Joy not Happiness: December 25, 2018

 Psalm 98, John 1:1-14   

                                        

            I do not know about the rest of you, but it seems that every year Christmas gets a little crazier.  I look forward to it every year and then the season seems to attack me mid December.  I can no longer stand the sound of Christmas carols.  The bright lights annoy me.  I turn into a scrooge and find myself counting down the days until the 25^th, when the madness is over, and I can finally take it all in, peacefully.   I realize that this is a precarious position for a priest to take. I mean, this should be the time when we love our job the most. Everyone comes to church, everyone is excited.  Yet somewhere along the line, it all became too exhausting.  Somewhere along the line, I forgot about joy.

              It’s not that you can every completely forget about joy. It’s on all the Christmas cards.  It’s in all the music.  But what is it really?  The word joy appears in the Bible about 250 times in some form or another.  Often, like in the Psalm for today, it is an expression of praise.  “Shout with joy to the Lord, all you lands; lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing.”  Psalm 98, like many of the Psalms, is a mix of praise and exhortation.  The Psalmist is not only praising God, he is encouraging others to do so as well. 

            One cannot help but wonder what was going on in the Psalmist life that would cause such excitement and spirit.  Some have concluded that this Psalm was the result of a military victory.  Verse 3 reads, “The Lord has made known his victory; his righteousness has he openly shown in the sight of the nations.”  I prefer to think that no event was the cause for this outpouring of joy, it was more of an awareness. 

            We know from our reading of the Psalms as a whole that the author(s) experienced many hardships.  The Psalms of lament are just as plentiful as the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving.  Many of the Psalms have elements of both lament and praise.  Even the most heart wrenching, and depressing Psalms end with praise.  It is easy to get in the habit of thanking God only when things are going well. Yet the Psalmist knew that God deserved praise at all times. 

            While some form of the word joy appears in the bible hundreds of times, forms of the word happiness only occur 25 times.  In the English language, these words are often used interchangeably.  But this is not so in the Bible. Happiness depends on circumstances.  If something good happens, then we are happy.  When we consider moments in our life when we were happy, they are almost always dependent on an event, like a wedding, or the birth of a child.  Joy has more to do with the spirit of God in you.  It does not depend on the situation.  It has to do with your knowledge and awareness of God’s action in your life.  By that rationale, you could experience sorrow, and still be joyful. 

            If you look up “how to be happy” on Amazon, you will get thousands of results.  There is a whole section called, “Happiness-self help.”  Most are how to books like, “How to make yourself happy”, “How we choose to be happy”, and “What happy people know.”  The majority indicate that your efforts will allow you to be happy.  That’s what happiness is about.  It’s about our own efforts providing positive outcomes.  If you look up “how to be joyful” on the same site, you will come up with much fewer.  Only about 10 are actually relevant and most are religious.  Why are their so few books on making yourself joyful? Because there is no systematic approach to being joyful.  It’s all about reliance on God. 

            So why even desire it? If it is not something we can achieve with our own hard work, what’s the point?  In C.S. Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he describes joy as, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction…I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.”   Well that sounds pretty tempting.  How do we acquire this elusive joy?  The most frustrating thing about joy is also the most beautiful thing about it. You can’t earn it. You can’t force it.  Whereas happiness is something we pursue, like we pursue any accomplishment, joy is something that is given.  It was given to us when God gave us the power to be the children of God. 

That line from John has challenged me during my sermon preparation.  “He gave them power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”  This is a completely different understanding of power than we are accustomed to.   But when we put it in the context of joy, it starts to come together.  We have been given the power to become children of God.  And when we are able to fully appreciate that power, then we will know pure joy.  That does not mean that we will know constant happiness.  That does not mean things will fall into place and our life will turn out just as we always wanted.  It means that we have finally accepted our role as God’s children.  Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection was what gave us that power.  And once we have that, we have no choice but to shout with the joy, and join with the rivers and the sea in exultation. 

            I suppose I have always put too much emphasis on the idea of being happy during Advent and Christmas.  Then, when I was not happy I thought I must be missing something.  Yet now I realize that it’s about joy, not happiness. If happiness comes along with it, all the better.  But for now, I will rest in my awareness of God’s presence and that will bring me joy.  So I wish you not a merry Christmas, but a joyful one. 

