Ash Wednesday:February 26, 2020

Year A, Ash Wednesday                                           

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21                                               

            I have often heard the liturgy (in traditions such as the Episcopal Church) compared to theater.  We have a stage and props.  We have a script (the BCP).  We even have stage directions which we call rubrics.  We have stage hands who make sure everything is in the right place and make sure our costumes are out (the Altar guild).  We have a program with the cast and the different acts.  Finally we have the actors, who are the acolytes, lay Eucharistic ministers choir, ushers, greeters, members of the congregation, and finally the clergy.  Many people have adverse reactions to this analogy.  It makes us sound insincere.  I admit I had the same reaction initially.  But maybe we should not be so hard on the theatre.  Perhaps there are some parallels.

In the Gospel for today, Jesus tells us how not to be like the hypocrites.  There were three things that Jews were expected to do: give alms to the poor, pray, and fast.  The problem wasn’t that people were not doing those things.  They were, but they were doing them for the wrong reasons.  When they gave alms, they would make sure that everyone knew they were giving money to the poor.  Giving lots of money provided a certain status because not only did it mean that you had a lot of money to give, but that you were exceptionally good and generous.  When people prayed, they would not only do it in a public place, but they would make their prayers as long as possible, so as to appear more pious.  Finally, while the Jews only have one day (the Day of Atonement) where fasting is necessary, many of the Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays.  They flaunted their piety by parading around in public looking dismal and hungry.  Sometimes they would even whiten their face to make themselves look more pale and underfed.  They wanted everyone to know that they were the holy ones, they were the ones who were close to God.  While these actions should have made them closer to God, they were too focused on impressing their peers, so it didn’t really work. 

All of this sounds pretty foolish to us.  And it is awfully easy to sit back and judge these Pharisees.  But maybe we should not be so harsh on them.  Wait you say, aren’t we just agreeing with Jesus? Wasn’t Jesus the one who told us not to be like them? Are we not justified in our disdain?  It’s true, Jesus did warn us not too be like the hypocrites.  Yet it is not our job to ferret out the hypocrites in our midst.  Jesus is telling us how we are supposed to act.  It also might be helpful to know what Jesus meant when he used the word hypocrite.  The literal translation of hypocrite is actor.  Jesus was calling these people actors.  That was his charge against them.

A few years ago, I read a fascinating book called, The Year of Living Biblically.  It was by a man who spent a year living out every law of the Hebrew scriptures.  He was agnostic and wanted to see if it was possible to truly follow the Bible literally.  What I found most interesting was one of his conclusions.  He said that he had previously thought that you changed your mind first and then your actions changed as a result.  However in his experience, his mind changed as a result of his actions.  For instance, one of the laws in the Hebrew scriptures is to give prayers of thanksgiving constantly.  While these prayers didn’t mean anything to him when he started, by the end he found that he was more thankful as a result.  The whole time, he was merely following these laws to prove a point.  He was just acting them all out.  Yet those actions fundamentally changed his heart. 

            Let’s face it.  Sometimes we don’t mean every word we pray.  Occasionally we come to church when we do not want to be here. Sometimes we come, just so we can get ashes on our forehead, for nostalgic reasons or so everyone knows that we went to church today.  Yet there is power in these actions that is greater than any of us is aware.  God is acting in us every moment and movement.  Sure it would be better if we meant every word and our minds never wandered while in prayer.  But until we all reach that state of perfection, perhaps acting isn’t so bad.  The important thing is that our hearts remain open to the actions of the spirit, that even when we don’t want to pray because we really are not that thankful, we still do it.  And we do it not because of what we want other people to see in us, but because of what we see in God.  Someday, we might just lose ourselves in the action and realize that maybe it meant something all along. 

Get up: February 23, 2020

Year A, Transfiguration                                                                 

Matthew 17:1-9                                                                                  

            Sometimes we get asked if we are planning to adopt another child. It is doubtful, but I rarely say never anymore because things don’t usually happen according to how you expect them to happen, at least they haven’t for me.  But the bottom line for me is--- the adoption process was absolutely terrifying.  No doubt pregnancy and child birth are terrifying as well, but for different reasons. The reason that adoption is scary is that you have the child for 4 months before that child is legally yours.  And that’s after you have the child in your home. Before that, there is even more uncertainty.  It’s why we didn’t prepare a room or even buy a car seat until we were on our way to pick him up from the hospital.  For those first few months, I thought the anxiety and uncertainty would drive me insane.  Of course like all babies, he didn’t sleep much at night. When he finally fell asleep, I would just watch him and cry for fear of losing him.  I remember watching him sleep feeling desperate with the desire to hold on to that moment. 

