Nov. 17, 2013 Luke 21: 5-19

Year C, Pentecost 26                                                                

                                                                                     

            After reading St. John’s history book, How Firm a Foundation,  I went back to check my church history book by Bob Prichard, one of my favorite professors at seminary.  I was dismayed to see that St. John’s was not mentioned.  It mentioned Bruton and the settlement in Jamestown, but no St. John’s.  If I had more time, I would have written that professor and asked him to fix his egregious error.  Instead, I spoke to our own Jim Tormey and asked how this could be.  He said something to the effect of, “St. John’s isn’t the oldest building, it’s the oldest community that has worshipped together continuously.”  The building itself only goes back to 1728….still pretty old, but not the oldest.  I guess it is easy to focus on the building because it is more tangible.  However, I am still going to write my professor when I have a chance. 

            The people of Israel had a tendency to focus on the temple.  When things were going well for the Hebrew people, the temple was a doing well and vice versa.  When the temple was destroyed, it was dire times for the Hebrew people because it generally meant that the people were under foreign control, or worse, they were exiled to another land.   So much of the Old Testament recounts the story of the temple.  It is built and destroyed….rebuilt and destroyed again.  The temple that existed during Jesus’ day was one of the finest temples that had ever been built.  It was built under the reign of King Herod in about 20 BC.  This new temple was twice the size of the old one and the outer walls were covered with gold plating.  Pilgrims poured into the city and were overwhelmed by its magnificence. 

King Herod did not have the best reputation and was certainly not seen as someone devoted to God. Many thought that the temple stood more as a monument to Herod’s own self-importance, rather than a temple in honor of God.[1]  So it is not surprising that Jesus was unimpressed with the temple and the beautiful stones that adorned it or the prospect that it would last forever.  He knew that like all things made by human hands, it could not last forever.  That did not mean that another temple could not be built in its place.  It just meant that this particular one, despite its appearance of greatness, could not stand forever. 

            From this text, a lot of people have concluded that Jesus was against houses of worship, perhaps even a critic of the temples.  This could not be further from the truth.  It is true that Jesus liked to preach on hills, boats and large fields; but he also spent a lot of time in the temple. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was at home in temple.  It was not his actual home, but it was the place that he always returned to, which is what I have always considered home. 

The Gospel of Luke begins and ends in the temple.  It begins with a priest named Zechariah being told by God that his wife will bear a son.  This son would be John the Baptist.  The Gospel of Luke ends with not the death, resurrection, or ascension of Jesus, but the gathering of the disciples in the temple.  After Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples immediately proceeded to the temple in Jerusalem to sing praises to God.  In between these 2 stories, we hear of many instances when Jesus and his parents went to the temple.  From the very beginning when Jesus was dedicated in the temple, his parents made sure that Jesus was part of the community of faith.  The temple was the first place where Jesus went after he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days.  That is where his public ministry began.  Clearly, Jesus was not against temples.   For Jesus, it was not about the beauty of the stones, but the beauty of the community of faith, the people of God.  That is why Jesus was in the temple.  God was manifest there.  God was manifest in the people of God.

            So why was it that Jesus wept over Jerusalem when he saw it?  Why did he feel the need to cleanse the temple?  Why did he predict the destruction of the temple?  He wept because when he saw Jerusalem, he saw a beloved city that had forgotten who they were and what they were about.  He saw a city that was headed for its own destruction because of its blindness.  He cleansed the temple because instead of it being a place of worship, it had become a place where people bought and sold things to make a profit.  It had become corrupt, a den of robbers.  He predicted the destruction because that was the truth.  Forty years after he died, the temple was destroyed once again. 

            Yet despite this sorrow, this doom, he had a message of hope for his disciples.  He said whatever horrible things happen, you have an opportunity.  Out of the dust and the rubble, will come a message, but only if you, the disciples of Christ, are willing to deliver it.   He said, “This will give you an opportunity to testify.  So make your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words of wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict… By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

            If I do write my professor, I am going to tell him this: “I don’t care about the oldest building.  I care about the community that was built to survive, a community that has lived through death and rebirth, a community that is ready to testify, to be disciples of Christ.”  Are you all with me on that?  Because I need some people to back me up if I am going to try to correct a history book.  Are you all ready to testify to not only the history that is behind us, but the future that is before us?  Let’s not just correct it.  Let’s rewrite it.