Expect the Unexpected: Dec. 23, 2018

Year C Advent 4                                                                      

Micah 5:1-5  

                                                                                     

            Advent is all about waiting, preparation and expectation.  That is what we have been telling you for three weeks now.  It’s true in that we are preparing for the birth of Christ. Our refrain when we light our Advent candles is “Come Lord Jesus.”  Yet here is the irony-- the readings we hear in the season of Advent, perhaps even the majority of the Bible stories we know and love-- tells us that God loves to surprise us.  Essentially we are telling you to “expect the unexpected,” which might be the worst advice anyone has ever given or received.  It’s right up there with “don’t worry.”

            A few weeks ago we learned that Elizabeth, a woman previously considered barren, would give birth in her old age.  Her son would be a locust eating, camel hair wearing, prophet. Instead of acquiring a religious degree and living in one of the places of power (like Jerusalem), he preached from the wilderness and told people to repent.  He was an unexpected prophet.  But then again, who better to prepare the way for a Messiah who would shock the world with his refusal to conform and his insistence on associating with the marginalized and oppressed?

            As we know, John was not the only prophet who was a little different.  Our Old Testament is chock-full of prophets, typically the people you would least expect to be prophets.  Micah was a prophet who lived about 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The first verse of our reading for today speaks of a siege.  The city of Jerusalem was under siege.  They were trapped by their own walls.  Defeat was inevitable.  The city and the king would fall.  Imagine what that would be like, just waiting for death or imprisonment, knowing there is nothing you can do to escape. Yet after that verse which declared the siege and the imminent destruction of all they knew and loved, Micah switched gears.  “Bethlehem, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth one who is to rule Israel.” 

            Bethlehem had a certain notoriety at that point in time.  That was where King David had come from.  King David had been an unlikely king.  He was a shepherd and the youngest of his family.  It was an odd choice for God.  However, as one would expect of one chosen by God, he was a mighty king.  It was expected that the Messiah would come from the line of David.  However the line of David and the hometown of David are two different things. This reference to a Messiah coming from the same backwater town of David was strange.  It was especially strange that Micah would bring it up at this very point, when they were under siege and their present king was about to die.

            Yet isn’t that often the way--when we feel as though we are truly under siege--relief and hope can come in the most unexpected places….or in the most bizarre dreams.  Micah prophesied something almost unimaginable.  This leader, born in the small town of Bethlehem, would rule not with money and armies, but with a shepherd’s crook. Instead of depriving people of things to enforce his rule, he would feed the people.  He would do all these things in the strength of the Lord.  He would bring peace to his people who are now under siege. 

            While that sounds very nice, we know now that none of the people Micah was talking to would experience that peace on earth.  The city was taken over. Many of the people were enslaved.  But that picture that Micah painted never quite faded.  It lived on in people’s hopes and dreams. It gave those who remained something to live for.  It gave those who died, a foretaste of their imminent future in life everlasting. 

            Our Bible is full of prophesies and dreams.  So many of these visions from our prophets contain God’s dream for us.  They are full of hope and promise.  We ignore them at our own peril.  Unfortunately our divine imagination has been limited by the acceptance of our present reality.  Many consider the stories of the Bible as fairytales or myths.  But these stories contain radical truth.  They may be hard to believe, but some of the most extraordinary things in life are things we never could have imagined.  The more comfortable we become with our present reality and the more reluctant we are to imagine God’s dream for us, the less likely we are to experience the dream. 

            Our Gospel reading contains what we refer to as the Magnificat.  It is essentially written in the form of a song.  But it is more than praise or worship.  It is prophesy.  It is God’s dream for our world—a dream that Mary interpreted for all of us.  “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 the sent the rich away empty.” She was able to articulate that dream because that dream lived within her in the form of an unborn child.  A child who would turn the entire world upside down.  What people thought was reality wasn’t real at all.  Jesus brought the world truth. 

            700 years before Mary shared her prophesy, Micah prophesized about a shepherd who would feed his people and bring peace to a violent nation.  Jesus was a carpenter, not a shepherd, but he fed the people.  He fed thousands with a couple fish and a loaf of bread. He inspired thousands more with his words and actions.  That was only in his lifetime.  Billions, trillions have been fed by his legacy of love since his death and resurrection. 

Yet….despite all that….we know that he did not bring peace. Look at Israel.  It is a land that has never known peace.  And our nation isn’t much better.  Violence plagues us.  Some look around and conclude that Jesus’ words and actions had no effect…no better than a dream. That could not be farther from the truth.  A dream only remains a dream if we refuse to allow it to manifest.  