            So I feel a special connection with Peter in this Gospel story.  I understand his desperation and fear.  I understand how his love for Jesus was tangled up with his fear of losing him.  I imagine that Peter was eager to walk up that mountain with Jesus and the other two disciples.  They had been surrounded by crowds for quite some time.  Finally he would have some time with Jesus, just Jesus.  Right before this story, Jesus had started to explain to his disciples that he would soon be killed.  That news had upset all the disciples, but none more than Peter.  Peter had been so upset that he argued with Jesus. He told Jesus he was wrong.  It’s understandable that Peter would be upset by Jesus’ prediction of his impending death, but apparently Jesus was not pleased that one of his disciples scolded him.  Jesus got so mad he called Peter Satan and told him that he was thinking human thoughts when he should be thinking divinely.

            My guess is that Peter was still feeling the sting of this reprimand and relieved to be one of the disciples Jesus chose to accompany him up the mountain.  He probably felt this would be his opportunity to make up for his earlier error.  Perhaps he was determined to think divinely, just as Jesus had advised. Well, if he wanted divine, he got divine.  When they got to the top of the mountain, Jesus was transfigured.  His face glowed like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.  Then, if that was not enough, two great leaders of the Jewish faith (who were supposed to be dead by the way) appeared beside him. 

Peter was determined to be helpful and offered to make dwellings for the three of them.  Many have interpreted this as a foolish move on Peter’s part.  Why would two dead people and the Son of God need tents? Isn’t this just Peter once again setting his mind on human things? Or maybe Peter understands more than people give him credit for.  I think Peter realized that this was a divine moment and that he needed to mark it in some way, preserve it—not because he was clinging to something ephemeral, but because he wanted to mark the occasion, carve it into ground of this mountain and into his heart.             

            That’s what we do every Sunday when we have this liturgy.  People who are not familiar with it might consider it arcane or antiquated.  That’s fine if that is what they want to see.  But in my mind, what we are doing is reminding ourselves of our connection to the divine.  It’s true, we can see the divine anywhere and everywhere.  We can find God in a sunset or the laughter of a child.  But here at church, in the context of the liturgy we are intentional about finding the divine in our everyday lives, not just the beautiful moments. 

            When I was struggling with this sermon, I was trying to think of times of clarity, when I had a clear sense of the divine, a clear direction in where God was leading me.  All the examples I could come up with were happy times, celebratory events, times of light and love.  But for most of us, those moments aren’t consistent.  And if we can only find God in the perfect sunset or rainbow, then we will find the dark days, the anxious times, the lonely times---almost unbearable. 

            Peter was no fool.  He knew that things with Jesus were about to get very scary.  He knew this might be one of the last times where he could get a clear and profound glimpse of the glory of God.   So he wanted to carve that moment out in the mud and the muck so that he could carry it with him always. And in a strange way, that is what the Eucharist is---it’s that point in the week where we remember the whole story.  Listen to the prayer.  It’s the whole story of salvation, leading to the crucifixion and the resurrection.  We tell that story of the suffering and the triumph every week. We tell that story here in this beautiful space, but also in the hospital room with the person who is about to die, in the field of battle with soldiers who are risking their lives, in the home of the person who has not been able to leave their home because of illness.  That sacred story of suffering and triumph is not confined to the beauty of the church sanctuary, nor was Peter trying to confine the divine to three tents on a hill.  But I think he was desperate to remember it, carve it into his heart and mind. 

What he did not realize is that every minute with Jesus was precious, not just when he glowed incandescently.  The most beautiful part of this text, is not the moment Jesus glowed like the sun with the two dead prophets.  It wasn’t even when God spoke from the heavens. It was the time when all was quiet again and Jesus reached down and touched his disciples who were now cowering in the dirt and said, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  Obviously, that didn’t wipe every fear from the mind of Peter but it did remind him that he was not alone on this journey.

Often, in the dark points of our life, we look up for something bright, something that will lead us and guide us.  And if we cannot find that, we think that God has deserted us.  Yet often, we find that even in the darkest places, God is there, reaching down and touching us on the shoulder…leading us not by sight, but with his presence. He might not appear as something bright and shiny because our God knows darkness and desperation. He knows what it looks like and what it feels like.  But more importantly, he also knows that there is always a way out.  It’s ok to want to hold on to those precious moments, but it’s also important to remember that experiences with God are never as fleeting as we think they are. They are all around. We just need to reach up and take a hold of the hand resting on our shoulder and rise to meet whatever road is before us.  That is what Jesus told Peter then and what he tells us now, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

Salt and Dung: February 9, 2020

Year A, Epiphany 5                                                                 

Matthew 5:13-20                                                                    

            In the 20^th century, salt got a bad rap in the nutrition world.  It became connected with high blood pressure and heart disease.   Today, if you are eating hospital food, good luck finding salt.  Despite the fact that there have been numerous studies showing that salt isn’t really as bad as everyone says, we still have negative associations with it.  So it’s kind of weird when the first thing we hear in the Gospel story is, “You are the salt of the earth…” Salt isn’t particularly inspiring, at least not today. However, in the time of Jesus, salt didn’t have a bad rap.  In fact, salt was good for a lot of things.  The obvious one is what we still use salt for----seasoning.  It was also a preservative for food, which was important since they didn’t have refrigerators.  Additionally, it was sometimes mixed with manure to create fertilizer. 

