Semester Sign-off and Incarnation

Matthew 1:18-25Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,"

which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Christmas Eve is in exactly one week. 

Do you feel prepared?

What’s left to do?

  

We try so hard to make Christmas a special time of year.

We try to make the experience perfect.

When we cannot do that, perhaps a sense of failure creeps in.

Or we remember people we have lost,

And wonder how our world could ever be the same.

In the midst of the bustle of the Christmas season

is the story in the Gospel.

Tonight we read Matthew’s version,

And on Christmas eve, you would hear Luke’s account.

But I’m going to refer to both of them.

When I think about how Christmas

becomes an exercise in getting things right,

in making a perfect memory,

it helps to stop and think, really think,

about the First Christmas.

Let’s start with Mary.

She was an unwed pregnant teenage girl

Engaged to a probably-much-older Joseph.

Joseph, is faced with the situation and plans to dismiss her quietly.

This is probably the most humane thing he can do in his culture.

He could very easily play the aggrieved man

and expose Mary to a lot of scorn.

A more harsh reaction would have been

the conventional way to do things.

But angelic visits to both bring the knowledge 

of who it is they will be raising.

At least they have that going for them, and not much else.

Then, while pregnant, Mary and Joseph 

have to trek from one town to another to be taxed.

They find no room at the Inn.

The way pageants and movies tell of the story, 

you hear that the innkeeper lets them use a stable,

But actually, that is not in the Bible.

They very well could have spent that night in the stable illegally.

As squatters.

Nor is Mary giving birth in great circumstances, 

as she is having to pick straw and mud 

from the blanket in which she wraps her child.

The first Christmas was attended 

–according to the world’s standards—

by a sexually suspect woman, 

and a man flouting the conventions of his culture by staying with her.

The first Christmas was cold.  Damp.  Dirty.

The first Christmas was punctuated 

by the moans of a woman giving birth

in a stable not their own

in a town far from Mary’s home

in a land occupied by a brutal empire.

It was as far from ideal as they could get.

It was also Holy.

and it represents the scandal of the Incarnation.

“Incarnation” means “to take on Flesh”

And Christmas is the celebration of God’s son, Jesus Christ,

Taking on flesh and living among us.

The scandal is that of all the ways God could be with us,

The Son chose this way.

God chose to identify with his people

in the most vulnerable ways possible.

God chose the marginalized and the suspect.

And while Christ was walking among his people,

He continued to reach for the marginalized and the suspect.

When he died on the cross, he died as one of the marginalized and suspect.

When he rose again, he showed that there was a power greater 

than the way the world orders itself.

And that the business of God is salvation for all

by pointing out that the world’s ways of seeing power

are destructive of the very people we are called to love.

So why care now?

The work is not yet done.

Christ’s incarnation is still ongoing by we who are members of Christ’s body.

I chose “incarnation” as the name for this campus ministry

Because the greatest witness to God is to be Christ to all we meet.

Next semester, new opportunities will arise for us to do so.

We may be imperfect.  

We may be surprised.

We will also find that holiness abounds around us

as we imitate Christ.

I want to end tonight by giving thanks.

Thank you all for being here and returning week after week.

Thank you for offering support.

Thank you for giving your encouragement.

Thank you for sharing your gifts.

I look forward to seeing you next semester!

Sermon: Worship and hypocrisy

Sermon, Proper 14
Year C

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the LORD;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation--
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

In the name of God…

I’d like to point out that we have read a passage of scripture in which God says God will not accept worship, smack dab in the middle of a worship service.  If that feels a little strange to anyone, that’s okay. It should feel a little odd.  Part of struggling with the text of the Bible is acknowledging that we will be confronted with dissonance.  The trick to biblical interpretation is to attempt to resolve the dissonance without removing the text from your life, or dismissing the text, or losing your own voice in the process, or shutting God out of the loop as you encounter the text.

In my own estimation, the brilliance of reading this text against worship in worship is that it is a denouncement of worship that practicing communities of faith need to hear—and communities of faith, by hearing this text in worship, are then confronted with that which calls their very existence into question.ibodd. t'rship service.  If that  accept  let our neighbors starveheir apathy toward the needy.  e

A week ago I mentioned that I loved the prophets.  I praised the power of the language the prophets used, and I spoke of the prophets’ offering insight into the mind of God.  But what I love most of all is that the prophets are examples of a religious tradition critiquing itself.  The prophetic voice is a remarkably valuable voice to have in the Bible where —instead of a unified book with only one voice dominating the story—we have a variety of believers speaking for God, and calling themselves and others back to the best and truest natures of the tradition

and the revealed nature and desires of God.

Why is this a valuable thing? Well, what the prophets bring to light, and are trying to warn us about, is the all-too-human propensity to allow our virtues to blind us to our vices.  In the Bible, the prophet is not simply one who seeks to predict the future.