                        We still carry the dream.  But we have to do more than carry it. We have to do more than talk about it in our churches.  We must live like that dream of peace and salvation is real for us...like we are trying to bring it forth, not just in the next life, but this life. In John’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in me...”  No matter how troubled our hearts become, we cannot give up the dream.  Christmas is almost upon us.  Let us take that day and the 12 days after to bask in the glow of that dream, a dream that became real in the form of a baby boy.  That dream lives today in our hearts and actions.  Carry the dream. Share the dream.  One day it will be the only reality we know.

Walking in Shadow: December 9, 2018

Year C, Advent 2                                                                 

Luke 1:68-79                                                                           

            My husband and I did not have any advance notice when we learned that a baby would be placed with us.  We received the call the day of our son’s birth and were told we had to pick him up the next day.  It was a 12 hour drive.  Fortunately we had a lot to discuss in that 12 hour drive.  One of the topics was what we would name him. We had not talked about names.  It was just too hard to discuss tangible things like names and registries when we had no idea when we would have a child.  During those 12 hours we narrowed it down to a few names.  However, as soon as we saw him, we knew none of those names would work. He didn’t look like an Isaac or a Jacob.  We had Joshua for 3 days before we settled on a name.  By then we were already sleep deprived and completely overwhelmed with the suddenness of it all. Once we settled on the name Joshua and announced it to our family, I looked at my husband, who is also an Episcopal priest, and asked, “What’s the biblical meaning for Joshua.” He said, “God saves.  It’s the anglicized version of Jesus.”  I replied, “We just named our child Jesus?  Because having two priests as parents isn’t bad enough, now we put the entire salvation of the world on him?” While this concerned me a little, I was too tired to come up with another name and we had already told the whole family.  Jesus it was.

            Naming a baby is a big deal. It always has been. Our psalm today isn’t actually from the Book of Psalms. But it is still considered in the psalm genre. It is Zechariah’s response to the birth and naming of his son.  Zechariah and Elizabeth had wanted children for a very long time. However, Elizabeth was considered barren as she was past the age when woman normally had children. In today’s digital age, we have all kinds of creative birth announcements--but I challenge any of you to find a more unique birth announcement than the one Zechariah received. 

He was in the temple offering incense to God.  Most Jewish priests only had this opportunity once in their lifetime.  It was an extraordinary honor. According to Jewish belief at the time, he was about as physically close to God as any human could be.  He was there at the altar in a cloud of incense when an angel appeared to him and said, “Do not be frightened, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard.  Your wife Elizabeth shall bear a son whom you shall name John.”

            Now since we are in church and this is the Bible, we don’t think too much of this kind of birth announcement. But consider it for a moment.  Imagine if you experienced that today, or heard about it today. Would you believe it?  Probably not, even if it was on the internet, we would assume it was some kind of hoax.  Angels don’t deliver messages to regular people.  Therefore, we really can’t blame Zechariah for reacting with disbelief.  He asked the angel how could this be as both he and his wife were old.  Well apparently this did not please the angel and Zechariah was struck mute. (My husband has a theory that striking Zechariah mute was actually an act of mercy because who knows what would have happened to him if he went and told his dear wife that she was too old to have a baby.)

Whether his muteness was a punishment or a gift, I cannot help but think about how hard that must have been….to be mute for 9 months, after such an extraordinary thing happened.  He probably didn’t try to communicate the event since he didn’t believe the angel’s words initially. However once Elizabeth told him the astounding news that she was indeed pregnant…imagine how he must have felt. Did he try to write the story all down, or did he still doubt and wonder? 

            I like to think that he held it inside himself and turned it over in his mind and heart while he marveled as his supposedly barren wife’s belly grew.  He must have communicated with her eventually as she knew that her son’s name was to be John.  In our reading for today, a group of family and friends was gathered 8 days after the birth for the circumcision. This was also where they traditionally named the male child. Elizabeth shared that his name would be John, but the friends and family wanted confirmation from the father.  Since he could not speak, he wrote the name out.  “His name is John.” It was then and only then when Zechariah was able to speak again.  You would think the first words out of his mouth would have been something like, “The craziest thing happened to me…”  But no, the text tells us that the first thing he did was praise God and share the prophesy that we heard today as our psalm. 

The prophesy started with praise of God and ended with words about who his son would be.  “You my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, To give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” That seems like a lot of pressure on a kid.  I might have named my child after Jesus, but at least I didn’t declare him a prophet.  However, then Zechariah switched gears a little. He said “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high will break upon us, To shine in those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and guide our feet in the way of peace.”

