ALL SAINTS CHURCH

Did you ever play “What if?”  I remember in seminary a number of professors and students asked the question, “What would you do if Jesus’ bones were conclusively found?”  The question provoked lots of lively and revealing discussion about what we really want in life and the roll Christianity has on our lives.  Of course the discussion ended with the grateful realization that this would not be possible and that we should all get back to the business of learning and proclaiming the gospel.

Recently, I had a discussion with a colleague about advertising a stewardship event. We wondered, if we told people we were going to discuss stewardship on a particular Sunday, would people be more or less likely to attend church. I know if I hear that Public Radio or Television is having a fund raising weekend I am more likely to change stations. It has been a long time since I found the Labor Day Telethon even of passing interest, let alone entertainment.

So, why would we expect people to want to discuss or hear about stewardship in Church. Don’t most people feel their lives are already too demanding?  If I come to church, don’t I just want to hear something like, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy ladened, and I will give you rest?” The one thing I don’t want to hear is, “We need more money.”

Fund-raising says, we have a service from which you and your family benefit and we need your generosity. Stewardship starts with you and your core identity. From the perspective of faith, we speak about nothing less that the foundation of our existence.  We speak about the spiritual, psychic and philosophical underpinnings of the human condition.  If you want simple answers, jingoism or feel-good platitudes the church should feel alien to you. The Church is founded on the sacrificial love of a young man who faced his mortality with courage emanating from the deepest recesses of his soul and its connection to his God.  We are those people who are called to follow in his footsteps, i.e. finding our life in losing it for others.

Stewardship asks, “How deep are we willing to go?  How aware do we want to be of our lives?  To what degree am I serving myself or alternatively, making myself responsive to God?” On the surface, it may look like fund-raising, but it is as different as comparing Shakespeare to a newspaper tabloid.  There may be nothing wrong with the tabloid, but it doesn’t expand your horizons and it doesn’t challenge your views about yourself and your world.

Yes, Virginia, we are going to speak about stewardship, but we are not going to talk about fundraising or church finances (all in due time!). Now it can be told! This Sunday we are planning an adult forum about stewardship.  We are going to talk about our relation to what we possess and what possesses us.  How do we find spiritual freedom in an economy that works by stimulating our consumer appetites and relies on our need for retail therapy to keep the wheels rolling?

We invite you to join us, this Sunday and every Sunday.  It’s always about going deeper, finding meaning, connection, community and ultimately love and salvation.  It’s always about stewardship and discipleship.  It’s always about “working out our (plural) salvation with fear and trembling.”  As the song says, “Who could ask for anything more?”

I remember a professor who once said to me that my mistake was that I thought the Kingdom of God and the Church were synonymous.  (I think he said that to all the seminarians!) His point was that God’s Reign is not limited to the church. Indeed, God’s presence will manifest itself wherever God chooses.  Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said if you try to silence these people, even these stones will cry out in adoration.

Every day I run across people who tell me they have outgrown church and religion.  It meant something to them as children, but now as adults, they don’t have time for such stories and distractions.  For many, church is replaced by charities and movies, gardens, crossword puzzles and “Meet the Press”.  “I am a good person” I hear on a regular basis. It is as if culture
has taken the best of religion and cast off the excess.

Certainly we are familiar with people taking yoga classes or meditation classes and having no clue as to the root belief systems that gave rise to them.  We might like certain kinds of music that have a gospel and soul feeling to them and yet have no idea about the role this music played in people’s lives in generations past.  We enjoy paintings and sculpture and architecture as if we were anthropologists visiting a bygone time. 12 step programs offer community and confession and refer to a  higher power, but certainly a non-creedal power and one that is open to each person’s interpretation.  Movies often have themes of supernatural forces that need to be obeyed.  Science fiction entertains with mythical, ageless battles between good and evil.  Ethically, I think, most people would ascribe to the golden rule, i.e. “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”  Psychologically, people have been clued into looking for the unknown forces that guide their lives, including the interpretation of dreams and symbols.  All of these derive from our storehouse of faith, yet maintain little or no memory or connection to our faith.

