Strength in Weakness: July 26

 Year A, Pentecost 9                                         Romans 8:26-39                                                                 

I went to a Presbyterian seminary in my early 20s.  I was Roman Catholic at the time and had never once been asked to pray extemporaneously…that means without any preparation. I had been active in a church and college ministry, but that was not something that Catholics did. Presbyterians are much more accustomed to writing their own prayers and often leading prayer without writing it out in advance.  Every week, the women on the 3^rd floor of my dorm would get together for prayer and conversation.  People were called on for opening and closing prayers.  I told them that I wasn’t comfortable with that and asked that they not call on me.  After a few months they said, “Well, can’t you just lead a Catholic prayer that you know?”  We did the Hail Mary, which also felt weird.  I became good at just avoiding it in general.

When I was studying at the Episcopal Seminary I was rarely called on to lead prayer that wasn’t in the prayer book…which meant I didn’t get any practice coming up with my own prayers. At my first clergy conference, the bishop had this fun habit of inviting the newest clergy to lead the prayer before a meal. He asked me and I politely declined…in front of everyone.  There is nothing more terrifying than leading a prayer in front of a bunch of clergy, especially when you are brand new and the youngest one there.  A few years later, one of my colleagues said, “Telling the bishop you wouldn’t pray was one of the craziest things I had ever seen. I didn’t think you would make it to the next clergy conference.”  But here I am, 20 years later.  And you know what…it still makes me nervous when someone asks me to pray out loud….and I am a priest.

          For that reason and at least a few more, I have always loved these words from Paul. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  Paul was obviously a gifted writer and speaker. If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t still be reading him today.  Yet it would seem, that even he had his moments when he didn’t feel like he could pray.  Maybe it was the times he was imprisoned...or ship wrecked, or beaten.  Those are all possibilities.  Or perhaps, it was those time when he felt that he had to prove himself over and over again, because he wasn’t one of the original apostles. He often felt the need to defend himself as he was one of the few leaders of this very new church who had never even met Jesus when he was still alive. 

It’s impossible to know when it was hardest for him.  I have had times in my life when it was hard, even impossible to pray.  Sometimes when it felt like it should have been hard, the prayer came with ease.  Even as I wrote this sermon, I couldn’t quite pinpoint why sometimes prayer felt impossible, and other times, it flowed like a mighty river, just gushing forth. I share all this because I know a lot of people who perceive that their struggle to pray makes them less of a Christian.  However, I believe that the struggle is what brings us closer to God.  I think the other thing that can bring us closer to God is our ability to acknowledge our weakness and thus our dependence on God.

          Some version of the word “weak” is used 42 times in the New Testament.  32 of those times are in Paul’s letters.  In the Old Testament, weak is only used with negative associations or when talking about the need to help and protect the weak.  What I have always appreciated about Paul is his willingness to acknowledge his own weakness…not as a failure, not even as something that needs to be fixed, but an opportunity to strengthen one’s relationship with God. 

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul talked about a thorn in his flesh…something he begged God to take away from him.  There are a lot of theories about what this thorn might have been, but we really can’t know for sure.  What we know is that it was a thorn that remained his whole life. It was something that he never overcame, never rid himself of.  While God didn’t remove the thorn, God did respond to the prayer. God said “’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” That led Paul to conclude, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

          I am not proud of my refusal to pray out load at my first clergy conference.  My refusal didn’t come from a place of humility or awareness of my weakness.  It came from a place of fear and anxiety…a need that people not judge me on something that I didn’t have time to prepare.  Ironically, about 15 years after that refusal to pray publicly, a friend of mine and I decided to write a book of prayers about our experiences being gravely ill.  Both of us realized that when we were sick and afraid, we couldn’t pray, which was confusing for us because we were both clergy.  You would think if anyone could have figured it out, we could have. 

But it was almost like our training got in the way.  We had forgotten the words of Paul were not just words to preach about, they were words to experience.   We called the book Irreverent Prayers, not because the prayers were actually irreverent, but because the groaning and sighing that we experienced as prayer just didn’t feel reverent or holy.  It felt desperate.  It also felt real, and I think that’s all God really cares about, that our prayers are real and mean something.

          If you are struggling with prayer, then that means you haven’t given up.  If you feel like you can’t find the right words, then that’s when you get to groan or sigh or cry.  If your prayers contain swear words, just don’t say those prayers out loud in a large group. Don’t try to censor yourself before God.  Don’t feel shame for what you want to say or are afraid to say.

Paul wrote, “God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit…” God has already searched our hearts.  God already knows all of us, and God loves us not despite our weakness, but because of our weakness.  Our weaknesses gives God something to work with.