Zechariah’s son did not end up having a very easy life.  His job was to prepare people for Jesus. He did that by talking about sin and judgment, but also offering opportunity for forgiveness.  In the end, he was killed because he insisted on speaking truth to people in power.  He did all of that because he truly believed that Jesus was that dawn that would break through the darkness.  Sometimes when we read these stories in church, we find ourselves relegating them to the past.  John was the prophet who paved the way for Jesus.  But then he died.  Even Jesus, who died and was resurrected, seems to stay relegated to the past.  We cannot leave these stories in the pages of our Bible.  We still need a dawn to break upon us.  While we have experienced the light of Christ, we still find ourselves dwelling in darkness and the shadow of death.  We have accepted darkness and death as our cultural norm.  In Advent we are reminded that while we may feel as though we are surrounded by darkness, we are merely walking in shadow.  If there is shadow, then that means there has to be light somewhere. The light is always there if we look long enough and never give up hope. 

The angel told Zechariah to name his son John.  John means, “gift of God.”  We might not all be named John, but we are all gifts of God and children of God. We are all here on this earth to remind people that Jesus isn’t dead.  We are here to remind people that even the longest night will come to an end.  Morning always comes.  My husband and I waited for a baby for 7 years and there were times when I felt suffocated by the hopelessness of it all.  Morning doesn’t always come as dramatically as a newborn, but it always comes.  Sometimes it comes with rain and clouds, but behind it all, we know the sun is there.

Power: November 25, 2018

Year B, Christ the King                                                 

John 18:33-37                                                                                   

            Today is the Feast of Christ the King. It’s not one of our more well-known feast days. There are no greeting cards, no fun traditions and  no special decorations or cookies.  The feast itself is less than 100 years old.  It was 1925 when Pope Pius XI declared that this Sunday would be the Feast of Christ the King.  In 1925 Europe was still recovering from the devastating effects of World War I.   Italy was leaning much more secular than it previously had.  A church that had once experienced great power, saw their power and influence waning.

            Until 1870, the pope had authority and control over considerable geographic areas of Italy.  That changed in 1870 when the pope and The Roman Catholic Church lost power over all the land they previously held, which meant that while the pope retained spiritual authority, he had no political power.  This was a cause of consternation for the Roman Catholic Church.  After World War I, Italy was struggling to recover from the war.  Mussolini came to power and the Catholic Church found itself negotiating with this new fascist government attempting to retain some authority in Italy and the world.  The compromise was the creation of Vatican City as an independent city-state, and recognizing the pope as the head of state.  That final compromise came about in 1929, only 4 years after Christ the King feast day was inaugurated. 

            It’s interesting that this feast day, a day committed to recognizing the supreme authority of Jesus Christ, came in the midst of this political turmoil, a time when the Roman Catholic Church was struggling to hold on to their own authority.  Now, you could easily look at the timing and assume that the creation of this feast was a purely political move by the Church.  Many have come to that conclusion.  But I think it was more than that.  The Holy Spirit was in the midst of this.

I believe that the leadership of the church was genuinely scared about the future of Christianity.  They had just witnessed the First World War.  It was violence and death on a scale that no one had seen.  The Church that had once had a voice in the public and political sphere was now being virtually ignored.  The pope wanted to remind the people, anyone who was still listening, that God was still almighty, still all powerful.  Just because the church did not have an army behind it did not mean that it did not have power.  So they did what they knew how to do, they created liturgy to remind people of what real authority and power looked like.

            Now I have no idea who picked the readings that would be associated with this feast day.  It seems like choosing this reading from The Gospel of John would have been an odd choice for a church trying to reassert their authority.   If you asked me to choose a reading to display the power and authority of Jesus, I would have looked for something where Jesus looked impressive, perhaps the feeding of the 5000, or one of the many times he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, or even one of the resurrection accounts.  Those are feel good moments. 

But the trial scene?? We typically associate this trial scene with Holy Week.  We read it on Good Friday and feel sad because Jesus is about to die and instead of defending himself like any other self-respecting king, he asks questions and responds with confusing answers about where his kingdom is.  Jesus was a gifted orator. He was often besting the great theologians of his time.  He loved to put powerful people in their place.   What happened to that Jesus? That is the Jesus we need when we talk about authority and leadership.  We don’t need this slightly docile and evasive Jesus who seemed to cooperate with this Roman leader, who was widely perceived as an ineffective leader.

