Alleluia Anyways: November 10

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 to say or they are just overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. I understand because I sometimes feel the same way, this week for instance.  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, 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.

            Given the last week, I had hoped we would have a good lament psalm.  One third of the psalms in the Bible are lament psalms, so I felt that the odds were in my favor. But no, not this week. This week was a praise psalm with the first word—Hallelujah.  I imagined how it would sound if I asked you all to say it. It would be a bit like when I ask my son to apologize for something he’s confident he bears no guilt.  Hallelujah. When I think of the word Hallelujah, I think of Easter and joy that cannot be contained— but it’s more than that.

It’s actually a transliteration of two Hebrew words that translate to: Praise God. It’s one of the few Hebrew words in the Hebrew Bible that wasn’t translated to Greek, then Latin, then English. All the other words were translated, but not this word. A music professor at Yale said it suggests the word was already charged with an emotion that transcends its linguistic meaning.[1] It’s like it was too beautiful, too lyrical, to translate it.

            When I think of praising God, I consider the times when it has just come out of me spontaneously, which frankly has been rarer than I would like to admit.  We praise God every Sunday through prayers, music and the celebration of the Eucharist.  But what I hear when I spend a lot of time contemplating the word Hallelujah, is singing the Alleluia chorus. It’s powerful and enthusiastic song of praise. I think so many of think of Alleluia in that context.  But the word Alleluia appears in all kinds of music.  I was struck by one piece the choir sang in our All Soul’s service last week.  It was a Ukranian piece written in 2007.  The whole piece is just Alleluia, but it’s much more contemplative and less triumphant then you would expect.  The author of the piece said he wrote it after a mission trip to Ukraine.  It was meant to be the “quiet voice of faith, praise and hope in the midst of suffering and tragedy”. That is how the composer of the piece described it. We don’t have to associate Hallelujah with joy.

            The Hebrew word is actually an imperative---it’s a command.  One commentator described it as a discipline. That means that even when we don’t feel it, we still say it.  We praise God not because of the wonderful things that are going on in our world.  We praise God because our God is worthy of praise. 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 all is right in the world.

That’s easy to preach, but how can we praise when we find ourselves in times of despair, when we have lost faith in people, when we have worked so hard and not achieved the outcome we wanted.  We grieve.  We act.  We organize. We remember the verses of this psalm that tell us not to put our trust in rulers, because they cannot save us…even when we have a really good one who we voted for. They cannot ruin us, no matter how very bad they are.  Only God can save us.

Because we still worship a God who loves us, 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 immigrant, 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 on who we elect or don’t elect.  Our hope has one source—God. So we continue to 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 division 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?” I don’t care what political party you are in, I don’t know anyone who believes things are going swimmingly.  I don’t know anyone who feels that our government is doing a great job of standing up for the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the imprisoned, all those people that the God of justice, (the God of psalm 146) promised to love and lift up.

What I fear more than anything, is hopelessness, people giving up hope.  So I ask that when we sing our final hymn, we will sing with whatever energy we have left-- these words: “Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore..  Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving thee whom we adore.” Let us not forget who we serve. We serve a loving God who cares deeply for all those people the world just tosses aside.

Because of that, we keep saying Hallelujah, even if it’s barely a whisper. You don’t have to say it with triumph.  You don’t even have to say it with joy.  Say it however feels right in your soul. You know how we don’t say Alleluia during Lent? The one exception is at funerals. Because even in the midst of death and grief, we make our song—Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Even when we feel that all is lost, our God continues to save us and the people we love.  Let our Alleluia be our protest, our protest to the division, the hatred, the misogyny, the racism, the homophobia---all of those things that create walls instead of bridges. No one gets to take Hallelujah away from us.  Don’t stop praising God. Let our praise be our protest.