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[1] Joel Green,The Gospel of Luke, 733.

November 9, 2013 Luke 20:27-38

Year C, Pentecost 25                                                             

 

            I spent some time around Evangelicals in high school and college.  I got used to the question: “Are you saved?”  I had a pretty good answer to that.  Yes.  But when people asked me when I was saved, things got a little confusing.  While at seminary I asked an Episcopalian how he responded when asked that question.  He said, “Well you can tell them one of two things:  I was saved 2000 years ago when Jesus was crucified or you can tell them you were saved when you were baptized.   Both are correct and neither answer will actually please the person who is asking.”  Sadly, I have not been asked that since being ordained.  I want to be asked because I think I have a better answer now.  I’m not going to tell you yet because then you will have no incentive to listen to the rest of the sermon.

            Our Gospel reading begins with, “Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question…”  Already, it seems pretty clear what this question is going to be about.  Otherwise Luke would not have had to preface the question with the reminder that Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection.  Often the Sadducees and the Pharisees get jumbled up. They were both part of the Jewish leadership, but they represented different kinds of Judaism.  Much like we have differences of opinion within the Christian faith, the Jews are not all of one mind.  In the time of Jesus, the two major divisions (at least the ones that we hear about) were the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The Pharisees accepted all of Holy Scripture including all of the oral and ceremonial laws.  The Sadducees only accepted what were written in the 5 books of Moses, which are the first 5 books of the Old Testament.   

As a result of this more limited acceptance of scripture and tradition (and probably a couple of other factors), the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection from the dead.  When Christians hear resurrection, we think of Jesus’ resurrection, but there was already a belief in general resurrection before Jesus even started talking about it. Jesus was not debating his own resurrection with the Sadducees; that had not happened yet.  He was debating the general concept while also laying the ground work for people to later understand his resurrection and what would become the Christian understanding of resurrection. 

            If you try to follow the argument in the Gospel today, it will get a little confusing.  Because the Sadducees believed that resurrection was impossible, they were using an absurd hypothetical situation to test Jesus.  What if a woman is widowed 6 times, and therefore ends up marrying seven different men?  Who will she be married to in heaven?  One of the reasons that Jesus was a master of debate was because he always kept in mind who he was talking to and what context they were coming from.  He knew that he was talking to the Sadducees and they only believed the first 5 books.  Any effective argument would have to come from those first 5 books.  He also knew that they were not really worried about marriage in the afterlife.  They just wanted to make the concept of the afterlife look absurd. 

            His answer was basically this: Marriage is not something that people are concerned with after they are resurrected.  It’s an entirely different world.  Then he reached back into the scriptures that they believed in.  He talked about Moses’ experience with God in the burning bush.   When God spoke to Moses he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  All those people God mentioned were already dead.  So why did God tell him “I am the God of” all those people if they were dead.  To us, it might seem like a weak argument, but at the time, it was a pretty good one.  

Then Jesus went on to say something about God that was a lot more important than marriage in the afterlife. “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”  Our God is a God of the living. Jesus went on to prove this for once and for all when he himself was resurrected.  He took what was one just this piece of lofty and unrealistic theology and he made it real.  He made it flesh and blood.  You don’t get any more real than that.

            I was leading a chapel discussion for 3 and 4 years old and we were talking about the church calendar.  When I got to Easter, I asked, “And what happens on Easter?”  A little girl raised her hand and said, “Jesus died and came back…and he does it every year.”  It made me laugh because I realized that it would look a little silly to a child that we go through this every year.  Every year Jesus is born.  Every year he dies about 4 months later and then come back 3 days after that.   Yet then I thought, maybe that is a good thing.  We all need a little more resurrection in our life.

I love the part in the Baptismal liturgy that says, “You are marked as Christ’s own forever.”  When I am teaching classes about baptism, I remind people that no matter what happens, where you go in life, you are always Christ’s own.  You may turn away from God, but God will never turn away from you.  On the one hand, you could say, “Well I guess I never have to go to church again. I can do whatever I want.  I can be selfish and hurt people and I will still be good because I am marked as Christ’s own forever.”  And I suppose that is one way to look at it.  Or we could look at it like this, we have unlimited opportunities in life to resurrect ourselves.  We might have a couple months or years where we have strayed from the Christian path, but we can transform ourselves, have our own resurrection.   I have never strayed too far from church and my faith.  But that does not mean I don’t need little resurrections in my life. 