            Or maybe…this was exactly the kind of leader that the pope was trying to remind a beleaguered people after World War I-- who were searching for identity and hope in the rubble and ash of their pre-war existence.  And frankly, this might be exactly the kind of leader we need now, in a time when the church has virtually no political power and very little cultural influence.  We are even losing our authority as a moral guide.  Church attendance and participation is at an all-time low and sliding lower every single year.  Churches everywhere are scrambling for the perfect program, the cure all that will enable us to thrive again….to matter. 

            I remember when I was first learning about the Episcopal Church, I was told that there were more US presidents who were Episcopalian than any other denomination.  I was appropriately impressed.  We were the church of the establishment. If you were an important member of your community, odds were, you went to the Episcopal Church. Alas, what no one told me was that since 1945, only 2 presidents have been Episcopalians, only one in my lifetime.  We are no longer the church of the establishment.  There are a lot of people who mourn that loss.  There are many days when I do, even though I have never actually experienced the church as a powerful church.  It would be a lot easier to be part of church whose name people could actually pronounce. 

But you know what….I don’t think Jesus ever meant for it to be easy.  I think that if Jesus wanted his church to be a church that held worldly power, he probably would not have been born in a barn to a poor unmarried couple. He told Pilate, “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep be from being handed over to the Jews.”  In saying that, he was not telling Pilate that his kingdom wasn’t this world.  Of course it is.  He was saying that he did not choose to wield his power in the same way that earthly kings did.  Could he have created an army and taken the Romans by force? Of course he could have.  He could have raised a dead army to fight. But he chose not to, because that was not what power looked like to him.  Power didn’t come from a weapon or a throne, it came from the heart.  It came from sacrifice. 

            Of course I wish that the church had more authority and that we could influence public opinion and behavior.  I would like that because we have some important truths to share.  In fact, that is one of the things that Jesus said to Pilate, that he came to testify to the truth and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice.  My friends, we might not belong to a powerful church, but that does not mean we don’t belong to something or someone powerful. We belong to the truth.  We belong to a King who wore a crown of thorns instead of a crown of gold. His throne was not a gilded chair with velvet cushions.  It was cross covered in his blood. That is the king who we belong to.  I truly believe that the more we can identify with that king, the more authority we will have.  It will not be authority given by worldly leaders whose power is fleeting.  It will be the authority of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. 

While I wish we could just create a new feast day and make that happen, we know that’s not going to work.  It didn’t work in 1925 and it won’t work now.  What we need to do is go back to our roots…not our 1610 roots, but our 33 AD roots.  If we actually follow God’s call to us, a call to sacrifice, a call to love the powerless, the abandoned, and the ignored, then we won’t need to claim authority.  We won’t need to sit in the highest positions of power, because then, we will be standing with the people who matter.  Then people will listen to us.  The world will notice. The world will change because we belong to the truth.

Let Your Praise Be Your Protest: Nov. 11 2018

Year B, Pentecost 25                                                

Psalm 146                                                                              

            I often direct people to the Psalms when they are struggling with prayer. Many times people need direction in prayer and get insecure about what they are saying or they are simply overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. I understand because I sometimes feel the same way.  The great thing about the psalms is that they encompass virtually every human emotion: anger, envy, frustration, joy, fear and utter desolation.  While there are 150 psalms to cover all the emotions, often times you will encounter several contrasting emotions in one psalm. I like it because it is true to life.  One moment you are on top of the world, the next moment you are asking God to vanquish your enemies.  Some days are like that.

            Earlier in the week, I had planned to preach on the Gospel.  It’s a familiar text and an important message.  However, then I read about another mass shooting.  The Gospel wasn’t going to work and I prayed the psalm appointed for this day might lead me. I thought, surely this will be a Psalm of Lament, or one of those good fist shaking “why is this happening” kind of psalms.  Nope. “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, O my soul!” It goes on like that.  The whole thing is a psalm of praise.  It is very inconvenient.  Yet the more I read the psalm, and the more I read about it, the more appropriate it seemed. 

            In general there isn’t a lot of certainty about the psalms.  Tradition tells us that King David wrote the psalms, but this is unlikely.  We are also unsure when the psalms were written.  They were most likely written after the Babylonian exile.  Some of the psalms allude to a specific event or enemy or a generalized event (like war or betrayal).  Most of the Psalms of Lament end on a note of praise and there will be an explanation as to what the praise is about.  Yet Psalm 146 does not reference a miraculous event or a saving act.  It praises God for being God. 

