Go and Tell
My husband Tom and I recently rented and watched a movie
titled PRESSURE COOKER.
It is a documentary about an inner city high school in Philadelphia.
The school offers an amazing culinary arts program.
Now, lest you think that culinary arts—cooking--would be an easy class,
you obviously have not met—or seen==the teacher of this class--
Mrs. Wilma Stephenson.
Mrs. Stephenson is tough. That’s putting it mildly.
She is a strict disciplinarian with 38 years of teaching experience,
and she has high—I mean pie in the sky high--expectations
for every student.
Her students dare not show up late for class
or worse still, unprepared;
Students quickly learn that Culinary Arts class is not a place
to goof off
or mouth off.
Try it and
they incur wrath like you can’t imagine.
Mrs. Stephenson is tough.
But the truth is,
Wilma Stephenson doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.
But she knows these kids at Frankford High
are going to have to achieve the impossible
to make it out of their crime-ridden
and crumbling neighborhoods,
to escape the demons that haunt them--
body, mind and soul.
What are those demons?
Poverty. Primarily poverty.
But there is also abuse. Hunger. Racism. Illness.
Low expectations. Hopelessness.
Every one a demon.
A demon that can grab hold, possess and destroy you.
Wilma Stephenson, like Jesus, is determined that the demons will not win.
Wilma Stephenson has been there and she knows what it takes to get out
and she knows it is not an easy journey
to get free of those demons.
She also knows that we do it only “with God’s help.”
Wilma Stephenson sees the potential in these young people.
Yes, she has definitely assumed the role as task-master,
but she has also accepted other roles with her students—
cheerleader, surrogate mother, mentor, motivator.
She sees their potential
and she sees her work
to be helping these students
see that potential in themselves--
and then to take responsibility for that potential.
Her Culinary Arts classes are the door to a much brighter future
for many of these students.
Through an annual competition
these students will compete for scholarships to colleges
to earn a culinary arts degree.
Top-rate chefs—especially those with a college culinary arts degree—
command top-rate salaries and positions when they graduate.
Mrs. Stephenson knows that none—hear that---NONE—
of her students’ parents
can afford college tuition.
So Mrs. Stephenson jumps in and gets involved.
Her students learn what it takes to be a gourmet chef.
She helps them understand the scholarship application process.
She teaches them how to manage their time and how to meet deadlines.
And she makes them work and work and work.
Work harder and work smarter.
Her results are impressive.
She points out in the film that last year 11 members of her culinary arts class
landed three-quarters of a million dollars in college financial aid.
Watch the film and you will see
that these students truly EARN those scholarships.
They work hard. They work late. They work early. They give up vacations.
But they do not give up hope.
Wilma Stephenson is a genius at generating hope.
So what does this film PRESSURE COOKER
have to do with Luke’s gospel today?
What is the connection between the students and the Gerasene demoniac?
Between Jesus and Wilma Stephenson?
Luke tells us that Jesus has gone into Gentile territory.
You know how we know?
Because they raise pigs here.
Jews don’t eat pork and they don’t keep pigs.
So we know that this is foreign soil for Jesus.
Foreign soil almost always guarantees that things will not be easy.
Immediately a man---a naked man—violent, shouting,
confronts Jesus.
“I beg you do not torment me.”
Now the disciples probably took one look
at that screaming, crazy, naked man—and like you and me--
wanted to get right back in the boat and go home.
But if you want the safe and easy,
you better not travel with Jesus.
Jesus remains calm but also quite stern.
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind
that Jesus is a person of strength and authority.
He looks with compassion on this man
who has been tormented by demons,
and probably by other people as well.
Jesus sees far beyond the demons—
Jesus looks and sees the potential
in every human being.
Jesus sees all we CAN be.
(And to that, we each ought to say, Thanks be to God!)
Jesus sees all that this man, this man so tormented, so possessed—
Jesus sees all this man CAN be.
Even in this man everyone fears,
even in this man everyone shuns,
Jesus sees what is good and what is possible.
And Jesus commands—
he doesn’t ask, he doesn’t offer a weak little prayer of intercession,
he COMMANDS
the demons to come out of the man.
And that happens.
The man is healed.
The man is free.
The man is saved.
The man is immensely grateful.
This man now wants to go with Jesus.
He wants to follow Jesus wherever Jesus goes.
Out of gratitude, out of amazement, out of transformation.
But Jesus says no.
Jesus says what I need you to do is to go.
To go and tell.
To return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.
To go and live a life that is whole and holy
and to keep reaching out to others.
And the man does just that.
The man does just as Jesus asked—he goes away,
proclaiming throughout the city
how much God has done for him.
You know that had to be hard.
Because these people in his hometown
they only know this man for whom he WAS—
possessed, out of control, some would say mad, crazy,
even mean.
These people in his hometown
do not know this man for whom he is now.