The prophet is the ultimate BS-Detector,

A critic,

A herald of God who challenges those who fuss over the frivolities of the faith tradition while leaving the weightier matters of justice and love and faithfulness unfulfilled.

In other words, prophets called the people to drop the illusion that everything was okay, and see the reality of others in pain.  Prophets challenge the tendency of the religious to express self-satisfaction at a perfect worship service while letting their neighbors starve. 

This is seen very clearly in our passage from Isaiah today.  In the Bible, Isaiah is the first book of the prophets; we are in fact reading the first chapter of the first book of the prophets.  If you were to open the Bible, we are on the first page of the prophets.  And what is God’s first order of business through the prophet Isaiah?  An assault on worship!

Isaiah musters some of the strongest language he can; calling out both ruler and ruled alike by comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah; cities tradition held God had completely destroyed because of their excessive wickedness.  That notion of utter destruction is Isaiah’s warning to the Kingdom of Judah.

Oh, by the way.  It is a common interpretation that the sin of Sodom has to do with sex, and particularly homosexuality.  The idea that Sodom and Gomorrah have to do primarily with sex is a later interpretation that shows up in history near the end of the formation of the New Testament continued with the Church Fathers, and has been misconstrued up to today.  The prophets understood the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah to be greed and injustice.

When the prophet Ezekiel wrote of Sodom, he said:

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom:she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

There is much more to be said about this, but the part we need to remember for today is that the notion that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah had something to do with sex is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament or in the four Gospels. What is found instead, is that both cities were renowned for their inhospitable behavior, their greed, and their apathy toward the needy. That is the thread running through the Old Testament and the Gospels. [See, for instance, Luke Ch. 10, when Jesus notes that failing to heed and take in his disciples would bring a worse judgment on the town than was brought to Sodom. The comparison makes more sense given the reputation of Sodom to have been inhospitable to visitors.]

And by bringing to memory Sodom and Gomorrah, God speaking through Isaiah brings to light the problem of  worship in Judah.  Judah and Jerusalem continued their duties to God in worship, but left the harder work of taking care of the vulnerable undone.  And God will have none of it.  In God’s eyes, “worship unconcerned with justice is obscene.”[1]

In essence, God calls out Judah and Jerusalem for their hypocrisy.  The hypocrisy being that the service to God in the temple would remain so exacting while the love of neighbor so vital to God’s desire for the world would be ignored.

This was not an isolated incident either.  The prophet Amos also notes God’s displeasure at sacrifices without justice, saying,

 I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.[2]
Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And Jesus himself echoed the prophet Hosea, when confronted about the low company he was keeping or the rules he and his disciples broke, by saying:

If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.[3]

After the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, Paul and James also wrote against favoritism and the ignoring of the needy in the midst of the community of faith.

And sermon after sermon, treatise after treatise, throughout the centuries have pointed to the same temptation of the worshiping community of God: that there is a temptation that a Christian’s service to God will eclipse the service to neighbor, instead of providing the basis for service to neighbor.

Christians serve a God who enables through worship and community a tangible expression of God’s love and comfort. This is a wonderful benefit to relationship to God, but it can be twisted and fouled when Christians bathe in such feelings and leave worship with a sense of finality to our purpose. The danger is that sometimes Christians seek God only for solace and self-satisfaction without opening ourselves up to strength and purpose toward the world God asks us to participate in improving.

Christians are then open to the charge of hypocrisy by anyone with some understanding of our own scriptures and tradition; and so I believe that keeping an understanding of the temptation for religious self-satisfaction and self-deception matters for Christian mission and witness in the world.

In a world in which there is a longing for something more real than what we can be sold or what we can be told by figures in authority, the Church suffers a crisis of relevance that will not simply be solved by arguing over what worship style will attract new people; but by how we connect people to God and how we treat those whom we meet.

I remember a survey of young people that was conducted in 2007 which asked the youth to do some word association.  The interviewers asked the youth what came to mind when they heard the word “Christianity.”[4]

“The vast majority of non-Christians in the group — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical.

Such views were held by smaller percentages of the active churchgoers, but the faith still did not fare well: 80% agreed with the anti-gay label, 52% said Christianity is judgmental, and 47% declared it hypocritical.”

Another way to interpret the data is that Christianity at large is known for who Christians are supposed to hate and for holding people to moral standards which Christians may conveniently excuse themselves from following.

Granted, these numbers are from six years ago, but I know of no new research that has indicated a massive change of opinion.

The numbers and the perceptions also resonate for me, because my own life includes the story of disgust with Christianity and of leaving the church.

In 2001, I was 17 or so, and I was in my final year of high school.  I was considering asking out a classmate.  Not an out of the ordinary thing for folks in high school.  What was slightly out of the ordinary was that my classmate was African-American.  A little bit of context, I am from Mobile, AL, which was officially racially segregated until the 1960s, and still seems unofficially segregated in many ways.