In the Gospels, it was always the proud and the confident that Jesus argued with and was critical of.  It was never the weak and the vulnerable. Jesus never reprimanded someone for genuine questions. The only questions he didn’t like were the ones that were trying to trap or trick him. If you are feeling weak, or afraid, or hopeless—that’s ok.  It’s hard to feel those things, but it doesn’t mean you are not holy or beloved by God.  You were created for holiness and goodness.  Don’t let fear or weakness be a reason to give up. Instead, let it be a reason to invite God into your life in the most authentic way possible.

Weeping and grinding teeth: July 19

Year A, Pentecost 8                                        Matthew 13:24-30,36-43                                         

There are some weeks when you can almost feel the biblical texts.  This week, trying to see through the smoke to the pinkish sun, I felt those words of Paul in his letter to the Romans.  I could feel creation groaning.  When I heard about a 2^nd person killed by Ice officers in one week, I felt my spirit groaning.  There are times when the words of the Bible just cry out to be felt with sighs too deep for words. 

I considered preaching on that text from Romans, but this parable from Matthew is one that is so often misunderstood and manipulated, I didn’t think I could NOT preach on it.  But I still want to name the groaning of our creation.  God hears our wordless groans.  God is begging us not to forget the need to care for the world that God created—once the smoke clears.  It will clear, but the devastation that is being wrecked on our world has not stopped.  We need to  make sure we don’t forget the smoke.

            So why…why is the parable we heard today important? Any time a reading ends with weeping and gnashing of teeth, I feel like it needs to be discussed. I don’t even like reading it out loud.  However, not only is it in our reading for this week, we hear it again next week. 

Our Gospel readings skip around a bit the next two weeks. If you look at the verses listed for our reading for today, you will see that 5 verses are skipped.  Those verses are another parable that will be read next week.   The second set of verses for today is the explanation of the parable.  There are about 40 parables in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  But only a few include explanations. A lot of Biblical scholars believe that Jesus didn’t provide the explanations. Instead, they were added by whoever wrote the Gospel…usually because they felt that was what the people needed to hear at that moment.   The Gospel of Matthew was written about 40-50 years after Jesus died, so the explanation was most likely for the people living in that time, when the church was just being formed. 

            Thus it’s helpful to look at the parable by itself.  Much like last week, we have a story that was meant for farmers, or people who knew enough about farming to make sense of it.  Apparently it was not unusual at this time for people to sabotage one another’s crops by planting bad seeds in the midst of the good seeds. There are a lot of theories about what these seeds were and how bad they really were, but I am not sure that really matters and it’s pretty hot in here. 

When the plants started to grow, those farming the land realized there were weeds in the midst of the good wheat.  Those workers (referred to as slaves in the text) offered to pull up the weeds. The master (the land owner) told them not to.  He told them to let them all grow together and when it’s time to reap the harvest, everything (the good and the bad) will be pulled up and then sorted.  The weeds will be burned. 

            There are two different ways to interpret this parable.  The traditional interpretation relies heavily on the explanation (that was mostly likely added later). That interpretation is that the wheat represents the good people and the weeds are the bad people. The bad people will be punished at the end of the world and the good people will shine like the sun.  That’s an oversimplification, but again, it’s very hot in here.  The other interpretation is that each one of us has good seeds and bad seeds within us.

That interpretation reminded me of an old Cherokee legend—where a man tells his grandson that we all have two wolves within us fighting an epic battle. One is evil – full of rage, jealousy, arrogance, greed...The other is good – filled with love, joy, peace, courage, humility, and faith.  The grandson asked, “Which wolf wins?” His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

We all have goodness and evil warring within us.  As Christians, we believe that the good will always win…but it does require some effort on our part.  We can’t let the rage, the jealousy, and the hate dominate our hearts and minds, because then we are just feeding that, allowing that seed to grow and choke out that which is good within us—that which is the good that God planted within us.

            I prefer the interpretation that we have both have these seeds within us and we need to tend our own garden by praying and serving God and God’s people. But even if you are going with the interpretation that it’s about good people and bad people, there is still a ray of hope for those of us who don’t like it when people threaten us with weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Those farming the land asked their master to let them pull the weeds out before everything had finished growing.  The landowner told them not to.  In essence he said, “you can leave the judgment to me.” 

I think this parable isn’t as much about God’s judgment as it is about Jesus not wanting humans to think that we should be the judges of who is evil and who is good.  The landowner in this story knew that it’s not always easy to tell the difference between the good crop and the bad weeds.  Maybe something that looks like a weed might not have grown to its full potential.  That is why the landowner wanted to give the plants time. Our God believes that we can be better.

