forth the treasures of the kingdom to the people in our lives.  Christ, as the living Word of God, commissions you and me to be scribes, becoming totally literate in the kingdom of heaven.

 

You and I have been given the Risen Christ as the Word who is God within us.  We are to be scribes of the kingdom of heaven, learning to use our best words, in saying, teaching and doing the kind deeds of God's love and justice and kindness to all.

 

May God give us the grace to be wise scribes of the kingdom of heaven as we do the work of interpreting all of the words of our lives so that we can bring forth the goodness of what is both old and new.  And you know what?  Love, justice and kindness are always old and they are always new.  So let these be our best use of our words.  Amen.

Balancing Cosmic Patience With Particular Impatience

7 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 19, 2020
Genesis 28:10-19a,  Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Lectionary Link

A basic technique of Jesus for teaching and communication was the parable.  A parable is a story which provides wisdom insights about life and certainly Jesus was one we might designate as a wisdom teacher.

Wisdom is not what we call science; wisdom has more to do with the ordering our inner lives of feelings and values and motivations to propel what we do and say in our lives.

One of the basic themes of the parables of Jesus was the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God.  First why does Matthew's Gospel use "kingdom of heaven" and not "kingdom of God?"  One theory is that the reading audience of Matthew were predominately from a Jewish background and since in respect for the name of God, the word heaven was put in the place of God's holy unpronounceable name. 

Jesus came to teach us the wisdom of God, the wisdom of heaven while we very much live in the realm or kingdom of this world.  The wisdom of heaven which can be derived from being born from above, involves someone who was conversant in the heavenly realm, the inner spiritual realm, and who communicated this to us in the earthly realm.

We've read today the story of the dream of Jacob about a ladder from heaven on which angels traveled up and down.

In the Gospel John, Jesus said to Nathaniel that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.  Jesus, then is Jacob's ladder, in that he connects the invisible abode of the divine with the earthly landing on the bottom rung.  Angels are messengers, symbolic of the messages which come through Jesus as the connecting ladder of the heavenly with the earthly.

St. Paul noted that the world is subjected to futility.  Futility might be described as thwarted hope, unrealized aspirations for things which seem so appropriate and right.

Jesus told the parable of the weeds and the wheat to give us insights about the experience of futility due to the conditions of freedom which prevail in the passage of time.

Jesus indicates that the human situation is like the life of a frustrated, challenged and yet hopeful farmer or gardener.  We plant and we hope for optimal outcomes, but in the conditions of freedom allow pests and weeds to challenge the success of our hopeful dreams.

And what is required of us as earthly gardeners?  Patience.  In the impatience of rage we wish that we could just go "Rambo" on our enemies, all of the weeds which challenge the full success of our lives.

We wish the field of freedom could be instantly rid of all evil by pulling up all of the weeds of evil.  But to rid the field of all of the weeds, we are reminded that such weeds in field of freedom are intertwined with all that is good.  And so we must be patient to tolerate the conditions until the time of harvest when what is good can survive and nurture future life.  That which is unworthy is separated and not allowed to be perpetuated.

As gardeners of living, we have to be patient for the cycles in the passing of time for things to come to pass.

The entire council of God or Christ are not revealed in the parable of the weeds and wheat.  Only the passive side of patience.  Yes, like gardeners we have to be patient.  Most of the biblical writings were written by people very unlike those of us who are white in America.  Biblical writings were written by people without political power; people who were oppressed and suppressed.  So, they needed insights about being patient.  If the Jews and early Christians thought that they could attack the weeds of evil of their Roman overlords, they knew that all of their good would be lost as well.  They had to abide in patience.

What the parable does not give to us is the responsibility that people with power, privilege and wealth have to prevent the injustice and oppression, and evil in our world.

Just think about slaves in America for many years.  Just think about indigenous peoples in America for many years.  Were they and are they supposed to just be patient waiting for the harvest when their oppressors are sorted out sent to the dust bin of history?