Healed, free of demons,
free of the demons that kept him captive all those years
But Jesus still tells him to go home,
to go and tell others
how his life has been transformed by God.
And this is exactly what this man does.
We cannot be Jesus,
but with time and practice and work,
we can learn to look with the eyes and heart of Christ,
to see the potential,
the possibility that lives in each person.
It is oh so easy
to see another person’s faults and weaknesses.
It is oh so easy to believe
that someone will never be free of their demons.
“Oh, she’ll never change…”
Jesus says wrong.
People do change.
People do live into their potential and possibility.
Wilma Stephenson, that culinary arts teacher at Frankford High,
looks at each student that walks into her class
as full of potential and hope.
She COMMANDS their demons to get lost.
She COMMANDS those students to work harder
than they have ever worked in their entire lives.
She COMMANDS their respect and their love
because she respects and loves each of them.
And love is really at the heart of all hope, all possibility, all change.
Jesus tells the man who is now free:
go and tell how much God has done for you.
Wilma Stephenson goes and tells how much God has done for her
by being a teacher that cares
and sends her students out into the world
with a future filled with hope and possibility.
Go and tell.
It’s called evangelism.
Sharing with others the good news of God’s abundant love.
Go and tell how much God has done for you.
Go and tell.
Go and do.
Go and care.
Go and love.
Go and see the possibilities,
instead of the obstacles.
Go and give hope to others,
just as hope has been given to you—and to me—and to all of us.
Some of us have received mightily, abundantly.
Others?
Truthly, not so much.
Or so it might seem by worldly measure.
But in God’s measure,
we are all receivers of abundant possibility.
In God’s heart,
we all have the potential
to go and change the world.
The source of all that is possible is the love of God.
The potential is here.
The possibility is there.
The time is now.
Go and tell.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Sermon for Year C Proper 5
Anything can be
Listen to the MUSTN’TS,
child,
listen to the don’ts—
listen to the shouldn’ts
the impossibles,
the won’ts—
listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen,
child.
ANYTHING can be.
That is part of a Shel Silverstein poem.
This poem fits well with our scripture readings
for this (Saturday) Sunday,
because these readings are filled with impossibles.
These readings are filled
with God making the ANYTHING come true.
Our Old Testament and our Gospel readings tell similar stories—
someone who is dead is brought back to life.
The prophet Elijah brings the child of a widow back to life.
Jesus tells the son of another widow,
“Young man, I say to you rise!”
And in both stories the dead sit up, get up
and are alive once more.
These readings have troubled me this week.
How do you preach about the dead being brought back to life
without raising the question,
“So, Elijah! Jesus!
Where were YOU
when the breath left the one I loved?
Where were you
when my heart was broken?”
The truth is
there are no answers to those questions.
We can read the stories as miracle stories.
Indeed, raising someone from the dead back to life
qualifies as a pretty major miracle.
We can read these stories as being told to confirm that yes, indeed,
Elijah truly is a great prophet.
Yes, indeed,
Jesus is also a great prophet.
Who else could do such impossible things?
But perhaps these stories are here
not to focus on the ones who are dead
but to focus on the ones
whose lives are so deeply touched by those deaths,
that they themselves felt dead.
The mothers.
Elijah is an important man.
A revered man
Yet he listens when God directs him to the home of a widow.
he goes not just to receive
but to give.
When the woman’s son dies,
Elijah does not just offer a platitude of condolence,
he begs God, he cries out to God,
this woman has suffered enough, God—
undo this death.
Elijah takes the mother’s suffering into his own being
and suffers with her.
We hear in Luke’s gospel that Jesus has compassion for the mother.
She has lost her only son.
She was already a widow.
How much loss can one person endure?
Jesus understands this pain.
Jesus has compassion.
Compassion is very different than sympathy.
Sympathy is saying, “I am sorry this happened to you.”
The word compassion means “with-suffering”—
one who is with us in our suffering, in our pain,
in our absolute agony.
Jesus does not just keep walking.
Jesus does not say, “Well, you know, people die every day.”
Jesus stops.
He sees the woman,
He REALLY really sees the woman,
And he feels her pain in the marrow of his bones, deep in his gut.
So what does this mean for you and me?
We are not able to bring the dead back to life—
Or are we?
You see people can be physically alive
but oh so dead inside.
Perhaps as followers of Jesus,
we are called to compassion,
to be fully present with those who are suffering,
with those whose lives
feel utterly empty.
A few years ago I was covering pastoral care for a friend,
another priest.
We did this for one another and generally, thankfully,
nothing ever really happened
that demanded much from us.
But the night before my friend was returning from her conference,
I got a phone call that no one wants to receive.
It was late at night. It was pouring rain.
A bright vibrant young man—
driving back to Asheville for school,
was hit by a truck,
who was swerving to miss another car,
and the young man was killed.