My parents, to their credit, were not dead-set against the idea.  They, however, remembered and witnessed the racism entrenched in Southern society, and were worried about me taking on all of the problems an interracial relationship could bring. 

Seeking some comfort and some strength, I sought out my church (I was not Episcopalian at the time).  I remember sobbing in the pew one Wednesday night as I struggled with what to do.  The pastor saw me at some point, and came over to talk to me.  I told him about wanting to ask this classmate out.  The response came swiftly; interracial dating was, as he said, “against the Bible.”

At that moment, I was done with Christianity.  The hypocrisy and double-standards overwhelmed me.  The same pastor who could stand in worship and talk about how in Christ the divisions between humans no longer matter and salvation was open to all [Gal. 3], was now telling me that racial separation was divinely inspired.  I had been raised to consider my church the pinnacle of Christ’s true faith, yetI thought that if the very Bible these Christians claimed to be infallible and without error could not break through the evils of racism, and instead confirmed in them their sense of racial superiority, then Christianity was a lie—a belief system totally compromised and malleable to the prejudices of the believer.

I left Christianity that night.  At the end of the year, the church gifted me a college scholarship, and I returned the money the very same day.  I wanted nothing from them.  I was done.

Well, as you can see, I came back to Christianity.  That is a longer story, but the point I wish to make is this:

The realization that some expressions of Christianity followed the prophets in continuously holding up their own practices and social prejudices to sometimes painful introspection—and in so doing continually attempt to find ways to reform themselves into more just and loving communities of faith—convinced me to give Christianity another try.[5]  I know I was not alone in the longing for such a vision of Christianity, in which the people of faith struggle to find a fuller expression of what God was calling into being. 

I would suggest that if Christianity wants to be taken seriously, believers would constantly seek to find where our practice falls short of our pronouncements, and figure out how to bring our preaching and our actions in line.  

For in those moments in which self-satisfaction and illusion falls to reality,

—and when we see the world and ourselves as God sees us,

—and when we continue to act to bring love and justice into tangible form,

—dear people of God, truly holy moments are possible and accessible to a world hungry for good news.    

---

[1] Paul Simpson Duke, Feasting on the Word, Year C Vol. 3, 319.

[2] Amos 5:21-24

[3] Mt. 12:7.

[4] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-10-10-christians-young_N.htm

[5] I may not have articulated this in the same way in 2004-2007 as I was making my way back into Christianity, but I understood the prophets’ call to Israel to re-commit to the poor and needy was part and parcel of my liberatory social ethic and eschatological hope as detailed in Matt. 25.

God's wrath and God's love

Sermon, Year C, Proper 13

Hosea 11:1-11
Psalm 107:1-9, 43
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Personally, I love that we have been reading the prophets of the Old Testament as we have done for the past weeks.  We will continue to do so for the next few weeks as well.

There is great power and emotion in the words of the prophets.  The language and imagery are visceral and striking.

Yet it is sometimes difficult to follow what is going on as we skip from prophet to prophet.  A few weeks ago we had Amos, now Hosea, next week Isaiah.  Perhaps the skipping around also leads us to wonder what is going on with the prophets.  And while the prophets often have overlapping concerns, the prophets all have a different emphasis and set of opponents with whom they are arguing, but we often do not get enough of the text to clearly picture what is really going on.  For instance, Ezekiel was concerned with the priestly class and ritual purity, Hosea spoke of Israel’s (in)fidelity to God with the imagery of husband and wife (and today, parent and child), Amos (actually all of the prophets) were concerned with social justice for the abused and neglected.

But simply catching snippets of the prophets leads to a sense of dissonance. The power of the language, which is often strong and condemning, may make us wonder why we follow this God at all.

Why read the prophets?

The prophet is angry.

God is angry—wrathful, in fact.

What is uplifting about this?

And the image of the angry God brings an uncomfortable question:  How do we reconcile a notion of a God of mercy and love with a God capable of wrath?

In trying to deal with what sometimes seems to be an unbridgeable contradiction, it seems to me that--sometimes­—Christians may err too far on the side of wrath or love to the exclusion of the other.

This may be an odd both/and to argue for, but stay with me.

I think you may know what I mean.  There are Christians who seem to take delight in the idea of others in suffering.  They at least seem apathetic to the suffering of others.  I remember, one night in Gilbert, I passed a street corner where a youth group was standing, shouting and holding signs up to the passing cars and assuring us of our place in Hell.  There was not even an attempt to offer a way out; which one might expect from them.  (Oh God! Where’s my fire insurance!) That is near the top of my list of “bad evangelism techniques.”  It’s not number one—someday I might tell you what is—but it’s close to the top.