            The other thing I like about the landowner in this parable is that he doesn’t seem worried that the bad weeds will choke the good crop.  The landowner has faith that the wheat will survive. God knows (as the source of all that is good) that goodness is greater than wickedness—that goodness will always prevail.  That doesn’t mean we can all just sit back and watch as the world appears to burn before us.  But it does mean that instead of pointing fingers and assigning blame to anyone who isn’t us, it means that we should seek out the good, in ourselves and others.  We can even foster the good in others. Sometimes that means holding others accountable.  Sometimes it just means naming the goodness you see in others.  Can you imagine how that could change our world if we started every interaction by naming the goodness of the other?

            We don’t know what is going to happen at the end of the world, and frankly, it’s never helped anyone who has spent too much time focusing on that.  Maybe there will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth.  You know what the Greek word that is translated to gnashing can also mean…grinding? Do you know how many people are already grinding their teeth?  And weeping, I think there has been a lot of that going on.  We are already suffering…so I am not going to worry about the weeping and grinding of teeth.  Because I’ve been there.  We have all been there.  Instead, I’m going to focus on all those good seeds.  As Paul says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”   The glory that is already there—all around us. The smoke will clear and the glory of God will be revealed.

Jesus wasn't sensible: July 12

 

 Year A, Pentecost 5                                          Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23                                                                      

Growing up, my father liked to extol the virtues of two foods—potatoes and peanut butter. He told us a story of a man who lived on a jar of peanut butter for 30 days when lost at sea…so we ate a lot of peanut butter. When he was trying to get my older brothers to eat their potatoes (before a 2^nd helping of steak), he talked about the Irish who survived on nothing but potatoes.  Consequently, when I took a pilgrimage to Ireland about 10 years ago, I found myself intrigued by the stories our guide told about the potato famine that led to mass starvation in Ireland in the mid 19^th century.

Our guide, who was also a farmer, explained that during the potato famine, they had to make the most of the land and they needed as much as possible.  They couldn’t just rely on the good soil; they had to dig the rock out of the terrain that was considered bad soil...so it could become good soil.  He said it required a tremendous amount of work to remove all that rock. It was fascinating to hear the stories while seeing the land that they transformed. 

The people Jesus was talking to were farmers or people who knew farmers.  In this time and this area, everyone knew where their food came from and generally how it happened.  It is likely that the people he was talking to were not well off and were unaccustomed to having more than they needed. Unlike today, they did not have food stored in their pantry or their freezer.   If there was a bad crop or a drought, they would very likely go hungry. 

Because of that scarcity, I suspect that this parable of the sower seemed a little ridiculous to them even though the imagery was familiar.  What kind of farmer wastes ¾ of his seeds?  If you only have so many seeds, why throw some on hardened paths, rocky ground, and ground covered with thorns? According to this parable, there was good soil available. Why not stick with that?  Instead of spreading it all over, put all of the seeds in the good soil. That would be the sensible approach. 

As much as it pains me to admit this, Jesus was rarely about the sensible approach.  Let’s face it, the virgin birth—not sensible, the crucifixion—not sensible, the resurrection—not sensible.  This does not make these things any less real, they were just extraordinary.  Yet this is a parable.  Parables are supposed to make sense.  When Jesus spoke in parables, he told a story that people would have been able to identify with and then used that story to teach a lesson about God.  However, just because it was a simple story, did not necessarily mean it was a simple lesson. 

In fact, often, the lessons were counterintuitive.  If this was a sensible and realistic story, the sower would have carefully spread the seeds where he knew there was good soil.  That means all of the seeds would have had growth potential.  As a result, there would have been an even greater harvest and the seeds would not have been wasted.  And this parable is about results, right?

Perhaps not.  You might note that when Jesus explains the parable he refers to it as the parable of the sower, not the parable of the ground or the parable of the crop.  It’s about the sower; the person who is tossing seeds around with wild abandon.  Jesus explains that the seeds are the word of the kingdom or the word of God.  He never says who the sower is, but if the seeds are the word of God, it would be safe to assume that the sower is Jesus.  It could also be whoever spreads the word of God, which means it could be any one of us.

One of the things I cannot help but wonder about is the amount of seeds.  I mean this sower could not have had an unlimited number of seeds.  At what point did he run out?  If we told this story today, it would be all about how careful we are with what we have.  We might talk about the importance of good stewardship of resources.  In other words, how are we using our limited resources as effectively as possible? Instead of talking about the countless supply of seeds, we might talk about how we could get the most out of every seed.  We would discuss each seed and its chance of success. Then in our modern day version of the story, the careful and practical farmer would develop a machine that would distribute each seed in fertile ground.

But this sower isn’t a farmer and the seed is not something that will run out.  This seed is the word of God. The word of God isn’t just the Biblical text; it’s also the experience of God.  It’s God’s love and grace.  And those things don’t come in packages of 100.  They are countless.  Because of that, Jesus is not worried about wasting because there will always be enough.  

But it’s tempting to be strategic in our faith.  We might talk to some people about faith, but only the people we think will be receptive.  We might invite a couple people to church, but only the people who might say yes.  We take the safe road because we fear rejection and we fear failure.  We also wonder if we are capable of being the fertile ground? How can we share with others when we don’t understand everything as well as we should?