Instantly killed.
The mother and father and brother and girlfriend were in disbelief.
The mother was hysterical—and furious with God.
The father was calm, keeping his emotions under control,
lest he lose all control.
The brother wept silently. Wrapped in a blanket. Curled in a chair.
The girlfriend was numb with grief.
The amazing thing was how the people of their church showed up.
In the middle of the night.
In the pouring rain.
It did not take a priest
to have compassion.
These people of God,
these followers of Jesus
could not have acted any other way.
Their years of worshipping together,
Praying together, being church together,
Somehow, miraculously,
Led them to do just what was needed that night.
To show up.
To hold one another.
To be compassionate.
To be with that heart-broken family
in the deepest parts
and darkest places of their suffering.
Not everyone has a household of friends who shows up.
Sometimes, like it was for the two widows in our readings today,
it may be just one person.
And even for those who think they don’t even have that one person,
They are wrong.
Because I will tell you for sure and for certain,
God shows up.
Always. Bidden or unbidden. God is there. Here.
God sees us with compassion.
God is right there with us
in the worst of times,
and in the best of times.
It is not impossible to be raised from the dead.
Resurrection.
Listen to the MUSTN’TS,
child,
listen to the don’ts—
listen to the shouldn’ts
the impossibles,
the won’ts—
listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen,
child.
ANYTHING can be.
Listen to the MUSTN’TS,
child,
listen to the don’ts—
listen to the shouldn’ts
the impossibles,
the won’ts—
listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen,
child.
ANYTHING can be.
That is part of a Shel Silverstein poem.
This poem fits well with our scripture readings
for this (Saturday) Sunday,
because these readings are filled with impossibles.
These readings are filled
with God making the ANYTHING come true.
Our Old Testament and our Gospel readings tell similar stories—
someone who is dead is brought back to life.
The prophet Elijah brings the child of a widow back to life.
Jesus tells the son of another widow,
“Young man, I say to you rise!”
And in both stories the dead sit up, get up
and are alive once more.
These readings have troubled me this week.
How do you preach about the dead being brought back to life
without raising the question,
“So, Elijah! Jesus!
Where were YOU
when the breath left the one I loved?
Where were you
when my heart was broken?”
The truth is
there are no answers to those questions.
We can read the stories as miracle stories.
Indeed, raising someone from the dead back to life
qualifies as a pretty major miracle.
We can read these stories as being told to confirm that yes, indeed,
Elijah truly is a great prophet.
Yes, indeed,
Jesus is also a great prophet.
Who else could do such impossible things?
But perhaps these stories are here
not to focus on the ones who are dead
but to focus on the ones
whose lives are so deeply touched by those deaths,
that they themselves felt dead.
The mothers.
Elijah is an important man.
A revered man
Yet he listens when God directs him to the home of a widow.
he goes not just to receive
but to give.
When the woman’s son dies,
Elijah does not just offer a platitude of condolence,
he begs God, he cries out to God,
this woman has suffered enough, God—
undo this death.
Elijah takes the mother’s suffering into his own being
and suffers with her.
We hear in Luke’s gospel that Jesus has compassion for the mother.
She has lost her only son.
She was already a widow.
How much loss can one person endure?
Jesus understands this pain.
Jesus has compassion.
Compassion is very different than sympathy.
Sympathy is saying, “I am sorry this happened to you.”
The word compassion means “with-suffering”—
one who is with us in our suffering, in our pain,
in our absolute agony.
Jesus does not just keep walking.
Jesus does not say, “Well, you know, people die every day.”
Jesus stops.
He sees the woman,
He REALLY really sees the woman,
And he feels her pain in the marrow of his bones, deep in his gut.
So what does this mean for you and me?
We are not able to bring the dead back to life—
Or are we?
You see people can be physically alive
but oh so dead inside.
Perhaps as followers of Jesus,
we are called to compassion,
to be fully present with those who are suffering,
with those whose lives
feel utterly empty.
A few years ago I was covering pastoral care for a friend,
another priest.
We did this for one another and generally, thankfully,
nothing ever really happened
that demanded much from us.
But the night before my friend was returning from her conference,
I got a phone call that no one wants to receive.
It was late at night. It was pouring rain.
A bright vibrant young man—
driving back to Asheville for school,
was hit by a truck,
who was swerving to miss another car,
and the young man was killed.
Instantly killed.
The mother and father and brother and girlfriend were in disbelief.
The mother was hysterical—and furious with God.
The father was calm, keeping his emotions under control,
lest he lose all control.
The brother wept silently. Wrapped in a blanket. Curled in a chair.
The girlfriend was numb with grief.
The amazing thing was how the people of their church showed up.
In the middle of the night.
In the pouring rain.
It did not take a priest
to have compassion.
These people of God,
these followers of Jesus
could not have acted any other way.