I have always liked the idea of reincarnation (that you keep returning to the world until you get it right).  But then I realized that we have something better.  As people of the resurrection, we don’t have to die to have new life.  We can choose it each and every day.   If someone asks me when I was saved the answer will depend on what day and time they ask me because I am being saved all the time.  I am experiencing God’s saving power each and every day and you know what, we all can.   Because our God is a God of the living.  Our God is a God of unlimited potential for new life. 

Nov. 3, 2013 Luke 6: 20-31

Year C, All Saints Day                                                                                     

                The summer after I graduated from college, I got an internship in a small Methodist Church in a town of 1000.   The down side was that I did not know anyone in the town and since it was such a small town, there was really no one my age.  My closest friend was about two hours away.  They had me living alone in the big rectory next to the church.  Not only was there no TV, but there was no internet.  This was before cell phones became so accessible, so all I had was a phone card that charged me about a dollar a minute.  However, I was in a good place.  I had finished college and had a wonderful boyfriend who I absolutely adored.  He was only about 2 hours away, so I figured I could see him every week and in the meantime I could catch up on my reading, learn how to cook, exercise, and get a taste of ministry.  Two weeks after I started, my perfect boyfriend broke up with me.  All of a sudden the town felt like a death trap as opposed to an opportunity to fine tune my cooking skills and read the classics.  I couldn’t sleep and I cried all the time when I was not around the parishioners.  I was going to a Catholic Church on the weekdays and I just sat in the back and cried during the service.  I cannot begin to imagine what the priest thought of me.  I also started attending their weekly Bible study.  I do not recall what we were studying, but at one point the priest said, “Being blessed is not the same thing as being happy.” 

I found that flabbergasting.  It just never occurred to me.  I was used to people telling me that they were blessed when good things were happening.  People tend to equate blessings with successes. I am sure you have all heard the word blessing used the same way.  People will talk about their lovely family and then say, “I’m just so blessed.”  Or they will talk about something good that just happened and describe it as a blessing.   I have actually had Christians correct me when I described something as lucky.  They will say, “I don’t believe in luck.  I believe everything good is a blessing.”  

Well ok, but that really doesn’t mesh with the Gospel for today.  “Blessed are you who are poor… Blessed are you who are hungry….Blessed are you who weep…Blessed are you when people hate you…”  If that is what it is to be blessed, how many of you want to be blessed?  I have never heard the following, “I have no money.  My family has disowned me.  I’m so depressed I can’t get out of bed.  I’m just so blessed.”  It would sound crazy if someone said that.  And I bet that people thought Jesus was a little crazy when he made those statements.  Many of the people who he was talking to were poor and hungry.  Many of them knew what it was to be ostracized, on the margins of society.  I doubt they were feeling particularly blessed by God. 

But wait, I did not finish the blessings did I?  “Blessed are you who are poor now, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled…”  There is debate about what Jesus meant with those statements.  Did he mean that the people would be filled in this lifetime or in the life to come, the heavenly realm?  It’s hard to say.  Either way, it is meant to give people hope when they are going through trying times.  Whatever you are experiencing now, it will pass.   

If the blessing part was not hard enough, Jesus then started on the woes.  “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.  Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”  That just sounds mean.   Why would Jesus want to punish people who were well fed or happy?  It’s a hard text to reconcile, especially when you do have money and are well fed.  If we are in that situation, are we not loved by God?     

Sometimes blessings and woes are best seen in retrospect.  When I look back on that summer after college, I don’t see it through rose colored glasses.  I was extraordinarily depressed.  It wasn’t just the guy…he was just the final push that sent me spiraling.  I would never want to go through that summer again.  I remember at one particular low point I was driving by a pasture and saw some cows grazing and thought to myself, “I wish I was a cow.”  If you asked me on any given day during that summer if I was blessed or woeful, I would definitely have told you it was summer of woe.  Yet that summer was a time that I was extraordinarily close to God.  It was then when I learned what it was to truly have God as a companion, to really depend on God. Even though I was miserable, I felt like God was hovering over me, making sure that the spiral did not go totally out of control.  I felt his presence as much as I felt the suffocating weight of the depression.  That was not a happy summer for me.  But it was a blessed summer. 

