A different story: June 25, 2017

Year A, Pentecost 3                                                   
Genesis 21:8-21                                                                                 

 

            The story of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham is complicated.    Normally when we talk about Abraham and Sarah, we talk about their faithfulness and their holiness.  God blessed them throughout their lives and promised a great nation from their descendants.  Unfortunately Sarah could not conceive a child in a time when a woman’s worth was dependent on her ability to have children.  Abraham and Sarah waited for decades, believing in God’s promise.  While God never wavered from this promise, it took a really long time to be fulfilled. Sarah decided that they needed to take God’s plan into their own hands.  Obviously God was not going to give her a child, so she decided that she would make it happen another way. 

Here is where it got complicated.  She told her husband to take a slave as his concubine, so that this slave could bear Abraham’s children and begin this great nation.  Abraham, being a dutiful husband, did as she asked.  While this sounds pretty horrible to us now, this was common practice for people in this day.  Abraham was a man of prominence.  Men of his standing and status had big families.  It was another sign of prosperity.   There was also that whole…father of a great nation thing.  How would that happen without children? Feeling powerless and frustrated, Sarah did what she had to do. 

While it was not  considered sinful at this time, for a man to take another wife, it wasn’t the plan that God had for them.  God’s plan was that Sarah would bear a child who would be Abraham’s heir. But no one can blame Sarah for doubting this at the age of 90. If God’s plan was for her to bear a child, it would have surely happened by now.  Her solution was a practical one and it worked….initially.  Hagar (the slave) became pregnant.  But before she even gave birth, Sarah regretted her decision and abused her so much that Hagar ran away.  If you put this in a modern context, it would sound like a horrible reality TV show that went a little too far.

            At this point, things looked pretty bad for all involved.  Hagar was abused and forced to flee.  Sarah was still childless and even more bitter than before. Abraham seemed to be caught in the middle and unable to show any moral backbone.  Thankfully, God stepped in. He found Hagar in the wilderness.  He comforted her by telling her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” He also told her to return to Sarah.  While this was not the news I would have wanted, “return to the person who is abusing you,” there was reassurance in more than just God’s words.  God appeared to Hagar.  She named God, “God who sees” because not only did God see her, she saw God, which is amazing.  In that time, no one saw God and lived.  Perhaps this is what gave her the strength to return to a hostile household.  Despite Sarah’s behavior, Abraham was still the father.  God even told her what to name her son.  It was to be Ishmael, which means, “he hears.”

            We do not hear any more about Hagar until our story for today.  Clearly the relationship between Sarah and Hagar has not improved.  Even after Sarah bore a son—the child that had been promised for so long--there was still jealousy. In addition to that, Sarah seemed afraid for her son.  Abraham and Sarah were wealthy in land and livestock.  Their firstborn son would inherit quite a lot.  Not only that, but their first born was the beginning of this great nation that God had promised them.  It was supposed to be her son, not Hagar’s son. 

Sarah asked Abraham to force Hagar and her son out.  Abraham was torn, but God told him to listen to his wife. This particular part is what a lot of people struggle with.  Abraham and Sarah are humans. They are flawed humans.  While Sarah’s actions are cruel, they are understandable to some extent.  What seems worrisome is that God would support Sarah’s decision.  In forcing Hagar and her son into the desert with meager provisions, there was a good chance they would die, or at least suffer a great deal.  It seems an odd thing for God to support.  But there was something else God said to Abraham besides just “listen to your wife.”  He said, “I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”  In those words, there is an implicit promise that God would care for Hagar and Ismael.

            He did.  When their water was gone and death loomed in front of them, God heard the voice of the boy and spoke to Hagar again.  It is interesting that the text says that God heard the voice of the boy.  Ishmael wasn’t the one making the noise; that was his mother who was weeping and crying out. However, remember that the last time Hagar was out in the wilderness scared and helpless, God told her to name her son Ishmael which means “God hears.”  In naming her son, God promised that he would always hear his cries, even when he was too weak to cry out loud, God would hear him.  Remember also that Hagar had named God, “God sees.” In this story, not only does God hear and see, he helps Hagar to see.  He opens her eyes so she can see a spring of fresh water.  He opens her eyes and gives her the vision and the courage to keep going.  Even though she has been abandoned by everyone, God is still listening, still seeing. 