Their years of worshipping together,
Praying together, being church together,
Somehow, miraculously,
Led them to do just what was needed that night.
To show up.
To hold one another.
To be compassionate.
To be with that heart-broken family
in the deepest parts
and darkest places of their suffering.
Not everyone has a household of friends who shows up.
Sometimes, like it was for the two widows in our readings today,
it may be just one person.
And even for those who think they don’t even have that one person,
They are wrong.
Because I will tell you for sure and for certain,
God shows up.
Always. Bidden or unbidden. God is there. Here.
God sees us with compassion.
God is right there with us
in the worst of times,
and in the best of times.
It is not impossible to be raised from the dead.
Resurrection.
Listen to the MUSTN’TS,
child,
listen to the don’ts—
listen to the shouldn’ts
the impossibles,
the won’ts—
listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen,
child.
ANYTHING can be.
Sermon for Year C Trinity Sunday
The Trinity as Poetry
I heard on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac
that Saturday, May 29 is the birth day of John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
our 35th President of the United States,
born in 1917.
If he were still alive he would be 93 years old today.
In one of his last major public speeches,
President Kennedy said,
"When power leads man toward arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations."
When power leads man toward arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations.
When we as Christians become spiritually arrogant,
when we think we are the source of power,
that we are the ones in control,
one of the mannerisms we default into
is attempting to keep God in a small box
with a very tight lid.
But almost as soon as we do that--BOOM!
we are reminded of the limitations of that thinking!
That poetic mysterious Trinitarian
everywhere and everything God
blows the top off our box!
The Trinity is very much like a poem.
We can understand it in our bones,
in the very deep place of our spirit—
But to understand it rationally
is difficult and has its limitations.
It would be exceedingly arrogant of me as a preacher
to believe that I can stand here in this pulpit today
and give you a concise clear explanation of exactly
what the Church means by the Trinity.
Theologians have struggled with explaining the Trinity
since the beginning of Christianity
and theologians today still struggle with this.
Me too!
Yet it is a good struggle,
not a struggle of conflict or violence--
but more like Jacob’s struggle with the angel,
a struggle to try to understand God more fully.
Even our own Episcopal Catechism,
doesn’t deal with the Trinity very well.
The Catechism doesn’t even mention the Trinity
until it comes to the questions WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?
and then the catechism tells us
the Holy Spirit,the third person of the Trinity,
is God at work in the world today, even now.
And then you have to flip back a few pages and figure out
Oh, I guess God the Father and God the Son
are the other two parts of the Trinity.
with God the Holy Spirit are the Trinity.
We as Episcopalians are Trinitarians.
We believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Yet we believe in only ONE God.
Three in One and One in three, we sometimes say.
Trinity Sunday is a very different type of Sunday in the Church.
Usually our gospel
or at least one of the scripture readings is narrative,
it tells us a story.
That is not so on Trinity Sunday.
We have Proverbs,
sort of the “Dear Abby” advice column
of the Old Testament.
(Maybe we should call it “Dear Abba”!)
We have Psalm 8—
magnificent Psalm 8—
but psalms are rarely narrative.
We have Paul’s letter to the Romans—
Paul is not a notable storyteller—
he falls much more under the category
of bossy older brother--
“Let me tell you what it means to be a follower of Jesus.”
Sometimes we think our bossy older brother is right,
and sometimes we think he is wrong—just bossy!
And there’s John’s gospel today.
Now the gospel is most often where we hear a story—
because the gospels are about the life and work of Jesus.
But there is no story today.
Jesus is just talking—
“I still have many things to say to you…”
he begins as he addresses his disciples.
First of all, a brief history of how we came to have
this doctrine of the Trinity.
From our earliest days,
we as Christians believed in one God.
We were and are monotheistic.
Like our Jewish brothers and sisters
we understand God the Father,
God the Creator.
Then along comes Jesus.
And we as Christians see Jesus as the face of God in the world.
Then Jesus, on the day of Pentecost says,
Don’t worry, I am leaving this world but I am going to send you
an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.
Hmmm…Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So do we have ONE God or do we have THREE Gods?
So the early theologians got together
and finally in the fourth century officially declared
that God is one essence==that one essence being GOD—
but that essence
is distinguished by three persons or personas --
Father, Son and Holy Spirit—all equal.
We forget that sometimes.
The EQUAL part.
We try to make the God the Father the boss,
The BIG boss,
The head of the God’s family.
But that is not true to our belief or our theology.
God encompasses Father, Son and Holy Spirit—equally.
and that is a difficult concept for us
and why people sometimes use different language—
we keep trying to find better language that
would make these three personas seem more equal--
such as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,
to try to better represent the equality
of these three dimensions of our one God--
but in all honesty,
words are generally inadequate for the Trinity.