I had my first finance meeting about a week after I arrived at St. John’s.   It was a rather anxiety provoking meeting.  St. John’s is in a very challenging place financially, possibly the most difficult place we have been in recent memory.  My instinct was to panic after the finance meeting.  Instead I went home and I prayed.  I haven’t stopped praying since that meeting.  Every time I want to go into fix it mode or start stressing about the numbers, I try to pray instead.    It hasn’t been easy.  It was really not until I was writing this sermon when I realized that perhaps this is actually a magnificent opportunity for us.  St. John’s is in a place of need.  We can’t necessarily rely on one or two very generous people this time around.  We certainly cannot rely just on the rector.  This time, we rely on God.  Right now, we might not be blessed in the worldly sense of the word, but my friends, we are blessed in the Gospel sense of the word.  Because of that, I believe that Jesus is closer to us now than ever.  So we persevere, not just for the sake of surviving, but because we are blessed by God.  It is my fervent hope that in ten years we will look back on this time as a time when we felt God’s presence in our own need.  And once we have felt that, I pray that no matter how much we grow, how secure we become, we will never let go of God’s presence….we will never forget what it is to be blessed.

October 27, 2013 Luke 18:9-14

Year C, Pentecost 23                                                 

 

            This past week, one of the big news stories was a German Roman Catholic bishop who was accused of spending millions on lavish renovations.   Shortly after the news broke, Pope Francis called him in to speak with him.  He then temporarily suspended him.  Apparently the renovation project was over 41 million dollars, and a portion went to the bishop’s private residence.  (Makes our renovation project seem pretty minor.)  The timing of this scandal is rather ironic because Oct. 31^st marks the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses on the door of Castle Church in Whittenberg Germany.  One of the things that Martin Luther condemned in the 95 theses was the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church. This action marked the beginning of the Protestant reformation. So now around the same time, a bishop is condemned in Germany for the very same thing.  I grew up Catholic and I remember every time something like this happened, I found myself having to defend the Roman Catholic Church.  Yet this time around, I thought, thank goodness I am an Episcopalian.

            It’s easy to do that, isn’t it, compare ourselves to one another?   One of the reasons that I think reality TV is so popular is because it makes us feel better about ourselves. “Well I have done some stupid things, but at least I have never acted like those people on the Jersey Shore or Desperate Housewives.”  (Which admittedly is a fairly low bar.)

We do it as Christians more than we would like to admit.  I sit on the Commission on Ministry for the diocese.  We are the commission that interviews people who are seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church.  One of the questions I often ask people is, “How would you describe the Episcopal Church to someone who knew nothing about the Episcopal Church?”  The majority of the time, people describe the Episcopal Church as what we are not.  “We are kind of like the Catholics, but we do not have a pope and we ordain women.  We are much more open-minded than most Christians.   We are not nearly as judgmental.”  And I admit it, in desperate times, I have used the same tactics to describe our faith.  Sometimes it is just the easier way to go.  Unfortunately it does not speak much to the richness of our faith or our tradition if all we can say is what and who we are not. 

            “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying like this, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector…”  You know the rest…hopefully because I just read it.  The Pharisee goes on to recite all the wonderful things he does, which are rather impressive.  Then we see the humble tax collector who cannot even lift his eyes to heaven.  Instead he says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” This man went home justified rather than the other one.  The moral of the story is clear:  Pharisee is bad, the tax collector is good.   Thank goodness we are not like the Pharisee. 

            It is important to note something about tax collectors in this time period.  People who work for the IRS right now might not be on everyone’s dinner party list, but they are not nearly as maligned as tax collectors were in Jesus’ day.   Tax collectors were considered traitors because they worked for the Romans, a government that oppressed the Jews and taxed them, but gave them no rights. Tax collectors were part of this oppressive government, and to make matters worse, they often earned their living by asking for more taxes that even the Roman government required. They were basically stealing from their own people.  That was why he was beating his breast and asking God to be merciful. He is often described as humble.  He wasn’t necessarily humble, he was just honest. 

            The Pharisee on the other hand, was probably a pretty good person.  He was devoted to his faith.  He went above and beyond what the requirements were of that day.  Yet in this story, the tax collector is the one who returned home justified.  The Pharisee was not justified, because he started off as righteous.  The words justified and righteous both have similar meanings.  One is not better than the other.  The problem was not that the Pharisee started off as righteous, the problem is that he was righteous because he trusted in himself and regarded others with contempt.  He trusted in himself.  Again, that does not sound so bad.  Most people would not think poorly of a person who claimed to trust in his or herself.  In fact, we would probably say that person has a healthy self-confidence.   There is nothing wrong with being confident.  There is nothing wrong with being righteous. The problem comes when we forget who the source of that righteousness is.   The Pharisee believed that he was able to make himself righteous with his own actions.  He did not realize that it was only God who could make him righteous. The tax collector knew that he was nothing without God.