Even Jesus realized that he would only reach a portion of the people he was speaking to.  When he taught this parable, the crowd was so large he had to move out to a boat to address them.  Yet in the end, the crowd that sat at the foot of the cross was one or two people.  The crowd that condemned him to death was countless.  He preached to them even when he knew they would not stay with him to the end.  Even his disciples would abandon him in some shape or form.  Yet he kept giving abundantly.

A lot of people read this parable and say the point is that it’s all about God and how God provides.  We can’t change the soil on our own.  We can only pray that God will change it.  Therefore it is not about how we can become better listeners or disciples.  It’s about a God who is so relentless with the love that God gives even to those who might have trouble receiving it.  I agree with that, to an extent.  This text is about God’s abundant love. 

But I also believe it’s about the soil and how that soil can change.  As followers of Christ, we can change.  Some days we are the hardened path.  Some days we are the rocky ground.  Some days we are the good soil.  We might go back and forth. At times, we might even convince ourselves that we are too far gone, we can’t possibly receive God’s word.  That is when it’s important to remember that this is the parable of the sower.   The sower has already thrown the seed everywhere.  God’s loves has been spread to every crevice of this world.  You might feel like you are rocky ground, but God still shared God’s love.  God didn’t wait for you to be in a good place. The sower knows that every type of soil has potential. 

No matter what kind of soil your soul might be feeling like right now, God has already shared God’s love with you.  God is like those Irish farmers, doing that hard work of digging rocks out of the soil that was once considered totally useless.  Not one of you is too far gone to receive God’s love…not just to receive it, but to help others with their own receptivity to God’s love and compassion.  Because if you have been the hardened path, you know how to talk to other people who are experiencing hardened hearts and thorny spirits.  You are not going to say, “Hey, it’s actually really easy and straightforward.”  You might even say, I know what that’s like, and I am still trying to figure it out.  Let’s figure it out together.

What makes us revolutionary: June 28

Year A, Independence Day Readings                                                  Matthew 5:43-48                              

                The readings you heard today are the assigned readings for Independence Day.  As many of you know, we are celebrating Independence Day two consecutive Sundays as we were not sure what the surrounding streets would be like on July 5^th.  On the first page of our service leaflet is an excerpt from our vestry minutes on July 4^th 1776.  The vestry is the leadership body of the church and they work with the clergy.  This vestry realized that their prayers for the King of England and his family might not be very popular in Philadelphia in 1776. On the one hand, crossing out the names of the King and the royal family was an act of courage as it fundamentally changed who we were as a church.  We were the Church of England. It was also an act of self-preservation.  If they had continued to pray for the King of England when we were at war with England, there is a good chance they would have had to shut down the church and the clergy would have been forced to return to England.

            Yet what is interesting to me is how our Gospel for today pairs with this action, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…”  I wonder if the rector at the time, Jacob Duche, thought about these words of Jesus.  We know that he was ambivalent about the war and especially the decision to declare independence. He acknowledged that England had not treated the colonies fairly, but he hoped this revolution would give us a place from  which to negotiate a better relationship, not create a new nation 

He undoubtedly knew this Gospel reading and knew Jesus asked his followers to pray for those who persecute them.  However, given the extraordinary tension that our new nation was experiencing, quoting these words of Jesus might not have been well received.  People would have said, well we are not supposed to pray for this enemy…this is not the enemy Jesus was talking about. 

In my last church, the tradition was to pray for the president, governor and the mayor by name every Sunday.  After Trump was elected, I had one person who was leading the prayers refuse to pray for him. I had to say, I understand you have a passionate dislike for this president, but Jesus did cover this very thing when he told us to not only pray for our enemies but to love to them.  You want to guess how they handled that perfectly reasonable and scripturally accurate argument? Not great. She said, “I can’t do it.”  I understood and didn’t try to convince her, but she took a break from leading the prayers because it would have set a bad precedent to have people only pray for the leader they voted for.

            That’s the thing about Jesus’ words…I bet not one of you shuddered when you heard them today. But when we have to put them into practice…it gets a lot harder.  One argument I have made in the past about praying for people who we disapprove of is, “Look, I get that this is hard, but you can at least pray that God changes their heart.”  But just this week, I was reading a commentary that said that praying for your enemy to change isn’t what Jesus was talking about. Now you might be thinking, how do we know that’s not what Jesus was talking about? Let’s look at the context… “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…”  

Jesus doesn’t tell us to love our enemies because that is his grand plan for changing the world or even changing the people of the world.  He tells us to do that so that we can be children of God.  In Jewish thought, referring to someone as a child of another is to show that person shares the quality or nature of the person they are a child of.  To be a child of God is to share the qualities of God. Jesus was saying that to be a child of God, be like God, we have to love the person as God would love the person.