We certainly should not use this parable of Jesus to tolerate the delay of justice for all people, if we have the power to bring it to full practice and to right the wrongs of the evil of our past.

If we are people in futility today, faced with some evil, over which we have no control, let us have the patience of a good gardener to wait for things to pass.

But us not regard ourselves as helpless gardeners,as passive ones who can do nothing about the presence of injustice that is in our ability to weed out.

All of us live under the cosmic futility of time, aging and death; and for this cosmic futility we need the cosmic patience of endurance.

But let us not accept cosmic futility as an excuse for not working in our own garden patches to rid this world of the oppression of injustice and all inhumanity to everyone in our world.

The patience of God does not give us the excuse to delay justice in the garden of this world.  We will not appreciate the anger of Jesus, if we are happy to delay justice for many to a future heaven.

May God give us today the cosmic patience for our cosmic futility in knowing time, aging and death; but may God give us the impatient, anger of Jesus to bring righteous justice to everyone whom we can now.  Amen.

The Parable Sower Was Not Jethro Tull

Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 10, July 12, 2020
Isaiah 55:10-13 Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11  Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Lectionary Link

To be human is to be interested in causation.  Why do things happen?  Why are certain things successful?  Why do certain things fail?

Farmers and gardeners are interested in causation.  What makes for a very good crop?  Drum roll....wait for the answer.  The conditions have to be right.  Well, duh.  That answer is too vague to be satisfying.

A modern agribusiness farmer wants to control as many factors as possible.  If it doesn't rain, then irrigate.  Use good seed, hybrid seed, prepare the soil environment with good soil analysis, pin point your seed planting, protect from pests and weeds and hope that some major flooding or other uncontrollable disaster will not hinder a good crop.

The early members of the Jesus Movement were wondering about the success of the Gospel Mission.  Why do some people receive the message and some do not?  Why are some Christians sixty day wonders and then peter out and go back to their pre-Christian habits and life styles?

The leaders of the Jesus Movement found the Gospel irresistible and lasting.  They wondered why everybody did not find the Gospel irresistible.  And so, we have the parable of the sower.  And the answer given for Gospel success and failure in the parable is not that satisfactory in its precision.  Why is the Gospel successful?  It depends upon the conditions.  Well, duh.  I wanted a precise answer Jesus.  Not just a vague reference to mystery.

The sower in the parable is a pre-Jethro Tull sower, not the Rock Band but the inventor of the seed drill, for controlled placement of seeds.  The sower in the parable just tossed the seeds to the wind and let them fall where they may.  Why isn't God a precision planter?  Why is God so indiscriminate in how the seed is sown?

The greatest mystery in life is the mystery of Freedom and the free conditions of life.  And all of the mixtures caused by the free conditions of life.  Free conditions in life mean that differences of all sort prevail, not only in farming and gardening, but more complex in the the social and psychological conditions of the people in the world.  Not everyone is in the same place in their psychological development, their social situation, their age, their family, their personal histories, their personality and lots of of other individual and social conditions of life.  If one is relatively happy with one's life and sees no need for a change, then a change which is offered may not even be received.  If one has to suffer too much for a commitment, then one may not commit.

I like the parable of the sower, precisely because it honors the free conditions of life.  It does not seek to explain away the mystery involved in how each person arrives at the right conditions to make a creative advance in one's intellectual and spiritual life.

That is why we are not involved in the science of evangelism.  We are involved in the art of evangelism as we seek to bring good news to people, in the appropriate ways tailored to the conditions in people's life.

The seeming indiscriminate sowing habit of the sower in the parable speaks to the universal availability of the Gospel, even though the conditions of its reception may not always be ideal.

The success of the Gospel for people is a matter of good timing. The conditions of freedom in the hearts and minds and the communities of people in our world, mean that we are involved in a discerning art rather than a strictly rational scientific method of evangelism.

Let us enjoy the parable of the sower today as an insight about free availability of God love to everyone even in the diverse free conditions of the hearts and minds of people.

