We live: August 23, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 12  (Feast of Jonathan Daniels)                      
Luke 1: 46-55                                                                                     

            I went to Gettysburg College.  Gettysburg is known for being one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War as well as a turning point in the war.  While the history of the war does not have an overt influence on campus life, it has subtle influences.  Our main administration building was used as a hospital for both union and confederate troops.  There are a lot of ghost stories involving that building, as well as almost every building on campus.  Some of the influences I have only seen in retrospect.  For instance, I love the Battle Hymn of the Republic.[1]  I do not usually like hymns that use battle imagery to depict the strength of God, but I love that hymn because we sang it in my college choir.  Every year our choir would go on tour and there would be one song that would be civil war era.  We sang the Battle Hymn when we were in the north and “I wish I was in Dixie” when we toured the South.  I don’t know if I knew that the Battle Hymn was a union song, but someone reminded me of that recently when I was discussing my love of the hymn.   The reason that the hymn has been at the forefront of my mind over the last couple of months is because our Presiding Bishop elect quoted pieces of that hymn in his sermon at General Convention.  The piece he ended with was “Glory glory Halleluiah!” 

            But that’s not why I chose this hymn for today.  You see, there was another well-known preacher who liked to quote pieces of this hymn in his sermons and speeches, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  His last public words before his death were, “Mine eyes have seen the glory.”   This hymn was a popular hymn during the Civil Rights movement and today we are remembering a martyr of the Civil Rights movement.  His name is Jonathan Daniels.  This year marks the 50^th anniversary of his death. There were many martyrs of the Civil Rights movement, but one of the reasons that he is on our calendar of holy men and holy women is because not only was he a martyr, but he was an Episcopal seminarian. 

            In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. challenged students and clergy to join in the march from Selma to Montgomery.   Jonathan Daniels left seminary in Boston and joined the march.  He returned to Boston and asked his bishop if he could finish the Spring term in Selma working with the Civil Rights movement.  He worked with voter registration, picketed local businesses, tutored African American children and brought those children with him to the white Episcopal Church.  He went to jail for picketing and after a week in jail he went to a local store to buy a soda.  He was with a couple of other people including an African American teenage girl.  A volunteer sheriff stood in front of the store with a rifle to bar their entrance.   When he aimed his gun at the teenage girl, Jonathan pushed her aside and was shot.  He was 26 years old when he died.

While the call of Martin Luther King Jr. obviously moved Jonathan Daniels to action, it was also a moment in evening prayer that propelled him to Selma. It was singing.  No, it wasn’t the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  It was the Magnificat.  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirt rejoices in God my Savior…”  It is Mary’s reaction to her cousin Elizabeth’s proclamation that Mary is the mother of God.  It was a hymn of joy, but it was also something else.  It indicated her growing awareness that this baby she was about to give birth to was going to change the world.  Typically changing the world isn’t a smooth process.  You can’t change the world without stirring things up a bit. 

Mary stirred things up.  She was the only woman who the author of Luke allowed a full speech.  Right there in the beginning of the Gospel, a woman, Mary spoke as a prophet.  Mary dedicated only a couple of sentences to her own blessings.  She then moved on to heavier things. 

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” She was talking about a God who would speak for the oppressed and the marginalized.  He had already done so in choosing her, a poor girl living under the authority of the Romans.  She had no rights.  No one listened to her.  But God had listened.  God had heard the cry of his people and he was on his way.  He was going to bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly. 

Because we often hear these words in the context of the joy of Christmas, we don’t always notice how incredibly revolutionary they were.   In many ways, this was a rebel cry.  The magnifcat is not just a beautiful hymn that we sing at Christmas.  It’s more than that.  It’s a call to action.  It’s a reminder of who Jesus is.

Jonathan Daniels wrote of the moment he knew he would return to Selma.   He said, “As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled "moment" … Then it came. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things." I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin's song was to grow more and more dear in the weeks ahead.”[2]

We have made great strides since the 1960’s, but we still have a long way to go.  All week I have been hearing the Battle Hymn in my head, but not the part about swords, or trampling, or even altars.  What I hear is the arrangement we sang in college.  The final verse came in after the lofty “glory glory halleluias.”  It was quiet and gentle.  It spoke of the beauty of the lilies.   And then there was a crescendo at the line, “As he died to make men holy”. It got louder and more powerful when we sang, “let us live to make all free. While God is marching on.”