            That sounds like a tall order. How can we possibly see our enemies as God sees them?  One way is to acknowledge that we share something with them…we share a common humanity.  We were all children once who desperately wanted to be loved and to love without condition or qualifier. When we were children, we didn’t care what race a person was.  We didn’t care who they voted for. It wasn’t until Joshua was 5 when his friends looked confused when they saw his parents were not his own race.  Before that, they didn’t even notice.  I remember Joshua’s best friend being shocked at the realization that he was adopted.   At some point, we learn to focus on the differences and not what we have in common. We need to remember how we saw the world as children and how the world saw us. 

The other way we love our enemies is by reminding ourselves of the way that God loves us.  Even in our worst and darkest moment, God is looking at us (maybe with a slightly concerned expression) saying, “That kid is mine.”   In loving our enemies, it helps to acknowledge our own sinfulness. Now usually the place I go to (in my own mind,  not a sermon) after I have acknowledged my own sinfulness is then jumping to, “But I am still not as bad as that person …” That is where we need to stop ourselves. That is where we need to realize that we are doing the one thing we can’t stand…we are judging someone else. 

            Loving and praying for our enemy doesn’t mean we can’t hold them accountable for their actions.  We can and we should.  We should do our best to shine the light on injustice, cruelty and greed.   Yet we can find ways to do that while acknowledging our own complicity, our own failures. That is why I think the confession is such an important part of our worship.  It’s a reminder that we have all fallen short in some way but we are just one prayer away from forgiveness. 

The end of the confession reads, “For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways…” Walk in your ways…that is how we come closer to the character and nature of God. That is what confession of our own sin gives us…an opportunity to be a little more like Jesus.  That also allows us to love ourselves without those self deprecating comments that always seem to hover around us, lest we love ourselves too much.

If we can look at ourselves with honesty and understand that God loves every part of us (even the parts that it pains us to see)…then we can come a little closer to a place where we are loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us. Remember, prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind, or another person’s mind, it’s about changing ourselves…coming closer to God.  If we pray for someone, we can’t help but be a little more open and understanding.

            We are all familiar with the idea of empathy.  Some people have said that empathy is a bad thing because it makes people ignore the teachings of their faith or their values. Others have responded to that accusation with horror.  But even those who are most passionate about empathy don’t often extend it to those who they consider cruel or corrupt.  They assume it is there only for those who are vulnerable and suffering.  But imagine if there were just small factions of divided groups who tried to listen to the other side, really empathize with them...that could change the conversation. It might even change the way we govern.

            Whenever someone references Christ Church’s revolutionary spirit, I always want to ask them, “What do you mean by that.” I think they mean Christ Church was brave and bold, willing to throw off the tyranny of the British.  But during the revolution, we were just trying to keep our doors open, trying to keep people who were on opposite sides still worshipping together. Maybe that is what made us truly revolutionary, an ability to stand in the midst of violence and chaos and remain open to the idea that people of different sides of an actual war can still worship together. They might not have been praying for the leader of the actual enemy, but I hope they were still praying for one another, still acknowledging that they were all children of God.  Maybe that is what actually makes us revolutionary, an openness (and perhaps even a love) for the other.

                -

Prisoner of Hope: June 14

 Year A, Pentecost 3                                                 Romans 5:1-8                                                                     Desmond Tutu was the Archbishop of Cape Town South Africa for over 30 years.  For even longer than that he led the fight against apartheid in South Africa.   Being black in South Africa during that time was a struggle— being black and on the frontlines of that struggle would have no doubt led to suffering and frustration.  He didn’t have an easy life.  Even after apartheid ended in 1994, he continued the hard work of truth telling by leading the Truth and Reconciliation Committee that worked to address the injustices committed during apartheid.  Archbishop Tutu never shied away from hard truths.  Yet I think what he is best known for is his joy, love, hope and his infectious laugh.  At the same time, he made sure to distinguish the hope that he practiced from the sunny optimism the world often associates with the word hope. He said, “I have never been an optimist. I am a prisoner of hope.”

            The Apostle Paul, the author of our 2^nd reading, would not have called himself an optimist, but was definitely a proponent of hope.  In his letters, he mentioned hope over 50 times.  In today’s reading he says, “…but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us...”  One commentator described this as “chain reaction of grace” because it starts with the fact that we are standing in grace.  Grace is the free, undeserved gift that God has given all of us.  It’s the love that God gives us regardless of whether we deserve it or even want it. We have all been called to stand in grace.

            I have to say that I both love and hate these words of Paul.  I love the idea that suffering can create endurance which would then lead to character and inevitably hope.  I love the idea.  What I am not too fond of is the actual experience of suffering.  I don’t know anyone who is.  It kind of reminds me of that phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  I have never liked that phrase much either.  Because I have witnessed a lot of suffering that didn’t lead to strength or hope.  Sometimes suffering just leads to anger or depression. 