            As long as we think that what we do justifies us, we will always compare ourselves to others.  When we compare ourselves to others, no one wins. Because we are either judging the other or we are judging ourselves. Either they fall short, or we do. There was only one human who was ever fit to judge and he died and was resurrected almost 2000 years ago.  So if you have to compare yourself to someone, compare yourself to Jesus.  That sounds like a tall order, right? Jesus was sinless.  So how about we stop comparing and we start striving, striving for the example that Jesus set for us and continues to set for us.  Then when we weary of striving, we forgive others and we forgive ourselves. 

             Did you all notice how many comparisons I made in the beginning of the sermon?  I wrote those on purpose to make a point, but those thoughts, those all came naturally. I really compared the Bishop’s renovations to ours when I first heard about it.   Before I heard about this recent scandal, I was even kind of jealous of my Roman Catholics friends and family because I am experiencing pope envy.  This new pope is awesome.  So I get it. I get the Pharisee.  But you know what, I’m also so tired of having to be good enough.   I think a lot of us are.  That is why everyone is so busy and stressed.  We are all trying to be good enough. So let’s just admit that we are never good enough…and we do not have to be.  We have a God who is the source of all goodness.  When we are weary of the effort, we can let go of the pretenses and scream or just mumble, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  That is all it takes to be good enough in God’s eyes. 

October 20, 2013 Luke 18:1-8

Year C, Pentecost 22                                                            

                                                                        

            In 1974, Muhammad Ali was set to fight George Foreman, who at the time was known for more than just his George Foreman Grill.  He was the Heavy Weight Champion of the World.   Foreman was younger and stronger.  He was favored to win, not only because he was the Heavy Weight Champion, but because of his superior punching power.   In the first 5 or 6 rounds of the match, it appeared that Ali was being pummeled.  It looked so horrible, so painful, people watching were afraid he would die in the ring.  Yet, by the end of round 5, it was clear that Foreman was tiring and Ali was able to go on the offensive.  In the 8^th round, Ali knocked him out.  It is one of the most famous fights in the history of boxing and I promise that if you keep listening, I’m going to make a connection to the Gospel. 

            This Gospel reading is probably one of the most well-known parables about prayer.    It has a lot of different interpretations, but the most popular is that of the persistent widow, or as my mom likes to say, “the nagging woman.”   There are a couple of things you need to know about widows in ancient Israel.  They were the poorest of the poor.  If a woman did not have a husband to support her, she either had to remarry of depend on another male relative.  If she was too old to marry, then she would depend on a son.   If she did not have a son, then her only option was to beg on the street.  Because of this, there were several Jewish laws meant to protect widows, although they were fairly limited in their scope.  As a result, widows became a symbol for all those who were poor and oppressed; all of those who needed to fight for their right to be heard. 

            It is clear that this widow did not have a male relative who was caring for her.  If she did, she would not have been the one in front of the judge.    She was at the mercy of a judge who had no fear of God and no respect for anyone.  She could not beg for mercy.  She could not appeal to his sense of justice or his respect for the law.  The only power she had in her arsenal was perseverance, and it would appear, more than her fair share of feistiness.  

            Most of the New Testament was translated from Greek.  Some things have been lost in translation.  The English translation we use in the Episcopal Church (The New Revised Standard Version) says that the judge said, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she many not wear me out continually by her coming.”  Virtually every commentary I read said that the last part of the verse (wear me out continually) is not a good translation.   The literal translation would be, “she will end up giving me a black eye.”   People are divided about what Jesus meant by this.  Some say the judge was actually worried that she would hit him.  Others say that black eye is a euphemism for public shame.  Still others, (and this is my choice) hypothesized that it was both.  He was afraid this woman would hit him and that black eye would result in public shame.  The judge, who had no fear of God and no respect for anyone, was afraid of public shaming, even if it was by a poor and powerless widow.   It would seem that she wasn’t so powerless after all.