And we do not have to be fatalistic about this in the way things are; we in our freedom can develop the call we have to be in the discerning art of evangelism. This is art of empathy, of knowing how and when to share our good news, as we discern the conditions of receptions in the people who are brought into our lives.

The condition of reception for many people today need our discernment about Black Lives Matter, hungry lives matter, poor lives matter, Covid-19 suffering lives matter, LatinX lives matter,  stressed lives matter, despondent lives matter, LBGTQ lives matter, unemployed persons lives matter, everyone's life matters.  The art of evangelism involves discerning exactly how people's lives matter and demonstrating how the active love of Christ proves the dignity of people's lives.

May God grant us the right conditions for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and may we keep learning the discerning art of evangelism for the success of letting all people know how much their lives matter to God and to us.  Amen.

Caught in St. Paul's Twilight Zone? Try Being Yoked with Christ

5 Pentecost, A  p 9, July 5, 2020
Zechariah 9:9-12 Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a Matt. 11:25-30

Lectionary Link

Video.  Sermon at 11:53

As Episcopalians we morphed from having been the Church of England in the American Colonies.  So the American Revolution was probably hardest upon the members of the Church of England in the Colonies.  Why?  The Church of England was the Established Church of the British Empire and the King was the Head of the Church.  It was an important feature of the Book of Common Prayer to pray for the King.  When our framers wanted the separation of State and Religion, they were purposefully trying to escape the English practice of established religion.  The revolt in the Colonies was hardest on the clergy; many clergy were Tory clergy and the last to make peace with our independence.

So, Happy Independence Day, Episcopal Church.  Do we mourn the loss of being the favored and established church of our country?  Or do we celebrate the fact that our country was an experiment in government that arrived at some important Gospel and Christly values?

Most Episcopalians are strongly in favor with the separation of church and state, precisely because we know our past.  And we get concerned when many Americans want the government to be specifically a certain kind of Christian rather than be non-aligned with any religious community.

How can we be Christian and Americans at the same time who respect the diversity of beliefs or non-belief of our citizens?

Perhaps, we are familiar with the quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:  Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary use words.

Many people decry the age of the Enlightenment when Reason and Science replaced God and theology.  I would like to suggest that the Enlightenment was one of the results of the success of the Gospel being preached but not with words, rather in resulting social functions of society.

Love God and your neighbor as yourself.  That is Gospel and Torah.  What embodies that more than the declaration that all are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Who was formerly responsible for providing health, education and welfare?  Such were the main diaconal functions of the church.  But what if the church converts entire governments to the role of being concerned about the health, education and welfare for all of the members of society?  Is that the defeat of Gospel values or the triumph?

Some Christians today are disappointed by secular health, education and welfare because it does not have specific Christian sub-titles stamped all over it in with conscious Christian evangelism.  In health, education and welfare, churches can only do band aid efforts in face of such great public needs.  We should be thankful that the governments have been converted to be responsible for the general health, education and welfare to the reach all of our citizenry.  And when we complain that it is not ever done perfectly, what do we want?  Do we want our government to cease to make the efforts on our behalf?

Should we not be thankful that the government adopted a biblical like tithing system of taxes so that the public common good can be taken care of?  With our payment of taxes we are doing the Gospel without words.

How many of us truly appreciate the collateral effects of preaching the Gospel without words which our government actually does for us because of our American values.  Dear ones, let's be thankful and let us not complain, except when we as a collective people are not living up to those "hidden Gospel" values within our American ideals which pertain to the active love of justice and dignity for every human being.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Torah are examples of the highly recommended behaviors for good human relationships.  They are such expressions of ideals that they can be experienced as the down side of idealized laws; they continuously remind us of our failures and our need to be better angels to truly fulfill them.