            There is a lot of debate about whether God plans our whole lives…meaning everything that happens ---happens because God wants it to happen that way. However, I am not sure this story of Hagar was part of God’s original plan. God did not want Abraham to take on a concubine.  He certainly did not want Sarah to abuse the concubine and then years later throw her and her son out to die.  God’s initial plan was that Abraham would be the father of a great nation and this great nation would begin with Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah.  That was what happened. 

But along the way, God had to create another plan to accommodate human’s need to take control of our own story.  God did not just create another plan, he created another story, of another nation—a great nation. God promised this to Hagar years before in the wilderness and he promised it again in our story for today.  Human sin can never forfeit God’s plans.  Sometimes it just creates more plans, more stories.  We don’t know all the stories because the Bible cannot tell all the stories, but it does not mean those stories are not out there. 

            It is the same in our lives.  We all have a story that we begin with. It is either a story we are told, or a story we develop about how our life is supposed to turn out.  But it never turns out that way does it?  It does not mean that God did not like that story.  It’s just that things shift in our lives, sometimes because of our decisions and sometimes because of things that we have no control over.  While that can be frustrating and at times discouraging, God is always there, willing to create a new and different story with us.  In the end, it’s not really about the details of our stories that matters. It’s about how we live those stories and how we welcome God into our stories. 

Funeral Homily for Tommy Sinclair

Matthew 18:1-5, 10-14                                   June 19, 2017

            “I have to say…” Those were the words Tommy used to begin every phone call.   The first couple of times, I thought I was in trouble…like he was going to say something he was disappointed about.  Sometimes that was true.  But even if he was just calling to ask when the service started, that was how he would start the phone call.  Whatever it was that Tommy was calling about, it was always important.  It was always something that he just had to say. Now that he is gone….there a few things that I just have to say.

            It is hard to describe Tommy.  When people try to explain him, they will inevitably say, “Well, that’s just Tommy.”  If you don’t know what they mean by that, well there is really no point in trying to explain because Tommy, is just Tommy.  This Gospel reading that we heard is a famous one.  We take it for granted that Jesus loved the little children.  There are so many cards, posters, paintings of Jesus with children gathered around him.  While that is a lovely picture, this reading is about more than just Jesus loving children.  One of his disciples had just asked him “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus answered that question by calling a child to him.  Most people today would agree that children are pretty important. In Jesus’ time, children were of little consequence, except to possibly their parents.  The only value children had were what they would one day be.  So when Jesus held a child and used that child as an example of the greatest in the Kingdom, that was quite extraordinary.

            We hear that term “childlike faith” bandied about a lot.  Usually when we think of a childlike faith, we consider qualities of children like innocence and wonder.  Those are certainly important qualities.  But there are also other qualities that we often overlook.  Children are dependent on others for their needs.  Children trust that others will take care of them. This does not mean that children do not have an independent or stubborn streak.  They do.  But at their core, they believe in the good of people and that people will care for them.  

            When I saw the outpouring of love for Tommy after his death, I thought, if only Tommy could have known how many people loved him (how many people would show up for this funeral), he would have been so touched.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is exactly what Tommy would have expected.  He expected to be loved and to be cared for. Here in our church community, Tommy was completely secure in the love people had for him.  Whereas others might think: Oh I can’t call that person again. I can’t ask for another favor.  That never occurred to Tommy.  While he was not always able to help others in the tangible ways that we helped him, there was no doubt that he would have if he could have.  We were always trying to find things in the office for him to do because he really wanted to help.  He did, in so many ways that I have only been able to see in retrospect.

            While Tommy was by no means perfect, the way he lived his life was a wonderful example of how Jesus asks people to live.  Jesus wants Christians to be dependent on one another and to be dependent on God. We should trust that we are loved by God and by one another.  Can you imagine living like that…believing people love you and want the best for you? That is how Tommy lived.

            After he died, I felt this profound sense of loss.  I could not understand it.  I knew Tommy, but not as long as most of you did.  I felt the loss, not just personally, but for this church.  When he died, it was almost like someone came in and stole a part of the church.  I have heard people described as fixtures.  I never truly understood that description until Tommy died.  He brought something to this place….something that cannot be replaced.  He embodied childlike joy and faith.  