As I meditated about that, I thought of the martyrs of our church.  I thought of the saints who have come and gone.  But what really struck me is the call to live. “Let us live to make all free.”  I don’t have the courage of Jonathan Daniels or Mary.  I am almost certain I don’t.  Some of you might.  What I pray for is the courage to live the life that God has called me to.  Jesus died so that we could live.  That is what we do.  But we don’t live for ourselves.  We live for God and we live for one another.  And we sing the magnificat and the Battle Hymn so we can feel that stirring in our heart. When I am singing, I feel that for a moment like I can do anything while God is marching on.  I can do anything if I am marching with God.  Your song might be something else. It probably is. Find your song.  Find whatever it is that reminds you that you are strong and you are courageous.  You are both of those things because God loves you so much that he died so you can live.  We, Christians, we live so all can be free.  As long as God marches on, we live.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVzbjbMBDGE.  I found Gettysburg choir singing this on youtube.  It was 1991, which was before I got there.  It’s the same arrangement we sang when I was there.

[2] http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html

God's Dream for Us: August 16, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 12                                                             
1 King 2:10-12, 3:3-14                                                                                  

            A couple years ago I came across a journal entry from college.  It said, “I have figured out the Trinity.”   The Trinity….one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith.  Brilliant theologians and scholars have been debating this doctrine for millennia and I had it figured out before I graduated college. Apparently I had just read a book that explained it clearly and I thought, “Well there it is.  I am glad I have that behind me.”   I think about that journal entry whenever I am teaching or preaching about the Trinity.  I wish I had the same assurance now as I did then.  Yet it would seem, like so much in life, the more I think about it, the trickier it gets.

            I imagine that most of us can think back on things that we were pretty sure about at one point in our lives; but our opinions shifted over time.  That’s what growth is, the ability to learn new things and even adjust our perspective.  Our perspectives evolve in a variety of ways, but part of the way they evolve is through our interactions with other people.  We learn from one another.

 King Solomon is often described as wise.  This wisdom is often attributed to a dream that he had when he was about 12 or 14 and a newly appointed king.  His father (King David) had just died and he was the heir.  One night he had a dream and in that dream God appeared to him.   In the dream God said, “Ask what I should give you.”   Think about that for a moment.  If God came to you and told you to ask for something, what would you ask for?  My guess is that we all have some ideas that spring to mind pretty quickly.  We might ask for the perfect job, for health for ourselves or our family, financial stability, or if we are more ambitious, perhaps an end to world hunger. 

Solomon could have asked for anything. He started by telling God of the steadfast love that God had shown to his father David.  He then prefaced his question by saying, “You know I am pretty young and I am not sure what I am doing.”  Because of that, he asked for, “an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern your great people.”  Obviously, God was pleased with this request.  It proved that young Solomon was already wise beyond his years because he knew what his limitations were.  In addition to that he knew how important God’s people were and that his responsibility was to take care of them.  This also indicated that Solomon was humble and willing to learn. 

God was so pleased by what he asked for that he decided to give the king not only what he asked for, but what he did not ask for.   He would give him a wise and discerning mind as well as riches and honor.  God ended by saying, “If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, then I will lengthen your life.”  All Solomon had to do was follow a few rules and commandments and walk in the ways of God. This should not have been a problem because he had been given a discerning mind so that he would always know the difference between good and evil.  That was God’s dream for this new king, that he would be a great king, a wise king, and a merciful king.

            But here’s the thing about most dreams.  They only last until we wake up.  Then reality sets in and God seems further than he was that night.  There are temptations, especially for Solomon.  Do you know that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines?  He had power.  He had money.  He had a divine mandate.  While he continued to display wisdom, he lacked humility. He forgot about the dream, or more likely the dream was manipulated by his own desires.  In the dream he asked for an understanding mind.  Another translation of an understanding mind is a listening heart.  A person with a listening heart is someone who will be attentive to the needs of those around them, a person willing to acknowledge that maybe they are not the smartest person in the room.  And even if they are the smartest person, that does not make them right.