We've read from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the section which I call the "Twilight Zone."  Why?  Do,do,do,do, Do,do,do, do, Do,do,do, do, Do,do,do, do.  In the portion we've read,  the word "do" is used sixteen times.  If you were Paul's writing teacher, you would encourage more stylistic variation, but you can understand Paul's obsession with an action verb.  The law stands over his head reminding him that he is not perfect, so how can he tolerate himself as his limps on his way to become better each day?  The intervention of the Risen Christ who becomes his "stand in" perfection while, he walks the path toward perfection.

We, as Americans, over and over again are faced with the utopian ideals of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  We have legislative bodies to try to provide us laws which approximate these utopian ideals.  We are faced with the obvious fact that people of wealth and power have the ability to finesse our legal system while people who are poor and deprived of full social equality end up being on the harsh punishment side of our legal system.

We want to do liberty and justice for all.  We want to do life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in an equal way for all of our citizens, but alas, we are ever poignantly reminded of our failure.  O, wretched failure that we often are.  Who will deliver us from the consequences of unequal practice of our great American Ideals?  We need the higher power of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit to help us become our better angels toward the ideals of our country.

Although we are not specifically a Christian country, we can say that the values taught by Jesus Christ became expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution in expressing a freedom to love God, if we choose, but the requirement that we love our love our neighbor as ourselves, in the most general and complete expression of love, is the practice of justice.

When Jesus came he found a very fickle public.  They criticized John the Baptist who was ascetic and spartan in his habits and his general rebuke of everyone; they criticized Jesus as a glutton and drunkard for eating with publican and sinners.  And what did Jesus say?  He was revealed to the vulnerable.  Who is the most vulnerable?  An infant.  He was saying, if you want to act in the wisdom of God, tend to the vulnerable.  The wonderful "I will give you rest," expression of Jesus reminds me of the ideal stated in the Lazarus poem at the Statue of Liberty, "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free....I lift my lamp beside the golden door."  America is the ideal of welcome.  Lady Liberty with the torch says, "We'll leave the light on for you, so you can find your way to welcome."  "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me and you will find rest for your souls."

Today, both the vulnerable and the powerful and the wealthy need the serious help of Christ.  We will not live up to the high ideals of God's law or even our country's ideal, if we try to go it selfishly alone or divide ourselves into tribal groups to perpetuate opposition in our country.  If we want to make progress toward our ideals, we need to be yoked with Christ.  Being yoked with Christ means that we are not absolved from our own agency and effort.  It means when we desire to go in the right direction, we can be sure of the power of Christ, the assistance of a higher power of the arc of justice toward the ideals of God as they are expressed in loving our neighbor as our self.

On this day after our American birthday party, we say, Happy Birthday America and we love you.  We love your high ideals, even if they consistently remind us of our failures.

But as Christians and Americans, let us come to Jesus as the weary ones today, seeking rest for our souls.  Let us take on the yoke of Christ to help us today as we alway live and act toward loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen

The Practice of Welcome

Pentecost,  A p 8 June 28, 2020

Genesis 22:1-14 Psalm 13

Romans 6:12-23   Matthew 10:40-42

Lectionary Link

video link

We call our Holy Bible, the inspired word of God.  We call it revelation.  Many Christian like to treat the Bible as their possessing the correct meaning or interpretation.  I would like to see it as revelation which means that within language, we have an unveiling of meanings for our lives to help us please and obey God.

As I have read the Bible, and not pretending that I could have been there when it came to it textual form, I read it for unveiling of meaning and promotion of what the wholistic health of salvation means for us in our lives.

As foundational as the story about the sacrifice of Isaac is in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for me it represents a story from the pre-historic era when people came to realize that God is not a God who requires human sacrifice in some cosmic justice system.  A substituted animal was allowed in the sacrificial system because people needed the sacrifice of physical life in how they perceived a cosmic system of justice.  