I was talking to someone about Tommy yesterday and she said, “Well he was just Tommy.”  Then she added, “But he was our Tommy.” He was our Tommy, but he never really was.  As much as he loved St. John’s, his family and friends, and the town of Hampton, he loved God more.  I know that God is in this place.  I rarely say that I know what God would say in any given moment, but I think I can venture a guess right now. God is saying, “He’s my Tommy.  He always was and he always will be.”  I hope that Tommy’s life can be a reminder that while we all belong to one another, there is one that claims us as his own, and that is God.  We are God’s. I am so grateful to Tommy for helping me understand what it means to belong so completely to God.

Humans unite: June 18, 2017

Year A, Pentecost 2                                       
Matthew 9:35-10:23                                      

            Every week brings more bad news and Mark and I could probably preach on that bad news every week.  We do not, because most of us need a break from that news on Sundays.  What made the most news this week was not another terrorist attack or natural disaster, but a tragedy at baseball practice.  In the grand scheme of things, this shooting was not significant. In any given day in the United States, there are between 40 and 50 murders…a day.  While two people are in critical condition, this shooting has not resulted anyone dying . However, this shooting was particularly disturbing for a number of reasons.  It seemed random in that it was a nice suburb of Washington DC and the criminal was someone who wanted to inflict pain on as many people as possible.  The two people most seriously injured were a congressman and his security person; someone in the national spotlight. 

Yet I think that there is a bigger reason than all of these.  This baseball practice was not just any practice.  This was the Republican team practicing for a game against the Democrat members of congress.  This game has gone on for over 100 years.  Many of those participating said it was one of the last vestiges of comradery between these two opposing parties.  It had brought people together and even created unexpected friendships between those who would have otherwise been political enemies.  In this day of political divide, people are more desperate than ever for some display of unity in this nation.   Thus, it was that much worse that someone chose to attack one of the few places where people seem to get along, preparing for a congressional baseball game for charity. 

            We all know that this division in our nation is nothing new.  At this church, our building reminds us of how the Civil War affected our nation and our church.  This entire town was burned to the ground because one side did not want the other side to win.  While our walls remained, everything inside was scorched.  No-- division is nothing new in our country and our world.  The world that Jesus lived in was divided as well.  There were Jews and Gentiles.  There were Romans and the people they ruled.  There were slaves and free.  There were women and men. 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus said something that referenced one of these divisions.  To some it seems that he even reinforced the division.  When providing his disciples instructions for their first missionary journey, he said, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans…”  One of the reasons this is so strange is that Jesus did interact with Samaritan people.  He told parables where the Samaritan was the hero.   The last thing he said to these same disciples in this same Gospel before he ascended to heaven was, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” Knowing this, why would he tell his disciples not to go to the Gentiles?

            I believe it is because Jesus knew that they were not ready.  He had just called these men to be his 12 apostles.  They knew him a little at this point, but had not spent a lot of time in his company.  When he tells them later in the Gospel of Matthew to go to all nations, they have been with him for several years. They saw him heal and teach.  They saw miracles.  They saw him die and after three days rise again.  Obviously, it would still be difficult to go preach to all these people, but they would be more prepared. In our story for today, they were new to all of this.  Just going to the Jews in their region was going to be hard enough. 

            Jesus was compassionate and loving.  He was also smart and strategic.  He knew that his 12 disciples would need more preparation before they could head out to the big world and try to cross the large chasms of division.  One of the ways he prepared them to face this division was to be an example for them. They saw how he spoke to and about Samaritans.  They saw how he acted when he was in a foreign land.  But Jesus did something else that was pretty sneaky.  Most of these 12 disciples did not know one another when they began this grand adventure.   Jesus did not choose the rabbis or the scholars.  He chose fishermen.  He also chose a tax collector and a zealot.  

We all know that tax collectors were considered bad in the Bible.  They are always put on a list with major sinners.  There is a reason besides that people just didn’t like to pay taxes.  Tax collectors were 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.  Right alongside Matthew (the guy who works for the Romans), we have Simon the Zealot.  Zealots were essentially nationalists.  They hated the Romans and everything and everyone associated with the Romans. Their goal was to free the Jewish people from the tyranny of Rome.  They were prepared to use violence as necessary. 