I have heard Christians speak of wanting to see atheists burning in Hell, because “that will show the atheist who was right.”  I somehow think these Christians have missed some basic understandings of loving our neighbors as ourselves, and they attribute human wrath (and a longing for vengeance) to God.  St. Paul admonishes us to put away things that are earthly, and set our minds to things above.  I submit that longing for God’s wrath to fall upon others is a misplaced and earthly hope.

On the other hand, there are Christians who claim God is love and mercy with no hint of disapproval of anything.  I might lean more towards this view, because it has been important for Christianity to reclaim a sense of the goodness of the world God has made.  Yet, I am also troubled by this view.  If God gives an unqualified ‘yes’ to all we do, then God is essentially giving license to all forms of discrimination and abuse we see. That is not good news to poor and the oppressed, who often suffer for the sake of the comfortable and the powerful.

How do we reconcile a notion of a God of mercy and love with a God capable of wrath?

This question is why I want to stay with the reading from Hosea, because in this passage from Hosea, we have one of the very few inner monologues of God recorded in scripture.  And in this passage God has to reconcile those very notions of wrath and mercy in God’s own mind.

Let us return to the text.  After describing Israel’s abandonment of God, We hear God describe God’s tender care for Israel as though a parent caring for a child.  The language is evocative and heartrending as God says:

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,I took them up in my arms;but they did not know that I healed them.I led them with cords of human kindness,with bands of love.I was to them like thosewho lift infants to their cheeks.I bent down to them and fed them.

Can you picture such a scene?

Perhaps you have lived it.

The care for an infant.

The devotion to a life not your own.

Sometimes, the pain of separation.

God remembers taking Israel out of Egypt.

God remembers protecting Israel in the wilderness,

God remembers feeding Israel.

God remembers establishing relationship through covenant.

God remembers Israel’s turning away.

God remembers what once was.

God struggles, and gives thought to deserting Israel who has strayed so far.  Wrath and anguish, memory and love collide within God.  God suffers a contradiction.

Until God remembers who God is.  God speaks in the text again:

How can I give you up, Ephraim?How can I hand you over, O Israel?My heart recoils within me;my compassion grows warm and tender.I will not execute my fierce anger;I will not again destroy Ephraim;for I am God and no mortal,the Holy One in your midst,and I will not come in wrath.

Theologian Stacey Simpson Duke describes the passage this way: “This is not the story of the prodigal son who, having struggled with his own bad choices, finally turns and comes home.  This is the story of a prodigal God who—in anguish, heartbreak, and the fiercest love—comes seeking out the children who have strayed.”

God violently recoils at the thought of abandoning Israel.  And the components of the divine life, specifically divine wrath and divine love come together.  They fuse to each other in a new purpose.[1]  God will seek out and liberate Israel again with the ferocity of a lion…with a roar to which God’s people will respond with trembling, but God will not abandon them.

Beloved of God, listen carefully.

The simplicity of the Gospel is that God loves us.

The difficulty of the Gospel is the recognition that God loves all with the exact, same, equal loving regard, and so all are worthy of our love and care.  This is a powerful claim of the Christian faith--a powerful truth which deserves unreserved proclamation.

Our God is a god of love who has promised to stay beside us and never abandon that which God has made. It is a love deeper than wrath yet fired with passion by anger at the human capacity to injure others­--and in injuring others we subvert God’s equal regard for our neighbors.

But there is a difference between God’s wrath and human wrath. We’ve seen human wrath in the world. While human ways of showing power seem to be demonstrations of destruction, the imposition of will upon others, and the hording of resources, borne of malice and greed, God says ‘no’ to these forms of power and call us to a different way. 

For the power of God is love, a life-giving power stronger than anything the world can summon. The power of God is the power to bring about the fullness to which we are called to reach through the indwelling of the Spirit of God. 

All of the divine life--especially love, but also anger--come to the creative purpose of restoring the world which God has made--

to liberate those under oppression,

to mend that which has been broken

to call into being healing and peace where sorrow and division fester.

To bring generosity where greed reigns.

To bring forgiveness where situations are thought to be irredeemable and hopeless.

The deepest trait of God is that all else about God gives way to a ferocious love fused with a passion for all that beckons us to follow.  As St. Paul says, we are clothed in a new self which restores within us the image of Christ and our Creator.  God relentlessly seeks us, desires to recommit to relationships with us, invites us into--and empowers us for--the renewal of the world, which is God’s labor of love.  It is a fierce love that seeks to work against that which destroys what God creates us to be.  It is a love with a sense of urgency, drawing us to God even as it propels us into the world and toward our neighbors.

May you listen carefully for where God calls you to act in love for another.

May you may know it when a godly anger at injustice stirs within you God’s call to act.

May you know when it is your turn to be a prophet.

Amen.

---

[1] Paraphrase of Katheryn Pfisterer Darr.