The Psalmist and the prophets wrote that God didn't need  or want the blood and sacrifice of animals.  By the time Jesus had died on the cross, it came to be understood that God did not desire death but life.  Sacrifice as a universal principle of the behaviors of living for each other and for God is something that God was trying to teach humanity all along.  And for St. Paul, the death of Jesus became the spiritual and mystical mode to die to oneself and be initiated into the way of being a living sacrifice.

One can easily see in St. Paul's writing to the Roman church the basis for the 12 Step Program analysis of addiction.  Paul understands sin to be addiction.  Sin is the force of habits formed by repeatedly doing wrong things, and the habits can get so entrenched that they put a person in the state of slavery known as addiction.  The 12 Step people cite an encounter of grace with a higher power to help them interdict their bad habit and become empowered agents able to build one sober moment at a time to reform one's behavioral habits.

Paul used the "Instrument" metaphor; all facets of our personalities are instruments which can be employed for wickedness or for righteousness.  The event of the grace of Christ in being able to die to selfish self in the power of the death of Christ, also means to ride the power of the identity with the resurrection to a new free agency, to attain the freedom to make new choices of righteousness.

One of imbalances in spiritual practice in the church is that we make salvation a very private and individual things.  We regard sin to be a very individual thing.  But the individual is also a member of a larger corporate body of people.

The well-known psychiatrist Carl Menninger wrote a book entitled, "Whatever Became of Sin?"  And he was not so much concerned about individual sin; he wrote about corporate and social sins.  He wrote about the things that are done in the name of the group, for which each individual does not have to take individual responsibility.  Racism is one such social sins which has remained in various forms since the lack of full inclusion of Black persons into the full promise of the American ideals after the bloody end of the practice of slavery.  The forty acres and a mule promised to Black persons was never fulfilled and Andrew Jackson overturned completely the practice.

We like to revert to individual responsibility and salvation and totally down play and discount the effects of social practice which does not give equal chance and equal opportunity to everyone in our society.

As a society we need to repent of our social sins and we need to have our social practice be transformed to the causes of righteousness in finding strategies of opportunity and justice for everyone.

What is the outcome of the transformation of personal capacity and social capacity to righteous practice.

The Gospel words explains it best with a wonderful word.  Welcome.  What if everyone in our country, state and local neighborhood could feel like they are people who are welcomed, in the name of all of us.  Jesus said when we welcome each other we are welcoming him.  And welcome and being welcomed is the self-reinforcing reward.

Let us not give up on the possibility for the hospitality of welcome becoming a delightful reality for the Black people in our country as we pray that all of us together will commit ourselves to the practice of mutual hospitality.

The Eucharist is the declaration of the practice of the hospitality of God in Christ.  Sitting at the table of hospitality is the expression of our aspiring prayers that such experience of welcome can come to all of us, all of the time, and all together.

In our country today, we pray that each of us will be instruments of the welcoming love of Christ and it be received by people as the kind of welcome which they want and need to receive for their dignity.

Let be in the welcoming ministry of Jesus Christ today.  Amen.

When Is Peace not Peace?

3 Pentecost, A p 7, June 21,2020

21:8-21 Ps. 86:1-10, 16-17

Rom. 6:1b-11    Matt. 10:24-39

Lectionary Link

Youtube Liturgy.   Sermon at 17:50

We can get very sentimental about a word like peace, but peace can become a silent complacency and false comfort in the static state of I know what I like and I like what I know, so don't upset my peace.

But today we have read the seeming contradictory words of Jesus when he is quoted as saying, "I did not come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword."  And then we have read the rather frightening words of division, yes, family division.  Families are supposed to be united and peaceful and not at war; "Jesus why would you bring a sword and not peace?  Aren't you the Prince of Peace?"

And so I pose the question, when is peace no peace at all?  And the answer?  When peace is anchored in the perfection of God for each person and for the society of people who need to become their better angels.

Two days after the celebration of June 19th which commemorates the declaration of liberty and freedom from slavery arriving to the Black people in our country, we have been recently experiencing the Peace that is no peace.  Why?  Because the peace of God is anchored in perfection and God wants us to be in perfect peace.