It seems that organized religion has been “picked over” and assimilated into culture.  Somehow it feels like the keepers of the store have gone on  vacation and allowed a wholesale looting (a recurring biblical theme). Without the “store” the culture would have been poorer indeed. But I believe, with the “store” intact and operational, there is a profoundly
greater good available in the apostolic gathering, than in the disjointed exercise of the individual parts.

Each piece is less than the whole.  Each piece, as beautiful and important as it may be, misses the beauty, the depth and the power of the original vision.  Our  gospel calls for nothing less than the authentic transformation of individuals and society.  Our gospel speaks about the eternal verities of life and death and how to find meaning, love, joy and justice and community in this world.  When faithfully practiced, our religion is a powerful witness to God’s love and compassion for humankind.  We have been entrusted with symbols and teachings that can enliven the imagination, expand the soul, and ennoble the will.

The vision of Jesus and Paul and the Apostles was nothing less than a universal vision; a tearing down of every barrier that divides us from each other, our selves and our God.  This vision is built on the power of the resurrection, which saw God’s will as inviting every person to the same banquet table of grace and love. Their vision and their life was based on the belief that heaven was indeed being made manifest on earth. Their task was to make this process conscious.

Perhaps God has a dialectical way of operating.  Those in power always seem to lose their vision.  Indeed, each generation and each of us from time to  time loses it!  It may look like God has disappeared, but I believe God is always seeking “new wine skins” to inhabit and in so doing calls the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak to the same joyous banquet of love and justice that is symbolically prefigured in our Eucharist.

I invite each of you to the joyful celebration of the Eucharist, the celebration of the inbreaking of God’s reign here on earth as it is in heaven.

Our Moses always says, “It will be over soon enough.”  I think what he means is that no matter how hard life is, the difficulties can be endured and our problems, like everything else will pass.  Of course the great Yogi said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”  I think his meaning is echoed by something John Lennon once said, “As long as there is life, there is hope.” (Ironically, this was said in his last interview.)

So, are Moses and Yogi talking about the same “It”? Is “It” just a matter of perspective, as in the proverbial eight ounce glass containing four ounces of water?  Can both be contradictory and true? Or is the contradiction just a mirage?

If “It” is life, scripture tells us that there is no temptation given to mortals that cannot be endured.  There is always the sense that with faith there is a way to make it through seemingly impossible times.  Of course in making it through these impossible times we are changed.  Maybe we learn to see the world differently. Maybe we are less proud of our abilities or selfish in our ambitions.  Maybe we learn to find strength from within rather than from conformity to externals.  Maybe we learn the divine gift of empathy, a feeling for the lives of others. Without faith, we become merely bruised and damaged, cynical and angry.  Yes, scripture and Moses teach us that these present troubles do not compare with the glory that has been prepared for us.  By faith this glory is apprehended and appropriated in this life. And “It” is not just our life, but the circumstances and forces and people that give shape to this life.

And now for the teachings of the Yogi.  Here, “It” is a life that is not only unpredictable and frequently hostile, but is also full of surprising potential.  It is a life of reversals, like the Kingdom of God, where the “stone the builders rejected, becomes the chief cornerstone.”  And the tiniest seed becomes the greatest tree and the servant of all becomes Lord.  It is a world where death is conquered and victory  stolen from the jaws of hell.   Yogi’s world is a world where the camel finds a way through the eye of a needle, the way a slow dribbling grounder from Mookie Wilson weaved its way under Bill Buckner’s glove to win game 6 of the ’86 World Series. In this world, against all odds, against all predictions of doom, life and victory are always in pontentia. The world is not only pregnant with meaning it is pregnant with victory!

Yes, the glass is both half empty and full at the same time.  Or perhaps it is filled with two different things, one you can see and one you can breath.  The pain and trials of this world become the negative space that create the opportunity for transformation.

