July 27, 2014: Romans 8:26-39

Year A, Pentecost 7                                    

            The Book of Common Prayer is full of absolutely beautiful prayers.  They are eloquent and theologically sound.   They are often Biblically based.  Some of these prayers can be found in our Sunday morning service, but certainly not all.  If you only open it when you come to church on Sunday, you have probably only experienced about 10% of the prayers.   As Episcopalians, and people of the book, we should never be at a loss for words, especially now that you can access the BCP on your phone. 

I love these prayers and I know many of you do as well.  But there are other Christians who find it a little strange that we read our prayers from a book.  Many Christians find it inauthentic, as if we are only going through the motions.  I can see that perspective.  Sometimes we are going through the motions.  Occasionally I will be reading a prayer and realize that I have been thinking about something else the whole time.   Yet when you are composing a prayer…it’s pretty hard for your mind to wander.  If it did, it would be pretty obvious. 

            There is no right way to pray.  The Apostle Paul (who was never at a loss for words) wrote to the Roman community: “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.”   When I think of a sigh, I think of something rather dignified, something that would be totally appropriate in an Episcopal Church.  However, most translations use the word groaning instead of sigh.  That sounds a lot less dignified.  That sounds like someone in pain, or at least very frustrated.   If the person next to you were sighing, you would probably be ok with that.  If they were groaning, well that might get a little awkward.  You might find yourself sliding in the opposite direction.

            It is not really clear in the text whether the Spirit is groaning on our behalf, or if our literal groans are the work of the Spirit. It might not matter.  Personally I would much rather have the Spirit groan on my behalf as I read an eloquent and theologically correct prayer.  Since there is no right way to pray, I think God would probably be ok with that method.  However, I worry when prayer feels too dignified.  For me, when my prayers have felt the most authentic and the most powerful were when they came out with tears and sometimes anger.  There has been occasional teeth gnashing, foot stomping.  Sometimes my prayers come out in laughter and tears of joy. These seem to be the ones that change me the most.

This does not mean that those other prayers that lacked laughter, tears or stomping have not been true or real.  They absolutely have been. In fact, I think it is those prayers that prepare us for the prayers that come out as groans.  Those prayers equip us with a sacred vocabulary, even if we choose not to use it.  Those prayers are what we come back to when the storm is over and we find ourselves exhausted.  It is those times when it is all you can do to even read the words in front of you…but you do because that’s what you need right at that moment. 

            Some interpret this passage as Paul not only saying that we do not know how to pray, but we do not even know what to pray.  If God searches our heart and can interpret those spirit sighs…it is only God who knows what we are praying for.  I find that a tad annoying.  I should have some say in what I am praying for.  Otherwise, why use any words at all? It’s not that we do not determine our own prayer; we just don’t always know what is in our head.  Sometimes our deepest needs and desires get stuck in our heart and never make it to the part of us that formulates the words.  Thankfully, God is there searching our heart…learning every nook and cranny so we can become the Christian we are meant to be. 

            What is our part in this complicated word scramble?  If God is searching our heart and the spirit is groaning on our behalf it would seem that we could live our life and not have to worry about God or faith.  It’s as if we outsourced our prayer life to people who can do it more effectively than us.  There is one tiny problem with that scenario.  There appear to be some hearts that God and the spirit just don’t have access to.  Sure, God could shove his way through like a big bouncer at a club, but that’s not God’s style.  Jesus never operated that way.  Jesus never forced himself on people.  He invited them to follow him.  He invited them to come a little closer.  God has delivered an invitation to each one of us, but we have not all responded.   Perhaps like a good Episcopalian you are thinking, well of course I responded….when I was in confirmed (5, 20, 40, 60 years ago). 

It would be nice if it were that easy.  But it’s not a one and done type deal.  You can’t invite God in and ignore him.  Sometimes you need to invite God in over and over again.  I imagine that most of us have had those times in our lives when our heart has gotten a little closed off and we have shoved God out .  Often it is more subtle than a shove.  We just did not have time for God.  There are other demands on us and God can be a pretty high maintenance house guest.  He’s got a lot of demands and that might get in the way of our social life,  job, sports, or the Desperate House Wives marathon.

That is where weekly worship or even written prayers come in handy.  We need a reminder—a constant reminder of who we are as Christians.  We might not have the discipline to read the Bible every day.  We might be too emotionally spent even to groan.  So we come back to this service, not just for solace but for strength.  It reminds me of that phrase, “fake it until you make it.”  It sounds insincere, but I think there might be something to it.  Even for a priest, there are times when I do not want to come to church, when I don’t feel like I have the strength to say prayers and sing the hymns.  It is those times when I am so grateful that I have this tradition of prayers and worship, and a community of people to worship with.  There are no excuses not to pray.  The prayers are right there in front of me. 