            One of the slight detours this psalm takes is a warning not to put trust in earthly rulers.  It doesn’t give a specific reason why nor does the author refer to a specific ruler.  We are not to put our trust in any human ruler.  Now we are days after the election. In the months preceding the election, we had all kinds of people and groups telling us who to trust and who not to trust-- providing copious reasons not to trust a specific candidate, or even an entire political party.  Yet none of these smear campaigns tried the reasoning that the author of this psalm provided.  Don’t trust human rulers because they eventually die.  They are mortal.  Even if they are a great ruler worthy of our trust, their thoughts and leadership die with them.  It would have been an interesting angle for a political campaign to take.

            But then again this psalm isn’t about a specific leader. It’s not about a specific event.  It’s about what it means to praise God and believe in a God worthy of our praise.   You might hear this psalm and think, well clearly the author of this psalm wasn’t living in a time like ours, when things are complicated and someone is getting shot every other day for no apparent reason.  Because if he was, he wouldn’t have thought it was that easy to praise God.  While we do not know exactly what was happening when each psalm was written, we know that some pretty bad stuff went down.  If you were to read through all the psalms, you would see many examples of these bad things and the emotions people were experiencing as a result. 

Let me give you some highlights: (Psalm 73) “For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.” (Psalm 44)  “All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face.”  Or the one that Jesus quoted as he was dying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22). I could go on and on with these kinds of cheery verses.  Bad stuff happened to the people of God in the Bible, just as it is happening today.

            In reading about the psalms, I read a comment that really got my attention, “Praise of God is sometimes an act of discipline.”[1]  It’s not supposed to be easy.  It’s not supposed to be something that we only do when things are going our way and we are grateful to God for all the blessings in our life. We can’t just believe in a good God when things are going our way and when all is right in the world.

So what are we to do about the realities of the world we are living in?  Are we supposed to just grin and bear it when our Jewish brothers and sisters are shot down while praising God, or when college student are killed taking line dancing classes like they were last week?  Of course not.  We don’t praise God because of what is happening.  We praise God in spite of it.  We praise God as a form of protest to what is going on around us.  Praising God reminds us that we have a loving and caring God, a God who gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind and cares for the stranger, the orphan and the widow.  When our human leaders let us down (and they will, because they are humans---and some of them are very flawed humans), we cannot lose hope.  Our hope is not based in the might of our nation nor the state of our economy.  Our hope is not even based on how safe we can keep our citizens.

            “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” What does that kind of praise mean? It means to praise the Lord from the depth of our being…to praise the Lord with the same breath that gives us life.  Every time someone is killed, they are robbed of their breath, that breath that allows them to praise the Lord. We still have breath.  We still have life.  Praise the Lord, not because we are pleased with what is happening in our nation and our world, but in spite of it.  Let your praise be your protest. 

            And I know how hard that is. Praising God is part of my job description and I still find it difficult in the midst of violence and hatred.  There will be moments when we can’t praise God and instead we pray Psalm 13, “How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” There have been many moments over the last several years when I have asked, “How long?”  Yet let us not forget how Psalm 13 ends. “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

            Now is not the time to give up on God or Christian hope.  Now is the time to declare to all who will listen who our God is.  Our God is a God of love and compassion.  Our God gives hope to the hopeless.  Let our praise be our protest to the hate and agony that surrounds us.  We may lament.  We may cry and yell. But let praise be the final word. 

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[1] Beth Tanner http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3825

Bartimaeus' Story: October 28, 2018

From time to time I try something different.  This was one of those times. 

Year B, 23 Pentecost                                                           Mark 10:46-52            

                                                                                             

            My name is Bartimaeus.  I am the son of Timaeus.  I hear many things, some things I probably shouldn’t hear, but many things I should.  Lately I have been listening even more closely.  There has been a lot of talk about a man named Jesus.  It’s not all good.  Some people say he is a rabble rouser, that he is going to try to overthrow the Roman government or even or try to take power from the Pharisees and scribes.  That is what the loud and important people say.  I cannot see them, but I can tell they are important by their voices, the way they talk to me and other people.  These are the same people who only give me money on certain days, and when other people are around to see them.  The important people don’t like him, but I don’t like the important people very much either.