            It would be easy to say well the difference is that as Christians, we have faith and that enables us to transform our suffering into strength and hope.  Yet I have seen many Christians who can’t make it to the other side of suffering. And it’s not because they weren’t good Christians.  It’s not because they weren’t faithful enough.  Sometimes it’s because the suffering was too intense, too endless. There was no reprieve.  I don’t believe that Christians have some special sauce that enables us to have hope in the midst of pain.  I think our hope is different. 

            You see our hope isn’t based in some idyllic life that we have been promised.  It’s not based merely on what can be. It’s based on what Jesus did for us and what he continues to do for us.  Christian hope is born not in life, but in death, in the death of Jesus Christ.  Jesus suffered in both his life and death.  That suffering is what enabled Jesus to be resurrected and thus enables us all to have new life.  Our hope is different than the hope we might read about in greeting cards and chicken soup for the soul kind of messages. Our hope was forged out of darkness and death.  That is why darkness and death cannot defeat Christian hope...because darkness and death---they birthed hope.  That is what makes the hope we have in Jesus so incredibly powerful.

            But here’s the thing, this Christian hope isn’t easy.  Having it doesn’t even make our lives easier. In some ways, life becomes harder with hope.  Esau McCauley, a priest and writer, wrote, “Hope is a demanding emotion that insists on changing you.  Hope pulls you out of yourself and into the world, forcing you to believe more is possible.”

            That’s what Archbishop Tutu meant when he said that he was a “prisoner of hope.” Once that hope took hold of him, he could not give up.  He could not despair.  Despair is a horrible feeling, it really is.  No one would want despair.  Yet while hope is demanding, “despair allows us to give up our resistance and rest.”  That makes being in a state of despair easier because we can stop trying to make the world better….we can stop being aware of the pain and anguish that surrounds us.  We can just stop.  And I have to say, that can be tempting sometimes.  In a world that is broken and seems intent on breaking our hearts a little more every day, it’s tempting to throw our hands up in the air and say, “Well, there is obviously nothing I can do about this, I might as well just stop trying…stop hoping.”

            We think that hope is something that should come to us naturally…but it’s not our natural state.  It’s something we have to work for.  That work can be exhausting.  You might be thinking, that doesn’t sound very good.  If that is what hope is, why would we want it? Why?  Because we Christians stand in grace.   That is God’s gift to us.  It’s our starting point.  And while hope is challenging, it’s also uplifting.  It brings joy.  It is life giving.  It gives us life and it gives those around us life.  Despair, it’s easier because we don’t have to do anything.  We don’t have to face the hard truths or our world. We don’t have to face how even our actions contribute to the despair of others.  But that is not why God put us on this earth.  We are not here to lean into despair.  We have not been given grace so we can squander it.  We, (the church) must be beacons of hope in this dark and lonely world.  We cannot give into the despair or the hate or the apathy. 

            Our Gospel reading says that Jesus saw the crowds and had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless.   Then he told the disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.” The harvest is the people who are living in despair, who can’t see out of their despair. Sometimes we are part of the harvest.  There are times, when we all might be in that place.  But there are also a lot of times when we are the laborers, when we are prisoners of hope who can’t possibly give up.  The harvest is plentiful.  Despair and darkness can indeed feel overwhelming.  But never forget that Christian hope was forged in darkness and death, which is what makes it indestructible and impenetrable.  Be a prisoner of hope.  Let hope captivate you.   Whatever is happening in our world, whatever suffering we might encounter, never forget that we Christians were created to defeat death. 

Fiery Courage: May 10

 Year A, Easter 6                                            John 14:16-21  

           One of my earliest memories is riding on a plane for the first time. I was really excited about what it would be like to fly through the clouds.  From down below the clouds look like the cotton you see growing on the plant before it’s harvested.  I imagined that once you were flying in the clouds, it would look the same way.  Maybe I would see some angels with harps.  You can imagine my disappointment when we first broke through the clouds.  It was just hazy.  You couldn’t see much of anything.  There were no places for angels to lounge gracefully.  I thought that these clouds were something you could really wrap your arms around, like a really amazing pillow.  It was a real let down seeing them close up. Now that I am an adult, I know that angels don’t lounge on clouds and heaven is another realm, not just really high in the sky.  Yet I still long for things that can be grasped.        

          The season of Easter is a bit confusing when it comes to our readings.  The first few Sundays, we have stories of the resurrected Jesus…which makes a lot of sense for the season of Easter. Then last week we shifted to John 14 which contains the words Jesus shared before he died.   Today we have a continuation of what we started last week.  It’s usually referred to as the farewell discourse, which is just a fancy way of saying---the long good bye. These were words that Jesus shared with his disciples as he prepared them not just for his death, but also his resurrection and then life after that—life without Jesus’ presence. 