            In the dream, Solomon asked for this gift and received it.  But his heart did not remain open and his mind stopped understanding.  He became selfish.  God’s dream was replaced by his dream.   He didn’t listen to the people.  He used them as slave labor.  He is known for building a magnificent temple, but it was built on the backs of abused people.  King Solomon treated people the same way that the Pharaoh had treated the enslaved Hebrew people.  The story of Exodus tells us that Pharaoh had a hard heart.  While Solomon surely knew these stories, he did not learn from them.  His heart became hardened.  The people were also taxed unfairly.   The burden was almost unbearable.  They began to resent him.  Soon after he died, there was a rebellion and the kingdom was split in half. 

            I am not saying that Solomon was an evil king.  He wasn’t. Much like his father he had both good qualities and bad ones.  This is true for us all.  Both King David and Solomon were given a huge responsibility by God.   God chose them to care for his people.   Their major sins were committed when they forgot about the needs of the people…when their success demanded that other people suffer.  God has a dream for each one of us. First, we need enough wisdom to allow ourselves to dream.  Then after we have discovered God’s dream for us, we cannot let it go. We have to hold on tight in our waking hours as well as our dreaming ones.  We also must be vigilant and make sure that God’s dream for us is not manipulated by our own desires.  We have to remember that God has a dream for all of us.

        If the only way to achieve our dream is to lay waste the dream of another, then we will know that we have let pride and desire cloud God’s dream.  When that happens we have to become like a child—like young Solomon, allow our heart to be tender again, tender enough to experience God, tender enough to dream and believe that the dream can become our reality.   

Love come first: August 8, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 11                                                                 
Ephesians 4:25-5:2                                                                             

 

My first high school was a pretty diverse school, which was a wonderful experience because it meant that I was friends with a lot of different kinds of people.  Most of my friends were not Christian.  There was a Christian group at the school, but I did not feel as though I fit in with that group, partly because they met before school started, which seemed like an ungodly hour to me.  There was one girl in that group who just baffled me. She was always cheerful.  She smiled all the time.  I never heard her say anything rude or inconsiderate.   For a while, I thought this had to be a front.  She could not be sincere.  However, I soon began to admire her as a wonderful example of a Christian. But then I got worried because I was nothing like her.  As some of you may have noticed, I frown when I am thinking, and I am thinking most of the time.  It’s hereditary.  Everyone in my family does it.   At the time I remember thinking if being Christian means I have to smile all the time, I am in serious trouble.

As I matured in my life as a Christian, I realized that Christians look a lot different and even act differently than one another.  As Christians we are called to emulate not other Christians, but Jesus Christ.  This realization makes me feel slightly better, but also frustrated at times.  First of all, emulating someone you have never seen is pretty tricky.  And emulating someone you have never seen who is also perfect, is that much harder. 

One of the reasons that we read the Bible is to get a picture of Jesus, to get to know Jesus.  Paul’s letters can be especially helpful because he was trying to help people be Christian.    The portion of Ephesians we heard today contains some of that practical advice.  Don’t say mean things.  Only say things that will build other people up.  Don’t steal; instead share with the needy.  Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another…  While these things are not necessarily easy to achieve, they make sense.   They are really nothing new, not even at the time this was written.  Being kind to one another was not a new Christian concept. However, there are a couple things in this portion of the letter that are more nuanced.  They are not just advice on how to be a good person.

One of the first things Paul says is, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger...”  Later he adds, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger…”   Well which is it, are we supposed to be angry, or not?  I would say that generally, people think Christians should not be angry.  That has led to a lot of guilt on the part of people who experience anger.  That means they ignore it and don’t deal with it.  Then it festers until it either weighs them down, or explodes and creates even more problems. 