            It’s the other people….the people who give to me not out of obligation, but compassion, those are the ones I listen to.  There is one woman who will sit with me and pray sometimes.  She told me about Jesus.  She said that he talks about love and that he cares for people like me, the people no one else seems to see. They say I am blind, but sometimes I wonder, if maybe it’s the seeing people who are more blind than I.   My friend said that Jesus even performs miracles.  She has never seen it, but she has heard the stories.  There was one time when he fed thousands with just a few loaves of bread and fish.  She whispered to me…as though saying it out loud would give me too much hope, that he healed a blind man.   I told her there were all kinds of people who claimed to perform miracles, but even I had to agree that this Jesus man sounded different.

            After hearing stories from my kind friend, I started asking anyone who I encountered--- about this man.  There were different stories, but there were a few things that tied the stories together. He was kind to the people who needed kindness and tough on those who thought they didn’t need him or were better than others.  He helped the people no one else would help, even the sinners.

            It had been awhile since I prayed, but I began to pray to God that I could meet Jesus, at least once before I died.  One day my prayer was answered.  I was sitting in my regular place along the road, and the woman with the soft voice and gentle manner knelt beside me.  “He’s coming,” she said. “They say he is headed to Jerusalem and that there will be trouble there.”  I did not have to ask who.   I knew.  I could hear a crowd approaching.  I could smell their sweat as they came closer to me.  I could taste the dust that their feet kicked up.   I had one chance.   What could I possibly say to get his attention?  Surely, he had people trying to get his attention all the time.  What could I, a blind beggar--say to him?

            “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  I am not sure where that came from.  It just came.  I needed help.  It wasn’t just my eyes.  I was wounded physically, emotionally and spiritually.  I was desperate for something to believe in. Even if he could not cure me, I knew he could help me.  I needed mercy.  The people around me started telling me to be quiet.  But I couldn’t.  When I am quiet, people ignore me. I even felt the hand of my kind friend touch my sleeve, as if she was trying to warn me.  Their words and warnings meant nothing to me.  I had been waiting for this man.  It seemed like I had been waiting for him my whole life.  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  I yelled until my throat was raw.

            Suddenly, the crowd around me grew quiet.  I could feel the travelers stop in front of me.  Then I heard him (Jesus) tell the crowd to call me.  The voices that had tried to silence me now were encouraging me, and telling me I had nothing to fear.  I did not need their encouragement.  Once I heard his voice, I leapt to my feet and threw off my heavy cloak, which was my protection from the world.  For a moment I worried what would happen if I could not find my cloak again.   It was the only one I had.  But it did not matter. He was here and he had called me. 

            He asked me….me…what I wanted him to do for me.  No one had ever asked me that before.  No one cared what I wanted.  I said, “My teacher, let me see again.”  It’s not just that I wanted to see…I wanted to see him.  I thought, if I could see this man –If I could see him, even for a moment, I would be whole. Then Jesus told me the last thing I ever expected, “Go; your faith has made you well.”  My faith.  He was able to see something in me that I could not see, my faith, the faith I thought I had lost—that was what let me see again. 

            Suddenly the darkness that had been my sole companion was swept away and there was his face.  His eyes.  Compassion, love, mercy, salvation.  I could see it all in his eyes.  I knew then that he was more than a miracle worker.  He was more than a teacher or a rabble rouser. He was holy and I promised myself that I would never lose sight of him again.   He did not say another word. He turned and continued on the road to Jerusalem, the place he would die.  He walked and I followed. I would follow him wherever he went.   

What We Lack: Oct. 14, 2018

Year B, Pentecost 20                                            

Mark 10:17-31                                                          

This Gospel reading is a very hard text to read and it is an perilous text to preach.  I do not feel that I can preach this text with integrity as I have not done what Jesus asks of the rich man in this story.  I was called to the priesthood and I certainly gave some things up as a result, but I didn’t give up most things.  In our Gospel, Jesus was approached by a man asking him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus responded in the expected way by reciting a few of the commandments.  The man responded that he had been keeping all these commandments from his youth.  That is impressive. All of them. From his youth. One would have expected a pat on the back from Jesus, or maybe a high five. Yet, there were no encouraging words from Jesus in response.

            The text does say that Jesus looked at him and loved him.  He probably even saw something special in him as he asked the man to come and follow him.  That is what he said to his disciples when he called them. Who knows, this man could have been number 13.  But as with the other disciples, the call did not come without some sacrifice.  He said, “You lack one thing, go, sell what you own, and give money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  

You lack one thing….it sounds like it should not be a big thing, right?  He had followed all the commandments...since his youth.  Now Jesus was asking him to sell all he had and give it to the poor.  He could not do it.  He walked away.  He was the one person in the Gospel who Jesus called, but refused to follow.  Why? Because he had many possessions.  He could not part with them, even if it meant having treasure in heaven, even if it meant eternal life. 