This week’s portion is the introduction to the Advocate. The word Advocate comes from the Greek word parakletos.  I try not to randomly drop Greek words into a sermon because I think it just confuses people most of the time. However, when the word doesn’t have a simple translation, then I like to mention it.  Parakletos is translated to a bunch of different things in the New Testament.  The most literal translation is “called to one’s side.”  It is often translated to Advocate, Comforter, or Helper.  It’s also another way of describing the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is impossible to explain.  We use all kinds of images for it.  When Jesus was baptized, the Spirit descended in the form of a dove.  On Pentecost, the Spirit came in the shape of flames.  When Jesus returned from the dead and appeared to them, he breathed on them so that they might receive the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, it is depicted as wind.  So let’s see….dove, flames, breath and wind.  Those are not very consistent images. 

To be honest, I never really paid much attention to the Holy Spirit…maybe for the same reason the clouds were so disappointing to me. I like something I can hold onto.  It’s probably why we love our phones so much.  It’s something we can hold, something that gives us all the answers we want, yet few that we actually need. 

          The first time I remember really appreciating the Holy Spirit was reading a book called “The Shack.” I won’t explain the whole plot, but the book tried to depict all the parts of the Trinity in human or human like form.  Both God and Jesus were humans, but the Holy Spirit was almost like a colorful fairy who talked and did human like things, but was also incandescent. While the book is far from perfect theologically, I thought it did a really good job of bringing the Trinity to life.  One year, I used only that book for my youth confirmation class. At the end, I asked them all the same question I asked previous classes.  Which part of the Trinity to you feel closest to? Which do you pray to? Previous classes all said Jesus, or God the Father.  However, in this confirmation class, most said the Holy Spirit because they understood it in a more tangible way. 

The 2^nd time I really connected with the Holy Spirit was when I was very ill and confined to a hospital bed. For the first time in my life, Jesus felt far away.   But the Holy Spirit I could sense at times. She helped me feel a little less alone.  That’s what I think Jesus hoped the Holy Spirit would do, help us feel less alone.

          Jesus knew not only how hard his death would be for this disciples, but how hard it would be to be left on this earth without him.  Jesus also knew how hard it would be for the generations after him who would have no experience with the Jesus who walked on this earth.  He understood that we would all need someone to walk along side us.

          He said to his disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”  In other words, I will never abandon you.  I will always be with you.  While you may not see me, that does not mean that I am not with you.  Death is not the end. My death will enable you to inherit eternal life with me.  I will see you again soon, and in the mean time, I will be with you in spirit.  Even as I reconstruct John’s words using simpler language, I can see that words are not what enable us to understand.  Knowing the stories, knowing that Jesus kept all those promises he made, that is what helps us to understand. No matter how many times he tried to explain it to his disciples, deep down, he must have known that they would not understand.  They would only comprehend the meaning of his words after the resurrection.  You can’t blame him for trying.  He had to try, because that is how much Jesus cares for us. He will not leave us ignorant or shield us from the hard lessons of life. He might leave us a little confused, but never unaware. 

          Even in our confusion, we still know that we have a place to turn, and that is the advocate, the spirit of truth.    We don’t have to understand the Holy Spirit to believe in the Holy Spirit. While there are a lot of translations for parakletos, the one I found that really resonated with me is: helping the dispirited person be brave.[1]  When we translate parakletos to comforter, or helper, we think of someone who will sympathize, or give us a big hug.  While everyone needs that at times, I don’t think that was Jesus’ intention.  Jesus knew that his departure would leave his disciples distraught.  He knew that they would face many obstacles, and most likely a violent death.  Thus he left them exactly what they needed, courage.

          We still need that courage.  I wouldn’t say we need courage more than ever. I am sure most of us can think of times we have needed courage, even more than now.  But I think this is a time in our nation and our world where Christians need more than a helper or comforter.  We don’t need a dove or a gentle wind.  We need that fire that we will witness on Pentecost, the fire that refuses to be quashed, the fire that spreads.

I heard a quote when I was writing this sermon--“That we have a God who might protect us from nothing, but who will sustain us in everything.”[2]  I often wish that God would swoop in and keep bad things from happening, that God would protect us all from the harsh realities of this life.  Yet again and again I see that is not how God operates. I could complain about that (and I do sometimes) or I could just release that expectation and instead focus on what God is doing.  God doesn’t protect us from the hard things, but God does sustain us when we are facing the hard things. God gives us the courage that we need.  So let us harness that courage.  Let us call on the Holy Spirit to make us braver, braver than we ever could be on our own.

 

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[1]Barclay, William.  The Gospel of John volume 2, p.167.