In a group of 12 men, Jesus decided to pick these two. They lived together.  They worked together. They ate together.  That must have been crazy hard because under any other circumstances, they would have hated one another.  Yet there was one thing that always transcended that kind of hatred---hatred of the other.  That was (and is) the love of Jesus Christ.  By choosing this group of men who were so very different and probably antagonistic toward one another, Jesus was teaching his first lesson on overcoming division.  In order to truly bridge the divide, you need to be in one another’s company.

That is what is so disheartening about the shooting this week.  This man thought that he was hurting one group, but he was hurting both.  This was the one time when our national leaders came together and he was prepared to take that away from them.   As we all know, the game went on. They played their game. The Democrats won and they gave the trophy to the Republicans.  It’s a small gesture, but a gesture none the less.  In many ways, this act of violence has been a wake-up call for our nation, a reminder that there is one thing that brings us together…not just that we are Americans, but that we are humans, made in the divine image of God. That is what really matters.

As a church, we cannot necessarily end division, but we can be a model of what the Kingdom of God can be. People often say that they love St. John’s because their friends go here.  That is wonderful.  It’s good to have people you like, people you are comfortable with.  But you should also have people that you don’t like, people you look at and think if I they were not a member of the church, I would never speak to them. That’s the point.  If you want to find a group of like minded people, join a club.  If you want to find a group of people whose one commonality is a love of Christ, join a church. That is what sets us apart from so many other groups. That is what makes it hard to be a Christian, maybe even hard to come to church.  Jesus never told us it was going to be easy or fun. 

I believe that we, as a church, have something to show the nation and the world…that it is possible to rise above the differences.  It is not only possible, it is God’s will for us.  Yes, please, invite a friend to church. You know what would be even better...if you invite someone who is not a friend. 

Hot, hot, hot: June 4, 2017

Year A, Pentecost                                                         
Acts 2:1-21                                                                            

            Typically, I write my main sermon, and then I consider how I can take something from it and make it accessible to children.  For this Pentecost Sunday, I came up with the children’s sermon first and that informed my main sermon.  The reason I was thinking so much about my children’s sermon was because I was worrying about how people would handle singing Hot, Hot, Hot.  If you loved it, it was my idea.  If you hated it, it was still my idea.  I realize that some people might find it a little weird for church.  Pentecost is one of the three major feasts of the church year.  It’s bigger than Christmas in terms of theological significance.  Because it is such a sacred day, we should take worship seriously.  We should be solemn and stoic like good Episcopalians. But then I kept coming back to this reading from Acts.  I kept thinking about what a ridiculous and wild scene this must have been.

 The disciples were all in one place---they heard and saw the same thing.  They were somewhat prepared for this event. Jesus had told them that after he left, the Holy Spirit would come to them.   However, the huge crowd gathered outside of the disciple’s small enclave were not prepared in the same way.  They were prepared to some extent as they were there for their own holy feast, the Jewish feast of Pentecost. In the Jewish faith, Pentecost marks the end of the spring harvest.  It was when people gathered together to present their first fruits of the harvest.  It was a time to praise God and show gratitude for all God had given.  They were there for a spiritual experience, but the same one they had every year, not something they did not recognize. 

However, something got their attention.  They heard a loud noise and felt the strong wind. They heard the disciples speaking in their own language, even though there were people from many places with many different languages. Thus all the people in the crowd knew something was happening.  But they all discerned what was happening in different ways.

 Some people asked, “What does this mean?”  They were astonished and amazed. They wanted to understand.  They wanted to believe.  Others heard the same thing, but they sneered and accused the disciples of being drunk.  Different people had different experiences with the Holy Spirit. Those who were open to the newness of it all ended up being baptized that day.  3,000 people were baptized--which is remarkable.  But not everyone was.  Some left thinking that these people were idiots or charlatans.  They were faking this holy experience to get attention or power.