            Human emotion is not a sin.  It is what we do with that emotion that leads to sin.  Paul says it is ok to be angry.  It is even good to be angry sometimes.  Jesus got angry several times in the scriptures.  The prophets of the Old Testament were often angry.  Yet there are different kinds of anger and different ways of handling that anger.  There was a period in my life where I was really angry.  And my dear husband listened as I ranted and raved about this and that.  I was sure that my anger was justified.  It was even righteous.  It wasn’t just anger, it was righteous indignation.  But it didn’t go away.  It lasted for months and I didn’t feel any better.  I didn’t do anything positive with the anger.  It just consumed me.  At some point, probably while contemplating a sermon, I realized that there was nothing righteous about my anger.  It was just anger and the righteous thing was to release it. 

            How do you know whether or not your anger is justified, whether it is righteous?  It’s actually pretty simple.  When Jesus was angry, it came from a place of love.  He was angry because people did not want him to heal people on the Sabbath.  He was angry when the poor were ignored.  He was angry when people willfully misunderstood his father’s words.  He was angry when people took his words and twisted them to fit their own needs.  Those are the kinds of things that we should be angry about.   

            Yet I would guess that normally we are angered because we feel slighted, because our pride is wounded, or when people hurt us.  And I am not saying that getting angry about those things is wrong, because it is a natural reaction.  But that is the kind of anger that we need to let go of as soon as possible.   Paul even provides a timeline.  Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.  So you’ve got about day, and no more than that.  If you hold on to it longer, it will hurt you and it will make it difficult to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.  We should also keep in mind that love comes before anger. If the origin of our anger is something other than love, then it is not righteous.   Love comes first.

            Now you might think, well what about righteous anger?  Can I be angry about that for long periods of time?  If you want to hold on to righteous anger, you must first sure that you are right, that you know exactly how Jesus feels about the thing you are angry about.  Not only that, you need to examine the rest of your life pretty carefully and make sure that you are following Christ in every way that you can.   Personally, I am going to try to be like Jesus. But I am not confident that I know the mind of God.  In fact, I am pretty sure that I don’t.  So I will follow Jesus to the best of my ability and pray that I can see myself and others as he sees us.  But I am going to try not to claim righteous anger, at least not until I am sure that I have mastered the necessary precursor to righteous anger, which is loving God and loving my neighbor.   Love comes first. 

            Being Christian is not always about being cheerful and smiling a lot.  Horrible things are happening in this world every day and we should be angry about those things.  But the answer is not bitterness or visions of revenge, but instead focusing on what we can do to be agents of change in this world. But before we change the world, we need to allow God to change us.  I have often said that, “God loves you just the way you are.”  I believe that with my whole heart.  But recently I heard someone say, “God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way.  He wants you to be like Jesus.”    I know that sounds like a tall order, but God is not as worried about the end product as he is about the process of becoming like Jesus.  Paul wrote, “Be imitators of God…”   Another translation of that is, “Keep on becoming imitators of God…”  That is not grammatically correct, but I think it makes the point a little more clear.  As Christians, we do not claim perfection.  We are not finished products.  We are in the process of becoming godly and the moment when we think our transformation is complete is the moment when we know it’s time to start over.  The process of becoming like Jesus is never over.  Just remember, love comes first. 

What once was small is now great: July 26, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 9                                                             

John 6:1-21                                                                            

            I suspect that most of us have prayed for a miracle at one point in our life.  Sometimes the prayer was answered with that miracle, sometimes we don’t see the miracle.  Of course all of us define miracles differently.  The most common way that we hear miracle described is a transgression of the laws of nature.  It is when something happens that cannot be explained with a rational explanation.  Our faith and our Bible are full of miracles.  Over the years, people have tried to come up with explanations for many of these miracles.  When Moses divided the Red Sea, it was actually the Reed Sea, which is much narrower and at a certain point of the year the Reed Sea is shallow, allowing for easy crossing.   Another theory is that it was the Red Sea but that there was a powerful wind that exposed a reef which the Israelites then crossed. 