Boy Scouts and Bad Arguments

I was not going to say much about the decision to allow gay youth to participate in the Boy Scouts.  I was never a scout.  I have no connection with the organization other than knowing a few people who have participated.  My attention has been elsewhere, even as I was glad others were putting in the time to keep gay youth from being barred from the organization.

However, this past week I’ve seen two articles about some of the backlash the Boy Scouts have received.  For instance, churches are deciding not to host/sponsor the scouts, and parents are pulling their sons out of the organization for religious reasons.  While the scouts are outside of my experience, the Church, Christianity, and religion are not.  I will pull a few things from these articles that I find to be problematic: the winning-out of what I call “fear, caste, and cooties” and the matter of for what—and for whom—the Church exists. 

[I will not address homosexuality and Christianity directly here.  Time and space make such a detailed argument unwieldy for a blog post.  But through the study of scripture, theology, and history, as well as my experience of Christianity with LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ, I find the categorical condemnation of homosexuality as sin to be deeply flawed.  This is not to say that there is no such thing as sin in relationships or the use of sex.  I simply locate the moral locus in what people believe and do (or leave undone) instead of who they are as a person created in the image of God, and so possessing an essential dignity worthy to be recognized.]

First, some general observations from the first article.  One pastor defended his decision, saying "we don’t hate anybody...we’re not doing it out of hatred. The teachings of the scripture are very clear on this. We’re doing it because it violates the clear teaching of scripture."

There is a fascinating paragraph in which the pastor of one of the churches says 

"The Boy Scout Leadership has handed down a decision that none of the children in Helena or elsewhere associate with why they are Boy Scouts. This is a decision that was made by adults that may or may not reflect the opinions of any Boy Scout in the troop that we host. I hold the Helena Boy Scout troop with no fault whatsoever."

This is an odd sort of Christian love.  The first pastor is saying that they are not motivated by hate, but near-apathy and unequivocal separation are necessary and acceptable. The second pastor is guaranteeing that all scouts are all equally ostracized from his church for a decision he acknowledges they had no control over and may not agree with.  Personally, I find this to be closer to "fear, caste, and cooties" than Christianity.

The concern I want to explore in some depth is the matter of for what and for whom the Church exists.  Such questions about gate-keeping help to clarify when Christians step into the role of 'judge' that is supposed to be left to God.  A rather telling exchange occurs between a father and son in the second of the above articles:         

Mike A. Miller, a union electrician in Mount Holly, N.C., who said he was pulling his 9-year-old son, Cody, out of the Cub Scouts and would step down as assistant den leader of Pack 45. Monday will be his son's advancement ceremony to Webelos – as far as he will go with the organization

“It was hard to explain to a 9-year-old the complexities of why I was telling him that we had to quit,” Miller said. “He told me, 'Daddy, it should be like church. Everybody should be welcome.'”

Miller said he then told Cody that the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness — not for being all-inclusive.

“I said, 'These people aren’t asking for your forgiveness,'” Miller, 51, told NBC News in a telephone interview. “What they're doing is saying, 'this is what I am and you have to accept me like I am. I'm not coming to try to change.'

It should be mentioned that this story is told by the father, mediated by the reporter.  Let us however take it at face value--that we have an accurate account of the father's conversation with his son. The father and the son are talking about two different things.  The son makes the claim that everyone should be welcome at church.  That is a statement about who the Church is for.  The father countered with the claim that the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness.  That is a statement of what people do at church.

The father conflates these two issues--of what the Church is for and who is invited--and so creates a false dichotomy.  For ease, let's call the issue of who is invited to the Church "welcome" and the issue of what the Church is for--forgiveness, according to the father-- "sanctification."  Sanctification means "to sanctify" or "make holy."  It is a term that can cover a range of moral and religious concepts that include recognizing sin, asking forgiveness, repentance, and seeking greater holiness. These two issues that the father conflates, when separated, should read like this:

1. Either the Church welcomes everyone or the Church sets barriers on who may participate.
2. Either the Church accepts everything about a person and makes no moral claims on a person or the Church recommends the seeking of forgiveness for sin.

The father is assuming that mere welcome implies that no claims are made upon those who are welcomed.   He instead begins his reasoning by arguing about what people do at Church and arrives at the conclusion that the Church cannot welcome all. 

The child's assertion comes closer to good theology than the father's.  This is partly because the son avoids the conflation.  And I should be clear that I am not arguing for a morally nihilistic community with no sense of critical engagement with the lives of members, nonmembers, and the larger world.  What I mean to say is that the child is more correct about for whom the Church exists, and the father displays a presumptuous right to judge others.