The early Celtic Christians
tried to approach the Trinity more practically
by using this teaching rhyme:
Three folds of the cloth yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair,
Three leaves of the shamrock,
yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice,
all in water their origin share
Three persons in God,
to one God alone we make prayer
The 12th century mystic Hildegard of Bingen
tried to explain the Trinity in poetry and song. She wrote:
Who is the Trinity?
You are music.
You are life.
Source of everything,
Creator of everything.
Angelic hosts sing your praise.
Wonderfully radiant,
Deep,
Mysterious.
You are alive in everything,
And yet you are unknown to us.
So why be concerned with something we can’t really explain?
Why should we even care about the Trinity?
Why does our church set aside—every year—
a Sunday
to draw our attention to the Trinity?
I will tell you that a number of priests
do not like to preach on the Trinity.
They will say,
How on earth am I supposed to preach
on something that no one completely understands
or can explain?
A friend of mine sent me an email this week and said,
“I’m not preaching on the Trinity this Sunday. I’m telling a fishing story.”
Well, I don’t fish,
so I AM preaching on the Trinity!
Because I think it is an important and powerful image.
The Trinity is the image of God as community,
God as full and total communion.
We are not called to be Christians in solitude or isolation.
We are made in the image of God
and God is not a solitary ruler or a lone ranger.
So why would we ever want to live our lives in isolation?
Now please understand,
There is a big difference between living alone
and living in isolation.
Many of us live alone, for a multitude of reasons,
but to live in isolation is to live in arrogance and disrespect,
of one another—and of God.
To separate ourselves from the community, the communion
of God’s people is saying,
“I don’t need anyone but me.”
We are a people called to community and to communion.
We enact that every single Sunday—
when we share the bread and wine together.
Regardless of our differences,
our theological differences and our personal differences,
when we receive communion
we bind ourselves to the God of the Holy Trinity
and to one another.
One bread, one body.
We say thank you God for making me part of your holy mystery,
Thank you God for this moment in poetic time.
Thank you God for giving me others,
this motley crew of which I am one,
a community to travel with on this journey.
Thank you.
God never stands aloof or arrogant.
God does not stay up on the mountaintop,
God is always moving,
here, there, everywhere.
God is a living God, a changing God,
a seeking God.
God is always on the move.
That may scare the pants off of us,
but it is the Gospel truth.
Think of the Trinity as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
holding hands and dancing round and round and round--
celebrating all that is possible and hopeful in the world--
and always,
always having room in that circle
for us to join in the dance.
God is never still.
The Holy Trinity is the image of the perfect community.
It is the best image for the church—
not a hierarchy of power
but a community of diverse gifts and functions.
If we can learn to better embody the Trinity
we will be a more faithful church,
we will create a better world.
We are not called to be wallflowers
standing silently or even sullenly on the sidelines,
thinking “I sure hope someone notices my gifts
and asks me to dance.”
No!
We are already invited!
Our names have been on God’s dance card
since before we were born.
We are called to offer what we have and who we are
and to be generous and joyful about it.
This isn’t easy for some of us.
The poet John Donne wrote
“Batter my heart, three-personed God.”
Batter my heart, three-personed God.
What a magnificent prayer!
John Donne was inviting God to come after him
and claim him
in every way and any way possible.
Batter our hearts, O Holy Trinity,
and help us remember
God above us and beside us and beneath us ,
God with us.
God continually on the move
Mysteriously binding us together
into a holy community,
into perfect communion.
Holy, Holy, Holy.
We say it three times.
That is no accident.
In the name of the Holy Trinity—
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
I heard on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac
that Saturday, May 29 is the birth day of John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
our 35th President of the United States,
born in 1917.
If he were still alive he would be 93 years old today.
In one of his last major public speeches,
President Kennedy said,
"When power leads man toward arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations."
When power leads man toward arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations.
When we as Christians become spiritually arrogant,
when we think we are the source of power,
that we are the ones in control,
one of the mannerisms we default into
is attempting to keep God in a small box
with a very tight lid.
But almost as soon as we do that--BOOM!
we are reminded of the limitations of that thinking!
That poetic mysterious Trinitarian
everywhere and everything God
blows the top off our box!
The Trinity is very much like a poem.
We can understand it in our bones,
in the very deep place of our spirit—
But to understand it rationally
is difficult and has its limitations.
It would be exceedingly arrogant of me as a preacher
to believe that I can stand here in this pulpit today
and give you a concise clear explanation of exactly
what the Church means by the Trinity.
Theologians have struggled with explaining the Trinity
since the beginning of Christianity
and theologians today still struggle with this.
Me too!
Yet it is a good struggle,
not a struggle of conflict or violence--
but more like Jacob’s struggle with the angel,
a struggle to try to understand God more fully.
Even our own Episcopal Catechism,
doesn’t deal with the Trinity very well.