            Jesus performed many miracles during his time on earth, things that could not be explained, things that were simply extraordinary.  For every miracle he performed, there are many people who have tried to provide rational explanations.  Consider the Gospel reading for today.  Jesus fed more than 5000 people with five loaves and two fish.  The traditional understanding is that he multiplied the loaves and the fish.  Perhaps the baskets were just bottomless baskets and the bread and the fish never ran out because no matter how much bread was given, the basket was always full.  We don’t know because John doesn’t say how so many were fed with so little, he just says that they were fed until they were satisfied.  The rational explanation is that all of these people actually had bread and fish with them.  It wasn’t like they were carrying around raw fish.  Many people would carry pickled fish when they were travelling. When they saw Jesus giving thanks for what he had, they took what they had and shared.  While this explanation does not defy the laws of nature, it still feels like a miracle to me.

            Every Gospel tells this miracle story.  It is the only miracle story that is described by all four Gospel writers.  They don’t all agree on the particulars.  This is not unusual.  We know that the Gospel writers were all writing at different times with different perspectives.  It is perfectly understandable that they would have different details in their stories.  One of the unique features of John’s version of this story is the boy who brings forward the 5 loaves and 2 fish.  He is not in the other Gospels.

We don’t know if he came up on his own, but Andrew announced that there was a boy and he had food.   You would think that the disciples had some food as we;;. They were pretty much nomads and they probably carried food with them.  Yet none of them pulled out their supply to share.  It was a boy from the crowd.

            I wonder about this boy.  Why did he come to the disciples with his meager offering?  How did he even know that food was needed?  We don’t know, but I have a theory. Perhaps this boy was in the front of the crowd sitting with his parents, watching Jesus with rapt attention.  The boy saw Jesus scanning the crowd with a look of concern on his face.  He saw him talk to his disciples, even saw the disciples trying to convince Jesus to turn the crowd away.  He saw all this and thought to himself, “I bet they are hungry and here I have 5 loaves and 2 fish.  It’s not much, but it’s something.”  He argued with his parents because they didn’t want him to give up their food, maybe the only food they had to sustain them for the day.  They tried to stop him saying that Jesus surely had his own food.  He was a great prophet and a miracle worker.  If he wanted food, he could make it appear out of thin air.  What use was their small offering to this great man? 

But the boy presented the food anyways because he had it and he wanted to contribute in some way to the ministry of this great man.  Maybe he was afraid that that Jesus and the disciples would scoff.  Barley bread was the food of the poor.  They could turn up their noses at him.  It was worth the risk.  So he brought his offering forward, shyly, hesitantly and he pulled on the sleeve of one of the men who was standing close to Jesus.   The man was about to turn the boy away, but then the boy saw something in his eyes, a spark of something he could not describe.  Then the man knelt down and he thanked him and brought him to Jesus saying, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Then Andrew hesitated as if he was second guessing himself.  He added, “But what are they among so many people?” Then the boy knew that this was not just for Jesus and his friends, it was for everyone.  He felt even more foolish, but then Jesus looked down at him and he accepted the bread and fish as though it was precious to him and he thanked him and told him to go sit down.  Then the boy saw Jesus held up the bread that he had given him and gave God thanks.  Baskets were passed and the baskets were full of the bread he brought forward, but there was more, so much more.  What was once little is now great.  His small offering was transformed by Jesus.

            Part of that narrative is my musings, but the end is the Gospel truth.  Jesus took a small offering and he made it great. He shared it with thousands.  How the bread multiplied is not important, but the way it was presented is critical.  We pray for miracles.  We beg for miracles. We wait for miracles.  What we don’t realize is that Jesus is waiting for us too.  Jesus has the power, but he has given us the materials needed for the miracle. He is waiting for us to present those small gifts.  Sometimes the gifts are material things.  Sometimes the gift is who we are as children of God.  Because we live in a time where we worry that we will never have enough, enough time, enough money, enough strength…we hold back on what we share with God.  We think that an hour a week is all that God wants.  But God wants all of us, even when we think that all of us is not good enough.  So I ask that you consider what it is that you have to give and you take one of the index cards at the end of the pew and you write it down.  Then when the plate is passed, you add that offering to the plate as a promise to God of what you will share.  Because no matter how small the gift that you present, God will transform it.  God will multiply it.  What once was meager, what once was small and insignificant is now great.  Each of us carries the materials for a miracle.  Don’t wait for a miracle, start it.