This year as summer passes, we once again begin in earnest the business of co-creating a voluntary, experimental, community based on the life and teachings of an itinerant teacher from an obscure corner of history. From his life, filled with rejection and persecution we participate in a church based on faith hope and love.  This fact alone testifies to the power of the resurrection.

We begin this work by calling a feast, i.e. The Eucharist and inviting everyone to attend. After the first invitations (yours!), we are to go out into the streets and invite the least, the last and the lost. It is not in our nature to be exclusive.   

So, it will be over soon enough and at the same time it is never over until the eschaton (which is constantly breaking into history).  In the meantime, come celebrate the amazing presence of the Incarnate Love of God here at All Saints.

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.

“Foxes have their holes and birds of the air have their nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Could there be a more poignant description of alienation?  All of us want to belong somewhere.  We join fraternities, sororities, sports teams, interest groups, political parties, business alliances, etcetera.  One of the joys of a group is to have safety from the threat of other groups as well as the threat of a descent into a faceless oblivion. 

Unlike us, foxes don’t worry about belonging, Jesus observes, because they belong to the earth. Birds are fine too, so long as there are trees on the earth.  But we, The Son of Man, and by extension, all humans, are not quite sure where we belong.  Houses and apartments not withstanding, we live as creatures alienated from our environment.  I think Jesus is just stating a core reality principle when he tells his disciples, to be in the world but not of it.  I believe this was the way he experienced his life.  He stood outside the strictures and customs of this world, observing, commenting and associating with others who were similarly dispossessed.  

From his position as outsider, Jesus stood with those in every generation who have fallen through the cracks in the world’s safety net.  He stood with them, ate with them and helped give voice to their perspective of not fitting in.  Why try to save your life, (invest in existence in this world) when it means losing your true identity as children of God?  Can’t you see that this world always tramples on, subjugates and exploits and then discards the poor and the weak?  As seductive as it appears, why would you want to invest in it, Jesus asks in various and sundry ways through out the gospels. 

In the face of all that glitters and for all the allure of money and power and privilege, the real truth is that humans have their true residence elsewhere.  In our mad attempt to quiet our knowledge that we don’t fit, we join groups that shield us from this knowledge.  These groups grant us a certain power, frequently at the expense of excluding others.  When we join the right group we finally sense we become mommy or daddy’s “favorite.”  I think Groucho exercised considerable wisdom when he ironically averred, “Any club that would have me as a member, I wouldn’t want to be a part of.”  He offers us a scathing critique of group pride, only to replace it with personal pride.

I think an even more profound wisdom comes from standing with Jesus, in the knowledge that we are a people out of joint (no room at the inn, no place to lay our heads). In so doing we always make our stand and share our voice with the poor and the persecuted. With Jesus and the prophets, we cannot neglect the stranger and the sojourner, because we know ourselves to be the same.  We cannot turn our backs on our brothers and sisters in Darfur, or any other oppressed and persecuted people who are being driven from their homes, raped and murdered for the sake of the security of some other group.

As Christians we are to be universal men and women.  We affirm God’s love is for everybody.  For the Christian, this Everybody, means starting with those whom the world has forgotten.  St. Peter says in Acts, “Surely I see that God shows no partiality.” Jesus said, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician.” There can be no peace in our world until all the sons and daughters of all people, have a place to lay their heads.  Until this becomes a reality, discipleship calls us to step outside our comfort zones and accept our alien status, as we identify with the least and the lost and the last.  While we are out there, we are able to join hands with all of God’s people, the last first and the first last. Then, with Jesus and all refugees, exiles, prophets and martyrs in every generation, we too can begin our procession toward the Holy City as a single family.  A family where everyone belongs and everyone has a place to lay their heads and everyone shares in the Eucharistic banquet feast.  In the meantime we allow the Word and Sacraments to foreshadow and inspire us towards this vision. 

Imagine, Believe, Act.