The Catechism doesn’t even mention the Trinity
until it comes to the questions WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?
and then the catechism tells us
the Holy Spirit,the third person of the Trinity,
is God at work in the world today, even now.
And then you have to flip back a few pages and figure out
Oh, I guess God the Father and God the Son
are the other two parts of the Trinity.
with God the Holy Spirit are the Trinity.
We as Episcopalians are Trinitarians.
We believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Yet we believe in only ONE God.
Three in One and One in three, we sometimes say.
Trinity Sunday is a very different type of Sunday in the Church.
Usually our gospel
or at least one of the scripture readings is narrative,
it tells us a story.
That is not so on Trinity Sunday.
We have Proverbs,
sort of the “Dear Abby” advice column
of the Old Testament.
(Maybe we should call it “Dear Abba”!)
We have Psalm 8—
magnificent Psalm 8—
but psalms are rarely narrative.
We have Paul’s letter to the Romans—
Paul is not a notable storyteller—
he falls much more under the category
of bossy older brother--
“Let me tell you what it means to be a follower of Jesus.”
Sometimes we think our bossy older brother is right,
and sometimes we think he is wrong—just bossy!
And there’s John’s gospel today.
Now the gospel is most often where we hear a story—
because the gospels are about the life and work of Jesus.
But there is no story today.
Jesus is just talking—
“I still have many things to say to you…”
he begins as he addresses his disciples.
First of all, a brief history of how we came to have
this doctrine of the Trinity.
From our earliest days,
we as Christians believed in one God.
We were and are monotheistic.
Like our Jewish brothers and sisters
we understand God the Father,
God the Creator.
Then along comes Jesus.
And we as Christians see Jesus as the face of God in the world.
Then Jesus, on the day of Pentecost says,
Don’t worry, I am leaving this world but I am going to send you
an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.
Hmmm…Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So do we have ONE God or do we have THREE Gods?
So the early theologians got together
and finally in the fourth century officially declared
that God is one essence==that one essence being GOD—
but that essence
is distinguished by three persons or personas --
Father, Son and Holy Spirit—all equal.
We forget that sometimes.
The EQUAL part.
We try to make the God the Father the boss,
The BIG boss,
The head of the God’s family.
But that is not true to our belief or our theology.
God encompasses Father, Son and Holy Spirit—equally.
and that is a difficult concept for us
and why people sometimes use different language—
we keep trying to find better language that
would make these three personas seem more equal--
such as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,
to try to better represent the equality
of these three dimensions of our one God--
but in all honesty,
words are generally inadequate for the Trinity.
The early Celtic Christians
tried to approach the Trinity more practically
by using this teaching rhyme:
Three folds of the cloth yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair,
Three leaves of the shamrock,
yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice,
all in water their origin share
Three persons in God,
to one God alone we make prayer
The 12th century mystic Hildegard of Bingen
tried to explain the Trinity in poetry and song. She wrote:
Who is the Trinity?
You are music.
You are life.
Source of everything,
Creator of everything.
Angelic hosts sing your praise.
Wonderfully radiant,
Deep,
Mysterious.
You are alive in everything,
And yet you are unknown to us.
So why be concerned with something we can’t really explain?
Why should we even care about the Trinity?
Why does our church set aside—every year—
a Sunday
to draw our attention to the Trinity?
I will tell you that a number of priests
do not like to preach on the Trinity.
They will say,
How on earth am I supposed to preach
on something that no one completely understands
or can explain?
A friend of mine sent me an email this week and said,
“I’m not preaching on the Trinity this Sunday. I’m telling a fishing story.”
Well, I don’t fish,
so I AM preaching on the Trinity!
Because I think it is an important and powerful image.
The Trinity is the image of God as community,
God as full and total communion.
We are not called to be Christians in solitude or isolation.
We are made in the image of God
and God is not a solitary ruler or a lone ranger.
So why would we ever want to live our lives in isolation?
Now please understand,
There is a big difference between living alone
and living in isolation.
Many of us live alone, for a multitude of reasons,
but to live in isolation is to live in arrogance and disrespect,
of one another—and of God.
To separate ourselves from the community, the communion
of God’s people is saying,
“I don’t need anyone but me.”
We are a people called to community and to communion.
We enact that every single Sunday—
when we share the bread and wine together.
Regardless of our differences,
our theological differences and our personal differences,
when we receive communion
we bind ourselves to the God of the Holy Trinity
and to one another.
One bread, one body.
We say thank you God for making me part of your holy mystery,
Thank you God for this moment in poetic time.
Thank you God for giving me others,
this motley crew of which I am one,
a community to travel with on this journey.
Thank you.
God never stands aloof or arrogant.
God does not stay up on the mountaintop,
God is always moving,
here, there, everywhere.
God is a living God, a changing God,
a seeking God.