Peter knew what they were thinking. He took this opportunity to preach a sermon.  He started by saying that they were not drunk as it was 9am (apparently had it been 5pm, it would have been a different story---yet it was 9am). He then quoted the prophet Joel.  It’s an odd choice for a happy and spirit filled moment. Joel was a prophet who had lived about 500 years before and spent a lot of time telling the people of Israel to repent as the Day of the Lord was near and the Day of the Lord was full of destruction and judgment.  It was not a day to look forward to. For Joel, it was almost as if the presence of the Holy Spirit was a bad thing. 

Peter was taking this text and reframing it.  Peter was telling people that the Holy Spirit was not just providing salvation from something bad, but new life through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.  Jesus had brought something new to the earth.  Instead of taking it back with him when he ascended to heaven, he left the Holy Spirit with the people of God. It was up to the people of God to decide how they were going to respond to the Spirit and this new life, this changed life. Would they scoff because it was different and incomprehensible? Or would they open themselves to this new experience of God’s wonder?

Please do not misunderstand me.  I am not comparing Hot, Hot, Hot, with the flames of Pentecost.  I am not saying that if you did not feel the presence of the Spirit, you were clearly not open to it.  What I am saying, is that we all experience the Spirit in different ways.  We even experience this Spirit in different ways as we age and go through the phases of our lives.   Sometimes it is in moments of utter misery—a small light of hope in the darkness.  Sometimes it is a moment of silliness and joy.  Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere.  When I was working on this sermon, I wrote down my spiritual experiences. It is hard to describe what I mean when I say spiritual experience. For me, it is a moment when I can feel the presence of God in a very tangible way. 

It is an interesting exercise and I commend it to you all.  In about 10 minutes, I came up with 16 experiences. Some of these moments were sad and even embarrassing.  Others were light and joyful. Most I could not really put my finger on what the emotion was, it was just a moment of fullness. It was like a small light inside me burst through.  Yet there was one theme that kept popping up. Of all those moments, only two happened when I was alone.  Some were with small groups of 2 or 3.  The majority were with crowds, crowds of people worshipping God.

We often associate the Holy Spirit with mystical and contemplative times. Some people might even think that they have not experienced the Spirit because they are not a mystical or contemplative type of person.  That is what is so amazing about the Holy Spirit--it comes to all people, at all different times, in all different places.   While this unpredictability can be lovely, it can also be frustrating as sometimes we crave that experience and we don’t know how to find it.  In looking for the mountain top experience of transcendence and nearness to God, we think that we have to literally climb a mountain.  If you can, then absolutely, go for it.   But perhaps… you can also have that mountain top experience here at sea level worshipping God with other people who are sharing that joy or that sorrow…or just the pew.  You might be thinking, well this is the 3^rd time I have been this year and I have not felt it once.  You have to give the Holy Spirit more opportunities to work in you and around you.  The Holy Spirit does not appear on command.

When we had our youth pilgrimage in Ireland, we hiked to the top of a small mountain in the middle of the sea.  The view was breathtaking. If you were to have a mountain top experience, it would have been there. We had communion at the top where monks had worshipped and lived for centuries. I knew it would be this amazing experience.   Yet there were seagulls trying to get the bread, bugs in the wine, and tourists walking in and out of our sacred moment.  Plus, I was pretty sure we were not supposed to be having communion there. It did not feel holy or Spirit filled. When we were walking down, I said to one of our leaders, “That was not really the sacred moment I expected.”  He replied, “I bet the Last Supper was kind of like that, people interrupting Jesus, a bunch of people not really paying attention.  It probably did not seem so holy at the time.” That resonated with me.   The Holy Spirit (the presence of God) rarely looks the way we expect it to look.   I am sure that the scene we heard about in Acts was absolute chaos.  Many people walked away thinking, “Those people are fools.  God could not possibly be present in such foolishness.”  Perhaps even the disciples, upon whom the spirit had descended thought, “This can’t be what Jesus was telling us about.  We need something more real, more permanent.”   When we are stuck in our own expectations, we miss the fresh expressions of the Spirit.  We miss opportunities for transformation.  I was not there on that spirit filled Pentecost 2000 years ago.  I think if I was, I would have been pretty annoyed.  I like order and predictability.  But I hope that I would have at least tried to be open to the crazy beauty that surrounded me.    I hope that you will all strive for that openness as well.  I love our liturgy and music in the Episcopal Church.  But the Holy Spirit is far too big and unwieldly to be confined by our expectations.   Thank God for that.