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[1] Hallelujah! The remarkable story behind this joyful word - Los Angeles Times.  Quote is from Markus Rathey, a professor at Yale

God Plays the Long Game: Nov. 1, 2020

Year A, All Saints                                               1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12        

          If you read too much about All Saint’s Day, you will get confused.  It’s kind of a weird day. Most Episcopal churches celebrate it by reading the names of those who have died in the past year.  It’s an opportunity to mourn and remember. Yet the term “saint” is not what we think it is.  Frankly, I blame Billy Joel and his hit, “Only the Good Die Young.” One of the lines is: I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.  He makes a distinction between the sinners and the saints, saints being those who are perfect and boring, while the sinners are… everyone else. 

Now, Billy Joel isn’t completely to blame.  I believe it was the early church that started it.  They wanted to honor those who had died for their faith, the martyrs.  They declared them saints after they died which led to the idea that saints were Christian superstars, the people who were super holy. They might have sinned a little, but definitely not much. 

However, if you read the New Testament (especially Paul’s letters), you will find the definition of saints is far different. When the Apostle Paul refers to saints, he refers to all Christians—not just the really good ones who have died, but all Christians, anyone who has been baptized.  I think it is good and appropriate to read the names of those who we have lost because they were and are saints of the church. They were not perfect, but they were God’s children, just as we are.  It is interesting that we find it easier to identify saints as those who have died, rather than those of us who are still living.  I think that is partially because we still have that idea in our heave of a saint being an extra holy Christian.  But it’s also natural to remember those who have died for their good qualities.  And you know, I have to admit, that when I looked at our list this year, there were several who I knew well and I perceived as especially good and committed Christians, people I would feel comfortable referring to as a saint.  But I doubt most of them would have considered themselves that way. 

Our three readings today effectively depict the various ways we define saints.  The reading from the Book of Revelation considers the future, after Jesus comes again and all are gathered together in paradise.  It’s a very traditional All Saints reading because it is otherworldly/heavenly---and while we know that a saint is any Christian, we still associate this day with those who have passed. 

The Gospel reading (the Beatitudes) is much more relevant to the living saints. It talks about those who are struggling today, right now.  Those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek….they are blessed right now.  It refers to what will be, but the blessing is now.   It even goes further to describe the Kingdom of Heaven as a place we can inhabit right here, right now. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness safe, for theirs IS the kingdom of heaven.”  Even the kingdom of heaven is now.  The reading from 1^st John combines the past, present and future.  “See what love the Father HAS given us….we ARE God’s children NOW….when he is revealed, we WILL be like him…”

I had a hard time deciding which text to preach on.  If I went with the Book of Revelation, then the focus would be on the saints who have died, the saints we remember today.  If I went with the Beatitudes, then it would be about the living saints.  I was leaning toward the Beatitudes when I happened to read something about Paul.  While Paul is not represented in our readings for today, his description of a saint is a big part of this day. It said a theme of Paul’s writings is, “Become what you are.”  I had never heard that before.  It kind of sounds like something that I would hear in a yoga class, but the more I thought about it, the more relevant it seemed, especially for today.

In fact, it is exactly what our reading from 1^st John is saying, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”  It’s refreshingly simple compared to what Paul usually writes.  We are called children of God and that is what we are.  Become what you are.  My friends, we can wait for our death for people to see us as saintly, or we can become what we already are.  We can claim the sainthood that was bestowed on us at our baptism.  Why are we so afraid of that?  Partly we are afraid because we lack confidence in our identity as children of God.  I mean we hear it a lot, but we don’t really take it in. But I think we’re also afraid to claim our sainthood because it means that we have to be more like Christ.  It’s much easier to admire Christ then emulate him. 