[2] Rev’d up for Sunday podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPyMmWDhxE

 

God's Chosen Strangers: May 3

2^nd Peter 2:2-10                            Year A, Easter 5                                                                                      

    Every three years we read a portion of 1^st Peter six weeks in a row, then people like me and I assume others as well, kind of forget about it.  Usually our 2^nd New Testament reading comes from one of Paul’s letters.  He wrote a good portion of the New Testament, but not all of it.  Paul’s letters were almost always directed to communities.  Even when there was an individual recipient, it was usually written with the idea that the individual would share the letter with a specific community.  However, this letter that is attributed to Peter, is geared toward a wider audience.  The very first line of the letter says “To God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora, who live in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.”[1]  I love that line—God’s chosen strangers.  Most scholars believe that this letter was written about 30 years after Jesus died to fledgling Christian communities who were in more hostile environments, places where communities were spread out more.  Most of these were places Paul didn’t even get to in his missionary journeys.

          There really wasn’t much of a Christian identity at the time.  The term Christian only appears in our Bible three times—twice in the Book of Acts and once in the 4^th chapter of Peter.  It seems like the term is associated with the crucified Christ.  The fact that Jesus was crucified was often used as a reason to prove that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah.  It certainly wasn’t proof that he was.  Most who became followers of Christ were ostracized from their communities.  Some were able to convert enough of their family to create a new community, but some were just pushed out and isolated.

In the last few weeks we have been hearing celebratory stories from the Book of Acts about thousands being baptized in a day.  Last week we heard about how wonderful and supportive those early Christian communities were.   For the last month, we have been basking in the Easter glow.   This Sunday, our Acts reading tells the story of the stoning of Stephen, our first Christian martyr.  (A martyr is someone who dies for their faith.) The terrifying reality of our faith is that, there has never been a point where it was easy to be a Christian.  It was never meant to be easy.  When we become too comfortable with our Christianity, when it has been watered down so it can be more palatable, then we have become complacent, and that is rarely a good thing.

          One of the lines in first Peter really jumps out at you, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…” You can just hear certain people taking that out of context. It hasn’t happened yet---I checked.  But it’s just a matter of time until someone does a deep dive and finds the phrase, “holy nation” or “chosen race.”  Those phrases should make us a little uncomfortable. It sounds like we are excluding certain people, that Jesus just came for the chosen race.  Or, that Jesus wants us to create a holy nation, rather than be a holy people.  It sounds exclusive and that should make Episcopalians and any Christians who put an emphasis on inclusivity want to cringe a little.

          But it actually means the exact opposite (and this is your monthly reminder that we always have to read the text in context.)  Remember how 1^st Peter began: “to God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora…”  These words are meant for a people who are feeling cut off and ostracized, either because of their location, or the people who are around them.  They don’t have a community.  They might just have a few families who are followers of Christ that they know.  But there is also a good chance, they have been forced to leave their community or even their family of origin.  

There wasn’t Christian persecution on a large scale at this time, but we can see from Acts, that Christians were being persecuted. Peter was saying to these chosen strangers, people in the diaspora, “I know you are suffering. I know you feel alone. But you are part of a holy nation, a holy priesthood, a chosen race.” This holy nation doesn’t have physical boundaries.   You can be a part of this holy nation wherever you live. It doesn’t exclude anyone who has committed to following Jesus.  And this chosen race isn’t based on the color of your skin, where you were born, who your parents are, it’s the human race, a people that were created by God.    To a people who were displaced and pushed out, knowing that they had this distinct identity, that they were part of a holy nation created by God-- that had to be incredibly comforting.

          I think most of us know what it is to be in a place where you feel like you don’t belong.  Usually, it’s temporary.  Typically there is some place in your life you feel like you belong. Yet there are many people in our world, maybe even some people here, who understand too well, that feeling of being isolated and not belonging all the time.  To you, I want to say, you do belong. I am not saying that because we are a progressive and welcoming church.  (That is true, but not the salient point here.) I am saying that because you belong to Jesus. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”  God’s own people.  You are God’s people, and that’s a good people to be. 

If you belong to God, then there is no place you don’t actually belong.  There are people and places that will try to exclude you and push you out and some of them might call themselves Christian.  If and when that happens, I want you to pull this verse out of the depths of your memory and remind yourself that you belong to God and that is no small thing.  It’s the biggest thing.

This reading from John 14 contains a very misused and misunderstood verse. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  Jesus had been telling his disciples about a place that he had prepared for them.  They were confused about where that place was, so they asked.  Jesus answered their question by saying, “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” In doing so, he was telling them, where, isn’t the point.  All that matters is that you are with me.  Because you belong to me. You (everyone of you) belong to God.  That is no small thing. It’s the biggest thing.

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[1] Translation is Common English Bible