In biblical times, the language of everyone, including the language of Jesus indicate to us that the world had made a terrible peace with the practice of slavery.  The ancient economic virtue of slavery persisted and resisted for way too long progress toward the perfect peace of God.

And when people advance in and toward the perfect peace of God, there are revolutionary times when things don't seem so peaceful.  Whenever true cultural and spiritual advances are occurring the peace of complacent blindness to taken for granted inhumanity gets upset and people get angry and are divided.  "But we've always done it this way and we aren't bad people."

The peace of God is no peace to those who do not want to advance to a more perfect peace when a better way is shown.

Early Christ-centered Judaism was an advance in evangelism to the entire world.  It seemed as though religious elites had promoted that God had only a few chosen people and God wasn't available to everyone in the world.  Why would God be available to the Gentiles?  And Jesus and his followers said, "Why not?"  And the peace in the community of faith was shattered and division occurred between the synagogue and the Jesus Movement.  The harsh words of the Gospel for today echo the big problem caused by offering salvation to the whole world.  And Paul hearkening back to Abraham declared that God was truly a universalist, God was for everyone.  And Paul saw that the meaning of Jesus the Christ, meant that God was for everyone.

And when we are offered a more perfect Peace from God and we refuse to advance to a more perfect peace, what happens?  Joseph Campbell once said, "Yesterday's virtues can become tomorrow's vices."  The once practiced exclusivity of thinking that God only belonged to a certain clan, became exposed as misrepresenting a loving God.  In Jesus, it was revealed that God was for everyone.  And when humanity finally begins to arrive at enlightenment in being humane, the ancient economic virtue of slavery has been exposed to be the wicked degrading practice of inhumanity to people who were created equal in God's image.

We as Americans, believe that our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were enlightened documents for humanity to advance toward their better angels and toward a more perfect peace with God and each other.

But just like Paul believed that people in his faith background were not living up to the universal faith of Abraham, it has over and over again been shown to us in actual American practice that we have not been living up to the high ideals of our founding principles of liberty and justice for all.   And when the hypocrisy is revealed, when we are shown to be lacking in the practice of our ideals, especially toward minorities, toward women and people of color, the public peace has been upset.  Why?  Because in power relationships people fear the loss of power if actual equal justice is offered and lived towards all.  People who have had wealth and power do not realize the motivating power of fear of loss in their own lives.

And these past weeks have been poignant and painful reminders that we have not yet achieved in full practice the perfect peace of God, we have not yet become the better angels that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution tried to write us to be.

So what do we do?  Today, we give up the false peace of complacency and the ignorance based upon refusing to know each other in fully mutually beneficial ways.  We accept the sword of division which Christ still brings today to force us to move on to better practice of the higher peace of God.

The perfect peace of God will always make us uncomfortable if we are settling for and tolerating the harm of anyone.  The perfect peace of God will not let us be comfortable because we have been segregated and sheltered from having to interact with people who are different from us.  America has for too long lived as separate gated communities of people with ethnic, social and economic differences and this betrays the peace of E pluribus unum.  Out of the many one.  Out of the many one, cannot just mean out of the many  European descendents who came to America,  the one.   Because of the original born here, the native peoples and those who were brought here unwillingly as slaves, and the many waves of immigrants who have come here for a better freedom and economic well-being, our land is a land of differences, and the wonderful peace of God calls us to find a fuller peace and practice the best ways of celebrating the beauty of these differences.

The peace of Jesus came to Palestine as an unsettling sword of division to call the world to the greater peace of God.  You and I are called to this greater Peace of God today.  May we have grace in our nation to weather this unsettling time of confrontation with the humbling and humiliating reality of our failure, but let this be a sure indication to us that God loves us to perfect us in the perfect Peace of God.   And for the sake of Christ, let us not give up on each other.  Let us provoke each other to become our better angels in the perfect peace of God. Amen.