ALL SAINTS CHURCH

Woe be it unto me if I don’t preach the gospel.”  Did Paul mean that he would be struck down from heaven if he didn’t preach?  Or did he just feel that there was something inside of him that would implode or explode if he resisted this inner calling?

Although I find myself in various places in the course of the summer, I feel a great necessity to be centered by the regular celebration of the Word and Sacraments as found in our worship.  The freedom that vacation and summer brings is never without the need to refresh my connection to the Creator and in so doing my connection to myself and others.  

It may be that it is summertime and the living is easy.  But I sense an inner malaise (woe) if there is not a gathering of the community to participate in the presence of Christ.  I pray that wherever you are, you will find a place to worship and celebrate the presence of God with us.  And if you are in town, it would be wonderful to see you here with us.

Remember, wherever you go, there you are and so is our God.

 

“The rich are different from you and me.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Yes, they have more money.” — Ernest Hemingway

 

“It is harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a

camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” — Jesus

 

Sometimes people tell me they like the fact that my sermons seem spiritual.

From exploration, I have discovered that what they appreciate is my

seemingly apolitical perspective. And beyond that I think what they are

saying is, “Leave my wallet and lifestyle alone.” But money and possessions

are always the gilded elephant in the room.

 

 

We want it, we worry about it, we envy it, we hoard it, we flaunt it, we lie

about it, we reward with it and we withhold with it. In short we are

consumers who are consumed by our love of money.

 

 

In our Gloria the congregation affirms, “We praise thee, we

bless thee, we worship thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory.”

Perhaps that more accurately describes our attitude towards money and those

who have it. We, like the disciples, treat the rich like gods and the poor

like the living damned. When we decide where to work some might pray about

it, but how often is the decision really based on ‘following the money.’

 

 

I know it is virtual heresy and offensive speak like this. In many respects

it is now easier and more acceptable to talk about sex than money. These

are the real facts of life. Like sex, we all know it’s there, but better

left alone. If you have a lot, we pretend like it doesn’t matter, while at

the same time signaling to the cognesceti we are part of the club, with our

colors, fabrics, labels, cars, etc.

 

 

In Jesus’ time wealth was also equated with virtue. That’s why his disciples

marveled at his rejection of the rich man, who could not bear to part with

his possessions. These classes and distinctions are how we learn to

understand good and evil. They motivate us and scare us. They are, in

short, the way things are. At least how they are in this world, where we are

called to be in it but not of it.

 

Yet we do not hear resignation when we hear Jesus say,“The poor will always

be you.” While acknowledging the way our world is structured, his life and

teachings offer a constant challenge to the way things are. Time and again

we hear the challenge to name it and an attempt to show a better way.

Whether it is the story of the widow’s mite or the rich young ruler or

teachings against anxiety, Jesus is constantly pointing out the contrast

between the reign of God and the tyranny of mammon. He insists that no one

can serve two masters. We always love one and hate the other. It is also

easy to pretend to love the one you really hate.

 

I know it is pie-in-the-sky idealism to expect people to sell all they have,

give it to the poor and follow Jesus. We don’t even get close to tithing in

most churches. Yet if we are to call ourselves Christians, we need a real

dialogue about this. We have to start seeing, thinking and talking about our

relationship with each Kingdom. We have to start understanding how our

attachment to wealth blinds us to the spiritual values of love, compassion,

forgiveness and the infinite worth of human beings and our sacred connection

to the earth. It seems to me that until we become more aware, we will

continue to be perceived here and abroad as more carpetbaggers than

missionaries.

 

Often we are inclined to practice a variation on the Clintonian, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in our lives.  Maybe it’s more accurate to say what we really practice is, “Don’t ask, don’t know.”   I once had a parishioner who said, “You know everything is going pretty well in my life, and I am afraid if I question too much it will come apart.”   How many of us avoid the doctor with the hope, “What we don’t know can’t hurt us?”  How many of us worship in churches with leaking roofs and rotting floorboards?  How many of us have undetected diseases and unexamined complexes that threaten to undo us physically, psychically and spiritually?

Ignorance may be bliss, but our legal friends will remind us that it is no excuse under the law.  Socrates taught that the unexamined life was not worth living.  Of course that proposition is debatable and is dependent on what is valued.  Nevertheless, Socrates’ voice echoes through the ages like few others. 

I think many of us wish that those around us would examine their lives, so we wouldn’t have to examine our own.  But that is not the way it works.  Ironically, when others do examine their lives, it actually puts added pressure on us to follow suit.