This past week one of my colleagues sent an email with a link to an interesting and somewhat provocative article about an Episcopal priest who used to be classmate of mine.  The article was about the Reverend Ann Redding, who had become a Muslim.  The article went on to speak about Ann’s personal journey and how she felt drawn to Muslim spirituality and practice.  In addition, the article listed interviews with various scholars and religious leaders about whether this “combination” of faiths could be valid or consistent with the basic teachings of each faith.  One of the interesting things has been the series of emails from out colleagues on the list serve about the rightness or wrongness of this choice.

Some people were happy that there was this bridge person who could act as a symbol or sign of unity that could help draw the two communities together.  However, most responses were more critical.  They acknowledged the right of every person to their own spiritual journey.  However, they expressed that as a priest in the Episcopal Church, that her public role and ordination vows were not consistent with a faith that denies the unique divinity and salvivic ministry of Jesus.

I am sure this debate will go on for some time to come.  It can’t help but to be controversial and upsetting to many in both faith communities.    Perhaps it is hard to separate one’s feelings about this particular combination of faiths.  For instance, would it have been easier, if someone said that he or she was a Christian who practiced Zen meditation or Yoga?

Many of us choose some syncretic or inclusive practices in our lives.  We gain insight and depth by interfaith studies and borrowing practices.  Gandhi and others have suggested that once we get to the core of any of the major faith we see the unity of all faiths. Of course St. Paul argued in Galatians that to practice or observe Jewish Law in addition to following Christ undermined the suffiency and efficacy of Christ’s sacrificial love.

So as if our church did not have enough controversy, this comes along, perhaps as a delicious distraction.  The one thing that occurs to me from one of my professors at Hebrew Union is that religion seems to operate simultaneously on three levels.  There is the personal level, which by nature can be very idiosyncratic.  There is common practice, which most people take as normative, whether or not they have any official status.  Finally there is what the various faiths have written as law or canon, even if it is little understood or practiced. 

It seems to me that Ann is practicing her own personal journey.  But in so doing she is contravening the norms and rules of the second two categories.  For this she will no doubt suffer some external rejection and censure.  And for the former she will also, no doubt experience deep inward joy.  

It is a complete cliché to speak about how fast the world changes.  Even in today’s New York Times, President Bush is now looking for world consensus on slowing and reversing the effects of global warming.  Maybe Gore won after all?  Yes, one can’t help being overwhelmed by the vertiginous swirl of events in our lives and in our world. 

Yet in the midst of these observable and remarkable changes, I find the more marvelous wonder is that constant, that stays the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Just like in Rick’s Café, “The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.”  At the core of our worship is the truly miraculous realization that the eternal has deigned to become manifest in the temporal.  Sometimes we use the word incarnation to focus our attention on this reality, sometimes we just say Jesus.

For millennia people have acknowledged the still small voice that whispers of divine presence and intimates immortality.  This voice is given utterance in the Word and Sacraments, in human acts of compassion, forgiveness, and sacrificial service. All of this taught and nurtured in the gathering of the faithful. 

As summer approaches, many of us take off for the beaches, parks and mountains for rest and renewal.   Those of us who come to church are doing the rest (Sabbath) and renewal (Gospel) every Sunday.  Each service is testimony, reminder and experience of the beautiful renewing timelessness of God.  In this sense church’s first order of business is re-creation and renewal. By comparison, the beach is just a pleasant distraction. (I know, HERESY!…Off with his collar!)

This summer as you take time off from your “normal schedule” I invite you to step into the wonderful presence of Eternal here at All Saints.  It is not just coming to church, it is a symbolic participation in the renewal and redemption of the world, a world that includes flesh and blood, you and me and the stranger. 

The church is prepared as a bride for the groom and now we are calling the guests to the “wedding feast,” the union of heaven and earth. Won’t you once again consider accepting this invitation?  Why don’t you bring a friend, or even a stranger!  Remember what you were taught, we need all need to share the good news.