            I believe that there are some times when it is good to feel a little powerless.  It is a humbling experience.  And we must always remember that we are all powerless before the majesty of God.  Yet there is a time when being powerless feels more like hopelessness, and that is never a good thing.  This woman, while powerless, was never without hope.  If she had been, she would not have gone back again and again.  Where did she get that hope?  The last line of the Gospel reading gives us a good clue.  Jesus concludes the parable by asking, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Her hope was rooted in faith, and that faith gave her strength to persevere, even when the fight had probably gone out of her. 

            Some people think this parable means that if you are insistent enough in your prayer life, your prayer will be answered.  I have tried that and I have known many people who have tried it.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.   When it does not work, it can be faith shattering.  It can crush the strongest, the most powerful, and the most fortunate.  In my limited experience, prayer is about the process and not the outcome.   Sometimes that process will feel more like a boxing match, or a wrestling match than a quiet moment with God.   

            Jesus prayed a lot.  That probably seems obvious, but when you think about, it’s actually kind of odd.  He prayed, even though he had control over the outcome.  Sometimes he prayed all night.  The night before he was arrested, his prayer was such a struggle that he actually sweat blood.  Was he trying to change the mind of God, or was he preparing himself for what was about to happen?  I believe he was preparing for himself, and that prayer, it was a battle.  He was going to work that out with God.  In the end, it did not free him from his death on the cross, but it gave him the strength to die in peace. 

            What Ali was doing the first 5 rounds of that fight was wearing out George Foreman.  In essence, he was preparing for the moment when he could overcome his opponent.  But in preparing, he took a beating and sometimes that is what prayer feels like, even when the outcome is the one we want.  He won that fight, but what I find most interesting was what happened to George Foreman.  He lost to Ali and he lost a couple matches after that. Then he became an ordained minister and did ministry full time for at least 10 years.  After that, he announced a comeback.  At age 45, 20 years after that fight against Ali, he won the Heavy Weight Championship again.  He was oldest person to ever win that.  It took him 20 years, but he never gave up. 

            Prayer is a process and it is not for the faint of heart.  It’s for those people who are willing to engage in a struggle.  Usually it is a struggle of the heart and not the fists (in fact we really discourage fighting in the Christian Church).   Yet most of us know that emotional blows can be just as painful as physical ones.  Sometimes our prayers will be answered after 5 rounds of beating like Muhammad Ali.  Sometimes it will take 20 years like George Foreman.  Sometimes it will seem like no matter how hard we fight, how good we are, how just our prayer, it will never get answered, not in this lifetime.  It is those times, when we have to remember that our prayer is not meant to change God’s mind, but ours.  It is meant to make us into the person who can handle what an unanswered prayer feels like.   My prayer for each and every one of you is not only that your prayers be answered, but that when they are not answered in the way you think they should be, you will have the strength for the next round.  God won’t give up on us. We cannot give up on him.  

Oct. 13, 2013 Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7

 Year C, Pentecost 21

              One of the things I did to prepare for my final interview with the search committee was to read the history book that was written about St. John’s, How Firm a Foundation.   I learned some interesting tidbits.  Did you know that in the early church, you could be arrested for not attending church on Sunday? I found this rather appealing.  It puts a lot less pressure on the preacher when the alternative to a riveting Sunday sermon is jail.  The other, less appealing, historical fact was that the clergy were paid in tobacco.  That seems like a good tradition to let go of.  What I found particularly fascinating was how integral the town was to the church and the church was to the town.  Everyone who lived in the town of Hampton were members of St.  John’s.  This is primarily because it was the only established church in the area and because it was an English colony, there was only one option as far as what denomination to be part of.  It was Church of England.   However, this could not last forever.  That pesky revolution made a church founded by the King of England less appealing to a people who just proclaimed their freedom from the King of England. Furthermore, it was no longer the only church in town.  There were other options.  

I found this idea of a prominent and dominant church attractive to some degree because the only way I have ever known the Episcopal Church was as the underdog.  I became Episcopalian in 2003 when the most recent major exodus from the Episcopal Church began.    It was a strange time to become Episcopalian and more than one person asked why I was jumping on a sinking ship.  The reality is that there were very few Christian denominations prospering at that time, and unfortunately, that trend has not reversed in the last 10 years.  The Episcopal Church went from being the church of a nation, to being the church that people of our nation no longer have time for.  At one time it was illegal not to attend church.  Now, it feels almost un-American to be a committed Christian.  We are living in a post Christian world, and as a priest, I find that a little terrifying. 