God is always on the move.
That may scare the pants off of us,
but it is the Gospel truth.
Think of the Trinity as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
holding hands and dancing round and round and round--
celebrating all that is possible and hopeful in the world--
and always,
always having room in that circle
for us to join in the dance.
God is never still.
The Holy Trinity is the image of the perfect community.
It is the best image for the church—
not a hierarchy of power
but a community of diverse gifts and functions.
If we can learn to better embody the Trinity
we will be a more faithful church,
we will create a better world.
We are not called to be wallflowers
standing silently or even sullenly on the sidelines,
thinking “I sure hope someone notices my gifts
and asks me to dance.”
No!
We are already invited!
Our names have been on God’s dance card
since before we were born.
We are called to offer what we have and who we are
and to be generous and joyful about it.
This isn’t easy for some of us.
The poet John Donne wrote
“Batter my heart, three-personed God.”
Batter my heart, three-personed God.
What a magnificent prayer!
John Donne was inviting God to come after him
and claim him
in every way and any way possible.
Batter our hearts, O Holy Trinity,
and help us remember
God above us and beside us and beneath us ,
God with us.
God continually on the move
Mysteriously binding us together
into a holy community,
into perfect communion.
Holy, Holy, Holy.
We say it three times.
That is no accident.
In the name of the Holy Trinity—
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Sermon for Year C Easter 7
A glimpse of the kingdom of heaven…
Paul and Silas come to Philippi.
They are simply on their way to pray,
but there is this annoying girl.
People say the girl is possessed
by a demon—
a demon that sees the future.
A fortune-telling demon so to speak.
Only the fortune
never goes to the girl,
only to her pimps.
Because this is exactly who these men are--
these men who are using and making money off this girl.
This girl they keep as their slave.
Paul and Silas come to Philippi.
They are simply on their way to pray
but there is this annoying girl.
She keeps following them and shouting things
and finally gets Paul so irritated--
you might remember
that Paul has always had a bit of a short fuse--
Paul gets irritated and he stops,
turns around and orders the demon—
in the name of Jesus Christ--
he orders the demon to scram, get lost.
And the demon does.
We don’t really know if the girl likes being free of the demon or not.
We don’t hear anything else from or about her.
What we do know
is that the girl’s pimps are not happy at all.
They grab Paul and Silas
and take them to court.
They make up a bunch of lies
(well, some of it was probably true).
The owners of the slave girl get everybody
all worked up into an ugly mob
and Paul and Silas get a beating and a flogging.
And, as if that isn’t enough,
they are then thrown in prison.
Into the innermost cell.
Which means
the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scariest
worst part of the prison.
Now go figure,
but along about midnight,
sitting there in the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scarciest,
worst part of the prison,
Paul and Silas began to pray
and to sing.
When all the jails are empty…
(Well, maybe not that exact song…)
But they do begin to pray and to sing.
To pray and to sing.
Now jump with me from first century Philippi
to twenty-first century Louisiana.
Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher,
wants the very best for his family—
a beautiful home, nice cars, great clothes, the best schools for his kids.
He gives generously to his church.
He is active and well-respected in the community.
He attends and supports all the right charitable events.
There is only one problem:
Neil White’s bank account can’t keep up
with Neil White’s lifestyle.
He begins the shell game of moving funds from one account to another
to avoid bouncing checks in his businesses.
It works. For awhile.
But then everything falls apart.
The FBI discovers his scheme.
Kiting checks—sometimes, interestingly enough,
referred to as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
Whatever we call it, to the courts it is fraud. Plain and simple fraud.
Handsome, perfect, well-respected Neil White
is arrested and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
He tells his young children, “Daddy is going to camp.”
But this was no camp and no ordinary prison.
This prison was in Carville, Louisiana.
Carville was indeed a federal prison but it was also home
to the last people in the United States
disfigured by what we used to call leprosy.
The more respectful and preferred term
is Hansen’s Disease.
Even today we have no idea how people contract Hansen’s Disease.
95% of the population is completely immune—
but that other 5 % is not so lucky.
Even today there are over 3000 active cases in the United States.
There is treatment,
but there is no preventive vaccine
and no complete cure.
When Neil White discovers that he will share the same buildings
and grounds with “those people”
he is terrified.
As many of us would be.
Carville was the national leprosarium for the United States.
It was meant to be a place of refuge,
not a place of reproach or punishment.
But the truth is,
it was a place of forced quarantine.
People—even children—were taken there against their will
and sometimes against the will of their families.
Though sometimes,
families willingly took their children
and other family members there.
People were—and still are-- afraid of this incurable disease.
Those with Hansen’s Disease were not physically beaten or flogged.
They had not committed a crime;
they contracted and suffered from a random disease.
Yet they, too were, cast into the innermost cell.
Away from their families and away from the world.