It’s ok if we are a little rusty on living like saints, because we will have ample opportunities to claim our sainthood in the near future.  This next week will be one of the most divisive in recent history.  It will divide families, neighborhoods and it even threatens to divide churches.  I know this election is important.  I really am aware of that. But it’s not the most important thing.  Our political leanings cannot define us. Why? Because we are children of God first.  We are citizens of the United States of America.  But before that, we are citizens of the Kingdom of God.   That is our most important citizenship and our most important loyalty. And guess what, God always wins. It doesn’t always seem like that because God plays the long game, but God always wins. Vote. Pray. Be passionate.  But remember who deserves your loyalty.  Remember to whom you belong. You are a saint, in God’s kingdom.  You belong to God.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

Love everyone, even the person who voted for the other candidate: November 6, 2016

Year C, All Saints                                                                  
Luke 6:20-31                                                                          

            “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This is the last sentence in our Gospel reading for today and probably one of the most familiar of the Bible.  It is sometimes referred to as the Golden Rule, possibly because it is the most important rule---or maybe because it is a rule that is consistent across most of the world religions.  Confucianism says, “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”  According to Buddhist teaching one must, “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”  Hinduism says, "Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." [1]  While these are all very similar to Jesus’ statement, one thing that differentiates them is that they are negative statements.  Don’t hurt other people in ways that you would not want to be hurt.  Jesus turns it around.  He makes it positive, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

            Jesus was not the only person to make the Golden Rule positive. He was a Jew and was heavily influenced by the Jewish scriptures.  When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he answered “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind….and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[2] This is essentially another version of the Golden Rule and comes directly from Leviticus and Deuteronomy which are both books of the Hebrew Scriptures.  What Jesus was saying when he said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (while wise and profound) was not exactly ground breaking.  It had been said before.

            But there was more to it than this one statement. This was essentially a sound bite to a much larger lesson. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Woh….that is taking the Golden Rule a few steps farther, maybe even too far for our comfort.  It is hard enough just to treat others the way we want to be treated.  Now Jesus is telling us that he wants us to treat people better than they are treating us??? That seems almost unreasonable.

            There are some people who have been able to follow Jesus’ example and treat others better than they were treated and not all of them have been Christians. Gandhi was a devout Hindu and is well known for his devotion to non-violence and passive resistance.  He lived out these words---loving his enemies and praying for those who abused him.  He respected and admired Jesus.  He followed many of the teachings of Jesus. When asked his views about Christianity he reportedly responded, “Oh it would be wonderful.”[3]  He was not critical of Christianity as much as he was of Christians ability to follow the teachings of Christ.  And who can blame him?  Loving people who hate us…that is some hard stuff.  Imagine a world where we could do that.  Imagine a world where we were willing to try to do that.  It would be wonderful.

            It is hard to imagine that right now, especially with this election coming up.  I know that every election divides people to some extent, but this one seems worse.       Perhaps it just seems that way because of social media.  It is a lot easier for people to air their grievances.  Don’t worry, I am not going to talk about the candidates and I am definitely not telling you who I am voting for.  I am sure we have people in this parish on both sides of the aisle. While we cannot all agree on who to vote for, I think we can all agree that the run up to this election has been crazy.  Many people have told me that they cannot look at their facebook feed…or anything on the internet for that matter because there is so much vitriol and hatred.  Even people who love one another, cannot talk about this election without getting angry. That was the rule at our recent family vacation.  No talking about politics! It was the only way to maintain the peace.  My concern is that it won’t be any better after the election.  One of these candidates has to win.  At the end of it all, most of us will all probably still stay in the country despite our threats to leave if our candidate doesn’t win.

            Whatever happens, we have to find a way not merely to live with one another, but to love one another…love the people who we cannot understand or agree with.  It is easy to see the divisiveness of this election and assume it is about the political candidates.  But the reality is that this polarization in our nation and our world has been growing for years.  Whatever we may be experiencing now is not the problem itself, it is merely a symptom of a greater problem.  I could try to articulate what that problem is, but I am not sure I know.  However, whatever the problem may be, the answer is not talking over one another until we grow so loud that we create a cacophony of hate and discord.  There has to be a better answer than that.