Whether we choose to examine our lives consciously or not, there is always a nagging, persistent suspicion that there is more there to be discovered.  Rarely have I met a patient in the hospital who did not sense when family and friends were withholding information.  Sometimes these hints haunt us in our dreams or manifest in our relationships.  As Bob Dylan sang, “There is something happening here, but you don’t know what is, do you Mr. Jones.”  But we do know there is something happening and maybe we just don’t want to know what it is.  Faith teaches us that in the knowing is also the possibility of the healing and in that light some of us take steps towards a healing knowledge.

This nagging suspicion of a life “under the surface” seems to have motivated the lawyer in Luke’s Gospel.  He asks, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus asks him about the law and he gives the right answers.  Should be case closed.  But the text continues, “Seeking to justify himself he asks, ‘But who is my neighbor?’”

Why didn’t he leave well enough alone?  There was no judgment, no condemnation, no criticism offered by Jesus.  Yet the man knew within himself that there was something wrong.  He had learned to cover this sense of dread by careful use of his intellect.  However, in the presence Jesus’ followers, he could see a joy and contentment that he knew he didn’t have, but wanted. 

The light of the good betrayed the lie the mundane. 

It is possible to leave both well and bad enough alone.  But one of two things inevitably occurs. Either the inner state atrophies and becomes diseased to the point where our wellbeing is compromised or destroyed.  Or we are stimulated by the positive example of others who have found the joy of love and eternal life that compels us to ask for it ourselves. 

To ask for this new life, means radical change.  This change means leaving the comfort of the familiar and accepting that the sacred promises of grace apply to us.  The first step is asking the right questions.

It occurs to me that we are meaning making machines.  Throw us into a room full of objects, lock the door and return a day later and each of us will have created some plausible scenario as to what this was about, and will have arranged the objects in some coherent or useful design.  Some of us will plot our escape; some of us will cry about the inconvenience, some will plot revenge, while still others might marvel at their good fortune. 

Once I performed a wedding where the grandmother of the bride had died suddenly the very morning of the wedding.  There was considerable talk about postponing the ceremony in deference to her memory and because of the pall that her death would cast over the celebration.  After lengthy discussions, everyone decided that Grandma would have wanted the show to go on.  How did they know?  How much was wish driven? How much was economics? How could they possibly celebrate this important event, when the matriarch of the family died so precipitously? The only way to stabilize all these conflicting emotions and events was to decide that, “Grandma would have wanted it that way.”  With that stabilizing thought, the wedding proceeded.  Near the end of the ceremony, as the couple were kneeling to receive a blessing, I raised my hand to offer the blessing and at that very moment, BAM!!! lightening struck the church (or a telephone pole right next to it).  I can’t explain to you the shockthat everyone in the church felt at that moment, but I’m sure you can guess what everyone was saying afterwards. 

“Yes, that was grandma, waving goodbye on her way to heaven.”  Or “That was grandma giving you her blessing.” And so it went. 

Everyone there experienced disparate and contradictory events and emotions.  In the midst of these irreconcilable feelings, they all made meaning.  This is what we do by nature.

We start life without detailed instructions.  Instinctual life takes us only so far.  Our parents communicate the basics of the culture, our schooling teaches us technique, our friends teach us to play.  But eventually the larger questions impose themselves on our psyche: Why are we here, where did we come from, where are we going, what makes for the good life, what is real and is love possible?  These questions rise to awareness as we experience pain and frustration or as we face our mortality.  We can’t have it all and we can’t take it with us, in any case, it’s easy to feel, “I am still not full.”

It is from this lack, that our meaning making capacity, our imagination and our religious faculties become activated.  Blessed are the poor, those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst, because they are the ones who start this journey.  The journey is from acquisitiveness to inquisitiveness.  Those who feel the emptiness of this world start knocking, asking and seeking a deeper foundation of meaning.  Those who don’t make the journey see it as escape, those who do see it as a search for the truth about existence.

St. Paul thanks God that the deeper things in life have been hidden from the wise.  Indeed he writes that, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise and… what is weak in this world to shame the strong.”  It is in our weakness and in our brokenness that we begin to look for and in some ways co-create a deeper truth and experience of life. A different Kingdom if you will.

I think all people take life as it is given to them; they reflect on it, interpret it, just as the wedding party interpreted the lightening.  It becomes the work of faith to move a little farther and deeper.  People of faith move from event to meaning, but then they continue to exercise their human/divine capacities and turn meaning into beauty and beauty into joy and joy into love and love into community and service.  For me this is the arc of the Jesus’ life death and resurrection.  He takes rejection and death and transforms it into new life.  So too, we start with the irreducible reality of pain, suffering and mortality, and through faith we move from chaos, to meaning, joy and love.  In our Eucharist we always remember Christ’s death and resurrection, but in reality this is the work that we are constantly called to do as meaning makers, created in the divine image.  We move from grace to grace, gradually coming into the mind of Christ.