And maybe there are moments, I have a hard time believing every prayer.  But I know that God is still there working through every nook and cranny of my heart ensuring that the Spirit is there to translate my groans into heartfelt prayer.   Because the more I read the prayers, the more I believe them and the more I feel them. I believe that is true for all of us.  There will be times when it is really hard to pray, really hard to believe the things we pray.  It is those times when it is even more important to show up, to open your heart, open your mouth and let God take it from there. 

Video for July 20th Sermon (Jacob's ladder)

This is the video from July 20th...which makes me a week behind. 
http://youtu.be/83QSyu1KIPo

July 20, 2014: Genesis 28:10-19a

Year A, Pentecost 6                                          

                                                           

When I was preparing for this sermon, I spent a lot of time thinking about holy places, places where I encountered something sacred and divine.  I got a little frustrated because I could not really think of any specific place.  Then I stopped filtering my thoughts and I realized that when I thought of sacred encounters, I did not think about places. I thought about experiences and emotions.  Sometimes they were in churches or places of natural beauty; but usually I could not even remember the place.  What I remembered was times of weakness, times of desperation and fear.  These were the times when my mind shut down and the barrier fell down and God broke through.  That is where I found my holy places.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Jacob.  On the one hand, he’s sneaky and manipulative which irritates me.  But he’s also pretty scrappy and tenacious.  Jacob was the younger son born to Rebecca and Isaac.  His brother (Esau) was born just seconds before him.  Because he was the oldest son, Esau was guaranteed a birthright and a blessing.  Having the birthright meant that he would be the head of the family when his father died.  He would own all the property and have authority over any younger siblings. Jacob wanted that birthright and convinced Esau to give it to him by tempting him with food.  Esau was hungry after a long day of work.   When he asked Jacob for food, Jacob said he could have it if he gave him his birthright.  Esau must have been terribly hungry because he agreed. 

Years later, when their now blind father was on his deathbed, Jacob presented himself to his father and claimed he was Esau.  Since Isaac could not see, he gave Jacob the blessing that Esau deserved as the first born thus giving Jacob both the birthright and the blessing.  As you can imagine, Esau was pretty angry. He vowed to kill his brother. When Jacob learned of this threat, he ran away.  

When he left his home, he had nothing and no one.  There was no one to accompany him on this journey.   We know he did not have time to pack since he was using a rock as a pillow.  I assume he was experiencing some guilt, maybe wondering whether it was worth it.  While he clearly had the brains in the family, Esau had the hunting skills and he was angry and out for revenge.  It didn’t seem as though having the birthright and blessing was doing Jacob much good since he couldn’t even stay in his homeland. 

The text tells us that he came to a certain place and stayed there for a night.  The phrase, “certain place” is an interesting choice of words.  We know where he left and we know where he was heading to, but neither the reader nor he knew where he was.  He was just in-between his home and an unknown future. He must have been very tired because despite his fear and the lack of comfort, he slept. 

I imagine it was one of those dreams that felt real and unbelievable at the same time because it combined his immediate surroundings with something that was glorious and almost unimaginable.   Our translation of the Bible says it was a ladder, but most scholars say it was more of a ramp, like a land mass in between earth and heaven.  Jacob knew that the ramp led to heaven because he saw angels ascending and descending.  If that was not convincing enough, the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord….”  God proceeded to promise Jacob the gift of land and offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth. It was a very similar blessing to that which God had given his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.

Then God added even more to the blessing.  He said, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land…”  Imagine how that must have sounded to someone who had been forced to cut all ties to his family and his homeland.   God was promising him that he would be with him at all times and that he would protect him from all peril.   That was an added blessing.  That was even more than God had promised Abraham and Isaac.           

That confuses me a little.  What had he done to deserve that?  He deceived his father and stole from his brother and now he gets an extra blessing?  Maybe he needed a little extra blessing.  He was alone and scared.  He was not the hunter that Esau was.  If Esau wanted to find him, he would.  But there was something feisty about Jacob.  God knew that he was going to fight for his blessings. He would doggedly pursue a blessing that he desperately wanted. 

Let’s face it, it’s not like it was fair that Esau got the blessing just because he came out of the womb first.    Jacob fought for that blessing and that birthright and he never gave up.  While his methods were questionable, I think God saw something promising in this him.  God knew that if he was at Jacob’s side, that persistence would no longer be so selfish.  It would be a persistence that would bring blessing not only to him, but to an entire people.  It would be a persistence that the Hebrew people would emulate for generations.      