Let's look at the son's statement.  There is plenty of scriptural evidence that the Church exists to welcome all.  The arc of Luke-Acts (and the other Gospels) is the opening of God's redemption to all.  Paul argues throughout his letters that through the work of Christ, redemption is open to all across boundaries that formerly divided people (including race, gender, and economic status (see Galatians 3, Colossians 3, Romans 3 and 10)).  And contrary to the father's assertion, the mission of the Church is to be inclusive, so that all things are brought to God's loving rule (1Cor 15:28).  In this way, his son is correct.  For the father to deny this would set the father outside of the bounds of orthodox scriptural interpretation on questions as basic as "for whom did Christ die and rise, and who may be saved?"

Now, the father would probably agree with the assertion of universal redemption in the abstract. He seems like he might take the Bible seriously.  But the way the father sets up his false dichotomy seems to say that there are people who are not welcome in the Church.  He conflates unconditional "welcome" into the Body of Christ through which salvation is granted with rejecting the work of recognizing sin, asking forgiveness, and seeking greater moral perfection.  (Also, the father's assertion that "the point of going to church is to seek forgiveness" is too small of a vision for the Church.  There is much more to the Church than that.)

It is at this point where an inappropriate judgment comes into action.  The father is so convinced that LGBT folks are resistant to change that he sees it as better to bar them from participating in the church.  [I should note that the change I think the father would want is for LGBT people to conform to hetero-normative standards of behavior.  When I speak of change, I mean the processes of sanctification that help one seek the holy in all relationships, gay or straight, romantic and otherwise.]  This position the father takes, which assumes some are resisitant to--or beyond all--redemption, goes beyond the moral critique that Christians are (necessarily) called to do, and enters the territory of judgment.  'Judgment,' that action Christians are to forgo because it is the purview of God,  is "not an injunction to spineless acceptance but a caution against peremptory legalisms that leave no space for acts of compassion and witness (see Mt 7:1, Jn 7:53-8:11).”  The father's willingness to speak with finality about the moral status of anyone--and so preemptively bar them from the community of God--is then an inappropriate judgment, motivated by fear and stereotype. 

It is also a judgment God has the power to thwart.  I believe that we will be surprised to see how God continues to work at extending love into places where we lesser beings thought we would never find such grace.  My hope is that Christians continue to seek that love wherever it shows itself.

Mary and Martha

Sermon--Pentecost, Proper 11, Year C

Amos 8:1-12
Psalm 52
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

Mary and Martha, Mary and Martha.

The story seems so familiar.

Mary: the quiet dutiful disciple at the foot of Jesus soaking everything in.

Sometimes Mary comes to stand as the example of the contemplative life, where all one needs to do is lead a quiet life of prayer in order to have chosen the better part.

Then you have Martha: the distracted busybody who invites Jesus over only to become annoyed when she is the only one doing anything.

Sometimes Martha comes to stand as the example of what happens when Christians or churches try to do too much, try to be too active, and so miss out on what is really important. In some very extreme forms, the perceived danger of being a “Martha” leads to people finding hospitality and social outreach —which are concrete ways of showing concern for one’s neighbor— to be secondary, and concerns more-easily dismissed.

Too often, when one hears this story from the Gospel, one hears more of “Mary or Martha” as though one must choose to follow the example of only one of these women, or as though these two women represent ideas that are always opposed. Some care needs to be taken before this brief exchange between Martha, Mary, and Jesus leads us into forcing ourselves and others into a false choice between what seems to be two opposed patterns of life.

To do this, we’ll need to look at what went right —and wrong —with Martha, what Mary understood from the beginning, and what we might learn from both about the nature of hospitality.

Let’s start with Martha. What was going right here? First of all, she was showing hospitality to Jesus. Hospitality is incredibly important in the whole of the Bible. If we were to just stay in the book of Luke, recall that Jesus sent first the twelve disciples, and then the seventy, to the surrounding towns to preach.[1] He sent his disciples with nothing —not even an extra shirt or sandals— making them totally dependent on those whom they would meet. In short, the disciples were given the responsibility to proclaim the news of the Kingdom of God, and they were expected to live on the hospitality others provided. Jesus says they were being sent out like lambs among wolves because they had nothing about themselves on which to rely. The hospitality they were shown—or not shown— was in effect a test of the town. To turn away a stranger in need —particularly one who was proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God—reflected poorly on the town.

Jesus, being the wandering preacher that he was, also had to rely on the hospitality of strangers and friends. Martha did right by inviting Jesus in, and taking on all of the responsibilities that doing so entails. This includes food, comfort, protection.

And if you have invited someone to your home, for a night or for an extended stay, you know how busy you can be. You have to buy extra food, wash more towels, maybe give up the exclusive claim to your own bathroom...

This busy-ness was not the problem, since we see that Jesus relied on hospitality for himself and his disciples [further, in Acts 6, we see the disciples assign folks to serve in hospitality so that neither preaching or service  to others are neglected].