            If you were to read the stories of Jesus calling the 12 disciples, you will see that Jesus did not ask them to sell everything.  All he did was ask them to follow him.  In each of those stories, we are told that they dropped their nets, left everything and followed him.  Was it easier for them because they did not have much money or possessions? Probably not--because when the text says that they left everything, it wasn’t just about leaving their possessions, it was about leaving their home and their families.  I like to think that they didn’t assume it would be a permanent departure, because it’s hard to imagine Jesus wanting people to leave their family.  But that’s just what I like to assume because it’s easier and a lot more palatable. 

            There are not a lot of people who could preach this text with integrity.  I don’t actually know anyone who gave everything up to follow Jesus.  I know of people.  I’ve heard of them, but they are few and far between.  So what are we everyday Christians to make of this difficult, seemingly impossible demand of Jesus?  I first looked at the readings a couple weeks ago, knowing this would be Celebration Sunday, which is when we ask people to make a commitment to the church in the form of a pledge.  Perfect I thought. This is all about giving money away and how important it is to give money to places like the church, that helps those who are poor---either figuratively helping the poor in Spirit, or literally helping the hungry and needy.  Some people on the vestry (I will not name any names) keep telling me I need to preach more about money and stewardship.  It’s not my strength.  But I thought, well this will give me the perfect opportunity.  How can I preach this text and not talk about money? 

            Alas, this text is a little more complicated.  And I am not just saying that because I don’t like talking about money.  Jesus isn’t telling this man he needs to give because there are needy people and non-profits doing good work. Nope.  He is telling this man what he needs to do to be a good disciple.  Now, normally when we talk about stewardship, we talk about the abundance of what God has given us and the many way that we can return those gifts to God.  Yet in this passage, Jesus doesn’t say, “Look, you have so much, how about returning some of it?”  He doesn’t lead with abundance or generosity.  He says, “You lack one thing…” He didn’t remind the man what he had, he told him what he was lacking.   

            When I thought about people who had given a great deal up to follow Jesus, I thought of Pope Francis.  I looked to see if I could find anything he had written about this passage.  I thought, surely, if someone could preach authentically on this text, it would be him.  I could only find one paragraph that came from one of his weekly addresses.  He focused on a part that I had never considered.  When Jesus reminded the man of the commandments, the man responded, “I have kept all these from my youth…” My youth. Pope Francis wrote that many of us never mature spiritually past our youth.  It’s as if we stop growing spiritually at the age of 18.  He said that one of the ways that we mature spiritually is when we begin to accept our own limits, when we become aware of what is truly missing from our lives. We can all probably name all the physical things we need.  We need a better job, a nicer home, more vacation time, better grades, better relationships with our family and friends.  But how many of truly know what we are lacking spiritually.

            Consider this man’s original question.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  He wanted to know what he could do.  He used the word inherit, because that was what his focus was in life.  Therefore, Jesus could immediately see what he was missing, what he was lacking.  He needed to let go to the things he acquired.  He had let his possessions possess him. 

Now I could turn it around and say, “Therefore, we all need to figure out what we are missing, what we need to be closer to God.” That would be a fair interpretation of this text.  But I think it also lets us off the hook too easily.  Because my guess is that for a lot of us, it is our possessions---those things that we worked so hard to earn that create barriers in our relationship with God and other people.  What Jesus reminds us in this reading and other places in scripture is that none of what we have is ours.  We didn’t earn it. It was given to us.   We certainly can’t take it with us from this life to the next.  The more easily we can let go of those physical things, the freer we will be. 

            Yes, consider what you lack in your relationship to God.  Ask God what you need to be a better disciple.  God’s probably not going to tell you to give everything away and leave family and friends.  However, there is a good chance God will tell you something that will be hard, something you might now want to do. Then, I pray that you will consider pledging to the church, pledging not just financially, but pledging your time.  There are few things in life more precious than time.  If God is giving us eternal life, then surely we can give God some of our time in this life.  And while we may lack something in terms of our relationship with God, every one of us has an abundance of gifts, some of which we don’t even know we possess because other things keep distracting us.  Therefore, let’s not perceive this call from Jesus to give things up as a deprivation.  Instead, let us see it as an invitation to live more fully and abundantly into the life God has called us.