So not only did God give him this blessing, he showed Jacob something that very few had ever experienced. He showed him a place where heaven and earth met.  What is so amazing about that  ramp to heaven was that it was a two way street.  Angels were ascending and descending.  Angels are messengers of God.  That is the literal translation of the Hebrew word: messenger.  That ramp was proof that the lines of communication were going both ways.  God was speaking and God was listening.  There was no and is no barrier between heaven and earth. 

The only barrier is the one that we create in our minds.  Maybe God chose Jacob to be a witness to that message because he was a man without roots.  He was a man in-between the home he left and a home he was searching for.  He was (as the text says) in a certain place.  And that is where God often reaches people; in that in-between place where we are still open to revelation.  It’s when we get comfortable that we stop having those vivid dreams that allow us to encounter true holiness.  If he was sleeping in a comfy bed instead of on a rock perhaps he would not have seen that vision. 

When he woke up he proclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place---and I did not know it!”  He took the rock that he had slept on and set it up as a pillar so he could remember that place where the Lord had appeared.  He declared the place to be a gate to heaven.  It is understandable that he wanted to remember that place and honor that place.  But I wonder if he kind of missed the point.  That place was not holy because of where it was.  That rock was not holy because he had dreamt on it.  That place was holy because of what was missing from that place, and that was the barrier between heaven and earth, between the sacred and mundane. 

I feel the Lord in St. John’s and I hope you do as well.  But I really hope that in your moments of pain, and fear and loneliness---in those certain in-between places where we feel lost and we have no idea where we are…I pray that we will find the Lord in those places as well.  Because that is where the Lord will find us. 

Video of July 13th Sermon

My battle with technology continues.  We recorded the sermon on June 22nd, but there was no audio.  So I'm afraid it would not be worth posting that.  Here is my sermon from July 13th.  If you are reading this and you have any knowledge of this kind of thing and live in Hampton, I would love some help!


July 13th Sermon

July 13, 2014: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Year A, Pentecost 5                                                               

                                     

One of the things we saw in Ireland were the fields that were used for the potato farming.  These fields were not on typical flat farmland. They went up cliffs.  Our guide, who was also a farmer, explained that before and during the potato famine, they were making the most of the land and they needed as much as possible.  So they dug the rock out of the terrain and that allowed the land to become better soil.  He said it would have required a tremendous amount of work to remove all that rock.  We heard a fair amount about farming during that trip.  I think that knowing more about farming and agriculture would be helpful in understanding the Gospels because of the imagery that Jesus used.  

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.   There were no canned or frozen goods.  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 that might as well be concrete, rocky ground, and ground covered with thorns? I don’t know a whole lot about farming, but even I know that type of soil is not going to be conducive to a good harvest.  According to this parable, there was good soil present. Why not use that?  Instead of spreading it willy-nilly, 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, 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 would take a fairly simple story that people would have been able to identify with and then use 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, most of the time 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.  This sower could not have had an unlimited number of seeds.  At what point did he run out?  I would think that at some point the bag became light and he would have been more cautious with his seed placement.  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.  The sack that contains these things is bottomless.  Because of that, Jesus is not worried about wasting because there will always be more as long as we keep giving.  As long as we keep reaching into that bag, there will always be more.  But it’s tempting to be strategic in our faith.  We might talk to some people about faith, but only the people we think would 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. 

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, disciples who receive the word of God more authentically.  It’s about a God who is so relentless with his love that he gives it to everyone, even people he knows will reject it.  I agree with that.  This text is about God’s abundant love.  But I also believe that soil can change.  As followers of Christ, we can change.  When the disciples heard this parable, they were the rocky ground.  We know this because when Jesus was arrested, they fled.  Then, Jesus appeared to them in the resurrected form and they rejoiced. They faced their fears and in the end they became that soil that could bear much fruit.  They were able to face persecution without losing heart.  The soil changed.

This parable is not a perfect analogy.  I would have failed my creative writing class with this parable.  As disciples of Christ we are the ground, we are the sower, and we are the seed.  We receive God’s love, we provide God’s love and in some ways, we are God’s love.  God will love us regardless of what kind of soil we are.  Of that, there is no doubt.  But if we want to be vessels of God’s love…if we want to provide God’s love to others, then we have to participate in the Gospel.  We have to dig the rock out of our hearts.  We have to fling the seeds of love in places we know it will be ignored.  Sometimes we have to reject the sensible and safe approach and be a little fearless with our love.  After all, it’s not our love.  It is God’s love.  God has been pretty clear in what we are to do with that love.