So what was the problem for Martha?  Well, the problem was not that she set herself to complete many tasks, the problem was that she was eventually consumed by them.  The problem was not that she was trying to be hospitable, and so wasn’t also sitting at Jesus’ feet; for Martha’s hospitality and Mary’s attention are both ways of showing devotion. Instead Jesus names the problems as worry and distractibility.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Prone to worry? Easy to distract? Anybody?

The problem was that in the midst of her tasks, Martha’s “practices of hospitality were eclipsing their purpose. Hospitality that is anxious and troubled loses its focus, which is Jesus, who is Lord and guest.”[2]

Understanding the focus of our hospitality as having something to do with the Christ we proclaim goes to the heart of what hospitality is, and why Christians are called to practice hospitality with such care. We learn in the Gospel of Matthew that what we do for even the least of those whom we meet is also done for Christ.[3] We learn in the Book of Genesis that all are made in the very image of God, and so are worthy of respect and dignity by virtue of sharing something so central to our own humanity. An act of hospitality on our part is an act of love for another who bears the image of God in Christ. It is an enactment of the ethic of the Kingdom of God in which all people have a worth intrinsic to themselves.  Our practices should call into serious question worldly ways of determining the worth of individuals, ways which all too often will not look past the surface layers of wealth, race, or gender...to name a few examples.

Martha, in her effort to call her sister and her guest to task for not cooperating in her own vision of what the visit should have looked like, lost sight of why she invited Jesus in the first place.

As for Mary, it was this single-minded focus on Jesus as the guest, and not simply her presence at his feet, which made Mary the clearer example of discipleship in that very moment. In this exchange between Mary, Martha, and Jesus, it is that matter of focus on God in Christ to which Christians need to attend, not a false choice between more prayerful or more active manners of devotion.

So. Okay. Mary and Martha were lucky enough to have Jesus in the flesh in their very home. How do we, today, find that focus? There are ways, both prayerful and active, which have been passed down through the generations. Reading and praying with scripture is a direct encounter with others’ experiences of God. Through the scriptures, encounters with God are still possible As we immerse ourselves in a story we continue to tell and take part in. Prayer in which we leave room for God to speak into our silences remind us that we are in conversation with God, not possessors of a one-way wish-granting hotline. Serving others with hospitality, here at church and elsewhere throughout the week, attune our eyes to finding God in unexpected places. Even starting a conversation with someone you do not know can become an avenue to give or receive God’s grace —and coffee hour is a good place to practice doing this.

These practices: encounter with scripture, prayer, and practicing hospitality, can help us keep a focus on God as we seek to serve our neighbors.

In the Christian tradition, we also have examples of holy people trying to maintain a balance between contemplation and hospitality. In Benedictine monasteries from the 12th century to today, the arrival of guests was seen as an opportunity to serve Christ in the visitor, rich and poor alike. And monks [well, at least the priors] would suspend their own fasts—their own self-imposed spiritual disciplines— in order to eat with their guests.[4] This is an example worthy of the attention of all Christians.

Now focus is one thing. I want to end by talking briefly about distraction, and leave you with a few questions. It is easy to lose sight of God in the bustle of our lives. After all, Martha managed to get distracted while Jesus was sitting right there.

What are the things in our own lives that lead to distraction? What keeps us from being attuned to the murmurings and messages of God?

For Martha, it was the demands of the household that blinded her to the memory of why she was showing hospitality in the first place.

What about us, as individuals or as a community?
What holds our attention?
Where might God be calling us to make a change, so that we may hear more clearly that which God is calling us to do?

May your listening be fruitful.

Amen.



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[1] Lk 9:1-7, 10:1-16.
[2] Matthew L.Skinner, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3, p. 267.
[3] Mt 25:31-46.
[4] The Rule of Benedict, Chapter 53.

Who gives us our identity?

Sermon for St. Augustine's, Tempe
Lent 5, Year C
Philippians 3:4b-14

May only truth be spoken, and only truth be heard. In the name of the holy and undivided trinity, amen.

We’ve all been there.

The party, the gathering, the athletic field, or the meeting where one person turns to you and asks “So, what’s your name?  What do you do?”

In essence, you are being asked “who are you?  What is your identity?"  

And the calculations start. You begin to ask yourself,  “How do they expect me to answer?” “After my name, do I lead with my job description? My department? My alma mater? My ordination status? My spouse’s name? My child’s name?”  

At least that’s how I see some of these conversations, but I’m an introvert and kind of shy. Extraverts may have less angst over these types of meetings.  

I often wonder about these ways of marking our identity. They are descriptive; they help the other person get to know you. But sometimes these identity markers can seem superficial, right? When you are talking about these markers, have you ever noticed that you can tell the difference between the merely descriptive markers of identity and the ones that—in saying them—bring you joy?  Even more slippery is telling the difference between the markers that bring joy to speak, borne of a deep connection with the best and truest expression of our own self—as opposed to the ones that show a pride in external achievements we think other people should recognize.    