Jeremiah knew what it was to be on a sinking ship.  For a good portion of his prophetic career, Jeremiah had been telling the people of Israel that they would be destroyed; that their great nation, which was once favored and protected by God, would be defeated by Babylonia.   Yet no one would listen to him.  He was not part of the religious establishment.  He was an outsider.  Biblical scholars believe that he was probably illiterate and had no formal education.  And here he was telling the powers that be that they were in the wrong and would be judged for it.  As you can imagine, he was not a very popular guy.  In chapter 20 he was put in the stocks.  In chapter 26, they tried to put him to death.  In chapter 37 he was imprisoned and later thrown into a well.  The Babylonians determined him to be so inconsequential that when they invaded, they just left him in Jerusalem.  He wasn’t worth deporting. 

Even after the exile, when Jeremiah was left with the remnant in Jerusalem, he did not stop prophesizing.  And unfortunately for him and the people, his prophesies did not get any more optimistic.   In the chapter preceding our reading for today, another prophet told the people that the Lord would deliver them from Babylon in only two years.  They just had to hang on for two more years.  (That is the same length of time you had an interim.) This was good news, news that the people wanted to hear.   But then, Jeremiah came back and told them this prophet was wrong and that it would really be 70 years.  No wonder they threw him in a well. 

The reading for today from Jeremiah is a bit of a puzzler. It’s not angry.  It’s not sad.  It’s almost a little hopeful, which is odd considering they are on the precipice of 70 years of exile.  The people he is talking to are those who have been exiled to Babylon; the people important enough to be deported and the same people who had tried to put Jeremiah to death.   They were the religious establishment who never accepted him.  While they never accepted him, he never gave up on them, because God never gave up on them.  

The people were still intent on returning to Jerusalem, convinced that this exile would be short lived.  The message that Jeremiah sent them probably seemed very strange to them.  He said, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters….”  In other words, get comfortable, you are going to be there for a while.  Jeremiah knew that they would be there for 70 years, more than a generation. Most of those hearing Jeremiah’s message would die in that foreign land. 

People perceived this message from Jeremiah to be a betrayal of the God of Jerusalem, the one true God.  To build homes in Babylon was to assimilate, to forget their home and their people. ..forget who they were and most importantly their God.

In the modern church, there always seems to be this tension  between assimilating to the culture while also maintaining the rich traditions that make our church great.   There are some of us who are afraid that when we accommodate the culture, we become a slave to the culture, we let the culture define the faith as opposed to the faith defining the culture.  I can empathize with that fear.  The church should be counter cultural.  We should be Jeremiah, telling people what they do not want to hear, even when that makes us unpopular.  But even Jeremiah knew that there came a point when it became counterproductive to spend too much time longing for the greatness of the past, instead of planting new gardens that would bear new fruit.

Another thing I learned in reading How Firm a Foundation, was that this site where St. John’s is located is the 4^th site.  The first three sites, while good buildings for the time they were built, could not last for more than a couple of years/decades.  When this building was built, it was built to last, last for centuries.  It has despite several wars and numerous hurricanes.   These walls were meant to remain, meant to withstand fires, wars, flooding, and construction.  But St. John’s the community—the community of disciples of Christ-should be a community with walls that are flexible, or better yet no walls at all.  We should be a community that welcomes the stranger and proclaims the Good News of God in Christ.  And we might have to package that news differently than before.  But guess what, the Good News of God in Christ, it does not need walls.  It does not even need a package or our protection.  It is strong enough to withstand the winds and wars of our culture, but only if we the people are willing to make it accessible to the people who have not had the gift of growing up in a church…in this church.   

I have only served as your rector for less than a week.  Already, I have been so impressed by the generosity, the abundant love of the people of St. John’s.  I have seen people go above and beyond to care for others.    What impressed me in the interview process was how much the search committee loved St. John’s.  I saw God’s hand in the history of St. John’s, the survival of St. John’s.  I want people outside the church to see what I have seen, and what many of you have experienced. 

Like the people Jeremiah preached to, we are a people who are exiled, not because we have been deported to another country, but because the country around us, the culture around us has changed so much; most people outside the church no longer know who we are or what we stand for.  So we have to plant new gardens.  We have to build our family, not by getting married and having children (although that is one method) but by reaching beyond the walls.  We can do it together.