There are three different words for love in Biblical Greek, the language the Gospel of Luke was written in.  One word is for romantic love.  One is for love of family.  Then there is the word that refers to a love that is rooted in God’s love.  That is the word from today’s reading when Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Romantic love, family love, while those are certainly not easy loves, they are more natural, more convenient than godly love.  The kind of love that is required to love our enemy, or those who hurt us, or those who voted differently, or those whose opinions are vastly different than our own--- that is a love that requires our will and our effort.   Yet even our will and our effort is not enough to produce that kind of love.  That kind of love also requires the grace of God. That is what gives us the strength to love our enemies and those who hurt us.  

It is easy to say that we should love our enemy.  Why?  Because generally, we don’t know our enemy.  In theory, sure we can love that enemy who we will never meet.  I am tempted to say that the hardest people to love are the people who are closest to us.  But that is not even right.  I think that the hardest people to love are the people who we know just enough about…just enough that we can say with certainty that we don’t like them and we certainly don’t trust them.  They might be the person who is posting super obnoxious things on facebook. It might be the co-worker who always disagrees with you, even when you are clearly right. It might be the person who lives next door to you who complains even when you are being super quiet.  It is the person who is not worth the trouble of knowing, because let’s face it, you know you are not going to like them.

That is why we are divided.  We don’t have to know one another anymore.  We can stay in our own little silos and interact with people who we know will agree with us, or at least have the good manners not to admit when they disagree.  While that is a convenient way to live, it’s not what God intended. That is why the church, the body of Christ is so very important.  It is one of the few places where we do not have to have anything in common with one another, except the love of God. That is all we have to know about one another… at least to start. If that is where we start, then imagine how far we can go.  We can go past the church.  We can look at every person and say, I know what I have in common with them. God loves them and God wants me to love them too.  In the end…that is all that matters.  God loves us. God loves them. We should love them too. And you know what…if just the Christians in this world could display that kind of love, that would be a wonderful thing.  The world would be transformed.  Let’s stop imagining and starting being that vision of the world.  

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[1] These are just pieces of these major religions.  They do not represent everything this religion said regarding how to treat others. 

[2] Matthew 22:36-40

[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=816  (I have not been able to find the source of this quote.  However, it aligns with other things that Gandhi said about Christianity.)

Understanding God: July 23, 2016

Year C, Pentecost 10                                     

Hosea 1:2-10                                                  

 

            Our nation and our world is divided in ways I never imagined it could be.  I know it is not the worst it has ever been, but it is definitely the worst that I have ever seen.  This may sound naïve, but I believe that we would be a lot gentler with one another if we understood the pain that each one of us struggles with.  We all walk around carrying burdens and sometimes/often those burdens are magnified because we are convinced that no one could possibly understand what we are going through.  Instead of trying to explain ourselves or listening to someone else, we cluster with people who are like us, or we bear those burdens alone and that makes it that much harder.

            As much as we misunderstand one another, it is nothing compared to how we misunderstand God.  That’s not necessarily our fault.  God keeps things a little mysterious, especially in the Old Testament when people were not able to say his name or look in his the face.  There is something sacred and holy about mystery, but it also makes it harder to love at times.  Jesus told parables like we heard in the Gospel reading today to help us understand God and his love for us.  Jesus used his own life to allow us to know God. 

In the Old Testament, before Jesus was born, God used the prophets to help us understand God.  The difference between these prophets and Jesus is that Jesus was God in the flesh.  Jesus understood God thoroughly as he was one with God the father.  The prophets were human, flawed humans, sinful humans….not that different from us.  Yes they were holy and wise. They had special relationships with God as they were especially chosen by God to deliver his message, but they were still human--which meant that they struggled to understand God’s ways and help us, God’s people, understand and know God.

            Because God knew how hard it was for the prophets to understand God and share his message, he got creative at times. This reading from Hosea is a perfect example of that creativity.  It’s a troublesome reading.  The term whoredom is not something we are used to hearing in church or polite company.  In fact, the entire premise of God’s request is profoundly disturbing.  He requires his brand new prophet recruit to: “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” There are more problems with that statement that I have time to address.  It’s not fair to Hosea.  It’s not fair to this “wife of whoredom” who is now being forced to marry Hosea.  And it is certainly not fair to the children who will be forever marked as displays of God’s anger. 