Paul had these issues in mind when he was writing to the Philippians. What we didn’t hear in the reading is that there were folks in the congregation in Philippi who are trying to push for circumcision as a requirement for being in the community.   Paul is saying that it is not the case; that the surpassing value of being a child of God is the root of the faith of Christ.  Paul here is challenging the externals markers of religion that are a lesser substitute for the greater measure of the faith:  one’s relationship to God through Christ.  

This text is rooted in a conflict in a church 2,000 years ago, but the principle Paul is showing us is still relevant.  In essence, this passage from Paul is asking us what external markers we rely upon as a substitute for the harder work of being in relationship to God.    

I did not understand Paul’s goal until I decided to rewrite the passage to match my own circumstance.  When I rewrote it, it read something like this:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the religious Institution, I have more: moved through the Commission on Ministry with some expediency, the safe option for ordination with all placement options on the table by virtue of the societal privileges that come with being white, male, straight, married, and young; as to the canons, a transitional deacon; as to zeal, one who can out-Episcopal the cradle Episcopalians; as to manners and etiquette of the middle class, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as foul water and excrement*, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the markers of religion, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.  

This kind of faith sounds difficult—at least it does to me—and this passage uses some difficult words like 'faith' and 'righteousness.' In their current Christian usage, ‘faith’ and ‘righteousness’ sound like a matter of mere belief or mere intellectual assent. But these terms have a depth that goes beyond the mind.   They are words meant to penetrate to a more visceral level—words more felt than thought.   These terms are better understood as trust and relationship. And like the relationships we have with others in our lives—particularly those relationships through which we find our identity and tap into a deep joy— trust and love are to guide our relationship to God.        

But it is so easy to take our performance, our accomplishments, our positions in life as the signs of God’s favor or our deserving of God’s love.   Or to think somehow our actions let us earn God’s love. This is not the case.   Paul is pleading with to us realize that our identity as people of faith is not simply about what we do.  We are not simply fulfilling a checklist.   Our identity is ultimately about living into who God made us to be:  God’s beloved.   And Paul reminds us that there is nothing —nothing!—that can separate us from the extravagant, unearned Love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).

Personally, I sometimes see this as difficult to remember.   I am considered a religious professional, and the outward markings of my position—including the odd situation in which I am supposed to be a servant to all and yet I am treated with deference—can quietly displace God, and I can start to think that I’ve somehow done all of this work on my own.  

Paul is warning us against this supplanting of our relationship to God, and Paul suggesting to us that the most important marker of our identity—the one relationship of love through which we are enabled to love others—is our relationship to God. 

And we are to be wary of any lesser thing in our faith that tries to detract us from this relationship.  

Now, a note of caution here. This does not mean our relationships to other people are necessarily weighed less than our relationship to God.   Jesus noted that the first commandment is to love God, But the second is like unto it: That we love our neighbors as ourselves. The love we show to others is to be the same as the love and trust we show to God, and the love we show others is our participation in the love of God working through us.   

So what?  Why does this matter? 

Let me suggest two reasons.  

Number One:  

We are in the latter part of the season of Lent. Perhaps it is time for a check-in.   Lent is a time where one can choose a discipline to take up or something to abstain from in one’s life. That is not wrong, but the discipline one chooses can easily become a way of trying to please God through an action that does not necessarily bring us closer to God.  

The downside to this way of seeing Lent is that if our attempts in the discipline seem less than perfect, we may think that God is disappointed in us. At the very least we may be disappointed in ourselves. In doing this, we turn religion into a weapon against ourselves, and our own success or failure becomes our measure of our relationship to God.   This is not what God has in mind for us!  

So I’d like to suggest another way to think about how we may have decided to spend Lent:   Let go of any sense of failure —if we have any— and ask how our discipline aids us in developing our relationship to God. What spiritual streams in the desert do we see?   Where do we perceive God doing a new thing in our lives?  Let those thoughts guide us through the rest of Lent and into whatever God may be laying before us.    

Number Two:  

I would encourage us to think about how we or other people might mark our identity —as parent, sibling, spouse, friend, director, professor, manager, deacon, priest.   What markers of identity are sources of pride that replace or mask the relationship to God that God is calling us to?   What relationships are we in that bring to life a deepening of love, and so show us an aspect of the life of God?  

In thinking deeply about who we are in relationship to God and to others, we might find those markers which will let us speak with joy about who we are, about who God is to us, and about what really matters in our lives and in our relationships.   Imagine how speaking those truths that might change the conversations we find ourselves in at parties!  

Amen.

_________________________

*Note: The word Paul uses in Philippians is often translated as 'rubbish,' but in the Greek there is a connotation of human waste. In essence, Paul said a naughty word.