And it was also used as a catalyst for fuel.  Typically when cooking, they used outdoor earthen ovens.  Wood was not easy to come by and they didn’t have easy access to other kinds of fuel.  A cheap way to create fuel was to use animal dung.  They would make it into patties and then add salt. For the outdoor oven, they would have a slab of salt under the dung patty and that would essentially be the catalyst for the fire.  At some point, the salt would lose its catalytic ability and become useless.  It would simply be thrown out, which is why Jesus said that when salt loses its taste, it isn’t good for anything.

            Thus when Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth,” he was not simply saying that we give flavor or that we preserve, he was calling us the catalyst that start a fire.  We, as followers of Christ are the ones who not only provide heat and light, but create the heat and light, enable the fire to burn. Now, you may be thinking, well he probably wasn’t thinking of Episcopalians.  We aren’t exactly known for our heat and energy.  Or, you might be thinking, well he’s definitely not talking about me.  I’m tired and over committed. I don’t have the time or the energy for fire, especially not on Sundays. 

He is talking about all of us.  This text is part of the Sermon on Mount.  He has just finished telling people, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  He is speaking to a crowd, most likely a crowd full of beleaguered people, people who are hungry, people who are tired, people who feel like they are anything but catalysts for fire.  He was speaking to a crowd then and he is speaking to us all now…saying the same thing.  “You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.”

            Notice that he doesn’t say, “You will be the salt of the earth if you try hard enough or if you do x, y, and z.”  No, he is saying, “You are the salt of the earth right now.”  And it’s not because you have something no one else has or that you simply have a fiery disposition.  You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world because that is what and who God created you to be.  We are born into this world to be fire.  I can’t speak for any of you, but I must confess that I have a hard time really believing this.  Because most of the time, I don’t feel fiery.  I don’t feel like a catalyst.  I don’t even feel particularly salty.  I feel kind of tired and stressed, a little overwhelmed and weary.  And given the amount of energy drinks at the store, and the ever expanding reach of Starbucks, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling weary and overwhelmed. Am I?  

            Have you ever just eaten plain salt? Meaning, you aren’t adding it to something, you are eating salt.  I hope not, because that’s kind of gross.  Salt alone is no good.  Salt is only good when it accompanies something.  Animal dung isn’t very useful, unless you add some salt, and all of a sudden, it heats an oven. These metaphors Jesus is using cannot be taken singularly.  They only work well accompanying something else.  So it is with us as Christians.  Sure, there are people who can do amazing things all by themselves.  At least, I assume there are, but I’ve never met one.  Most people find energy, power, and fulfillment in their work with other people, or with the support of other people.  So if you think you are too tired, too busy, too old, too sick, too young to be the salt of the earth, to be the catalyst that sparks the flame, you might be right.  You can’t do it alone. That’s why we have Jesus to be that support. That is why we have the community of Christians, to inspire and motivate one another.

            I witnessed this several times this week.  On Wednesday, we delivered 1594 cans of soup to the HELP food pantry.  Now, I admit, the Lutherans had more and I was a little irritated about that, but then the Lutherans helped us unload all our cans because they had more people.  We all worked together and I was reminded of the importance of Christians working together. Don’t get me wrong, we will win next year, but I am still grateful to them for motivating us and supporting us.  Then this Friday we hosted a dialogue of race in our parish hall.  The Unity Commission of Hampton Roads organized it and there were a few people from our church there.  But there were also 50 other people there who were committed to finding ways for people of all tribes, all colors to work together.  As many of you know, I have an African American son. There are times I am overwhelmed by what I don’t know and understand.  But on Friday, I was reminded that I am not alone.  And as I looked around that room, I could see there were people there who would help, who wanted to help.  All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so weary.  I felt energized and hopeful.

            Unfortunately we are currently in a culture that doesn’t encourage people who are different or who disagree to be together or even pray together.  That is a travesty, because more than ever, we need one another to inspire us, or sometimes just hold one another upright and accountable.  You are the salt of the earth. You were born to be fire.  Together, as a community here at St. John’s and in the wider Christian community, we must find a way to work together and if we can we will set a fire this world has never seen.  Once we have done that, there is no way that anyone is going to hide that fire under a bushel basket.  No, we will be that city on the hill, a city that no one will dare hide.