            God not only told Hosea who to marry, he told him and his new wife what to name the children.  The first was Jezreel….which seems like a perfectly fine name.  It means God plants and refers to a lovely city.  However anyone in that time who knew their history would know that horrible atrocities were committed in Jezreel.  It would be like naming a child Hiroshima.  Every time his name was said aloud people would be reminded of the horrible violence that God’s people had committed.  The 2^nd child was named Lo-ruhamah.  Now, if God had just gone with ruhamah, that would have been a lovely name as it means compassion and mercy.  But God added the prefix Lo which meant that the compassion and mercy was negated.  It would be like naming your child Faithless instead of Faith.  Wait…it gets worse. The third child was names Lo-ammi. Once again you will note the prefix Lo which means this is a negative.  This child will remind the people that they are no longer God’s people. God has officially given up on them.

            This all sounds cruel…and a little crazy, does it not?  What person in their right mind would want to be a prophet if this is what it entailed?  Was God’s sole intention to punish Hosea?  First of all, Hosea did not have a choice.  He was called by God to be a prophet and so he would follow God’s advice wherever it led him. And no, God was not trying to punish Hosea.  He was using him as a tool.  God needed Hosea to understand the depth of his pain.  We don’t think about that.  We don’t think that we could hurt God.  We do.  Again and again, we betray God.  We break his heart.  That is hard to imagine…that we could hurt God—the all powerful God’s feelings. 

            Yet we, God’s people have hurt him time and time again.  The people of Israel just could not make up their mind.  One minute they were following the one true God, Yahweh.  Then when their crops needed rain and their prayers to Yahweh were not being answered, they turned to Baal, the god of rain.  One of the things that really ticks off God in the Old Testament is worshipping other gods.  It hurt God on a deep and profound level, and he wanted people to understand that hurt…not just to understand it, but to feel it.  What better way to do that than to force his prophet to marry a woman who would repeatedly cheat on him.  Worse yet, Hosea would know that she was going to cheat on him before going into the marriage and still not be able to help but love her.   He would take her back again and again just like God has taken his people back again and again.

            It would seem from these 8 verses, that God was finished.  This was his good bye.  But that is the crazy thing about God…he just can’t say good bye.  Even when he says he’s done, he’s not really done.  Right after he tells Hosea to name his 3^rd child, “not my people,” he says, “Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God.’”

            This is only the end of chapter 1. There are 13 more chapters of Hosea.  Hosea and his wife went back and forth between love and betrayal just as God went back and forth on what to do with this group of people who had repeatedly betrayed him and taken advantage of him.  The part of God who was a just and righteous God knew that these people had to be punished, possibly even cut off from his love.  But his love for them overcame his need for justice.  As Christians, we refer to that idea as grace.  Grace is when God’s mercy and love overcomes the need for justice and righteousness. 

            God will not ask the same thing of us that he did of Hosea.  With Jesus, God brought us a new model of what it is to love and be loved.  However, even with Jesus’ life and death, we will continue to misunderstand God and misunderstand one another.  It’s inevitable to some degree, but that does not mean we have the luxury of not trying—of staying in our own little silos. We cannot continually bemoan the ignorance and cruelty of others before we try to get to know one another. If we are all truly children of the living God, then we all carry pieces of God. When we try to understand and know one another, we get a little closer to knowing God.

We are the body of Christ. It is a strange and eclectic body---but there is beauty in that diversity and the strange parts will seem less strange the more we get to know one another.  We are the body of Christ.  We cannot give up on people because they vote for a different candidate or because we cannot agree whether it is blue lives, black lives, or all lives.  We have to continue to listen to one another.  Much like God refuses to give up on us, we cannot give up on one another.  We are the body of Christ.  Let’s start acting like we actually believe that.