Those suffering from Hansen’s disease were hidden away.
They became known as the “secret people.”
Yet these outcasts,
especially an older African-American woman
who had lost both her legs to Hansen’s Disease—
her name was Ella Bounds--
would teach Neil White how to confront his past with honesty,
how to begin to value the things in life that really matter,
how to sing and pray in the darkness.
Carville closed as a leprosarium in 1999 shortly after Neil White’s release
Most of the residents were moved to a hospital wing in Baton Rouge.
Thirty-six refused to leave.
Carville was the only home they knew. They were allowed to stay.
The story we hear this morning in Philippi is about being in prison.
But not just about Paul and Silas in prison.
The girl is imprisoned by her demon and her pimps.
The pimps are imprisoned by greed.
The magistrate is imprisoned by corruption.
The crowd is imprisoned by anger.
The jailer is imprisoned by fear.
Paul and Silas--the only two people in this scripture story today
who are in a physical prison—
are actually not in prison at all.
Even before the earthquake,
before the doors open and the chains are unfastened,
Paul and Silas are already free.
The jailer realizes that –
and he wants that kind of freedom too.
Neil White arrives at federal prison in chains,
both physical chains and spiritual chains.
But he has been trapped in a prison of self-centeredness
for a long, long time.
He has been held captive
by his desire to impress people,
to keep moving up, up, up in the world,
to protect his image,
even if it meant lying and cheating
and fraudulent money handling.
The earthquake for Neil White comes when he sees
those suffering from Hansen’s Disease
as people, as friends.
It is these outcasts who teach Neil White about unconditional love.
Neil White discovers his deep desire
to love like that, too.
Neil White wrote a book about his time at Carville.
It’s title is IN THE SANCTUARY OF OUTCASTS.
When he is released from Carville, he writes:
…at some point after I settled in Oxford [Mississippi] I would take Ella’s advice and find a church. Not just any church. A place like the church at Carville. Where the parishioners were broken and chipped and cracked….A place to ask forgiveness. A sacred place where people were not consumed with image or money. …I would pray. Not the kind of prayers I used to say for miracles or money or advancement. I would ask for something more simple. I would pray for recollection—pray that I would never forget.
Neil White caught a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven
in Carville, Louisiana
and he knew, at last, what he needed.
The jailer caught a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven
in a prison in Philippi
and he knew, at last, what he wanted.
We too sometimes find ourselves bound and held captive.
We too sometimes find ourselves
in the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scariest, worst of all places.
Addiction. Bitterness. Illness. Grief. Abuse. Self-centeredness.
There are hundreds and thousands of dark, dark cells.
We too long for a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven usually shows up
in the most unlikely person or situation.
After a beating and a flogging in Philippi.
After hitting bottom and winding up in federal prison.
When our life is turned inside and out.
We begin to see grace in the midst of the brokenness.
We begin to see light even in the darkness.
We begin to pray and to sing.
The stone is rolled away
and anything is possible.
Paul and Silas come to Philippi.
They are simply on their way to pray,
but there is this annoying girl.
People say the girl is possessed
by a demon—
a demon that sees the future.
A fortune-telling demon so to speak.
Only the fortune
never goes to the girl,
only to her pimps.
Because this is exactly who these men are--
these men who are using and making money off this girl.
This girl they keep as their slave.
Paul and Silas come to Philippi.
They are simply on their way to pray
but there is this annoying girl.
She keeps following them and shouting things
and finally gets Paul so irritated--
you might remember
that Paul has always had a bit of a short fuse--
Paul gets irritated and he stops,
turns around and orders the demon—
in the name of Jesus Christ--
he orders the demon to scram, get lost.
And the demon does.
We don’t really know if the girl likes being free of the demon or not.
We don’t hear anything else from or about her.
What we do know
is that the girl’s pimps are not happy at all.
They grab Paul and Silas
and take them to court.
They make up a bunch of lies
(well, some of it was probably true).
The owners of the slave girl get everybody
all worked up into an ugly mob
and Paul and Silas get a beating and a flogging.
And, as if that isn’t enough,
they are then thrown in prison.
Into the innermost cell.
Which means
the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scariest
worst part of the prison.
Now go figure,
but along about midnight,
sitting there in the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scarciest,
worst part of the prison,
Paul and Silas began to pray
and to sing.
When all the jails are empty…
(Well, maybe not that exact song…)
But they do begin to pray and to sing.
To pray and to sing.
Now jump with me from first century Philippi
to twenty-first century Louisiana.
Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher,
wants the very best for his family—
a beautiful home, nice cars, great clothes, the best schools for his kids.
He gives generously to his church.
He is active and well-respected in the community.
He attends and supports all the right charitable events.
There is only one problem:
Neil White’s bank account can’t keep up
with Neil White’s lifestyle.
He begins the shell game of moving funds from one account to another
to avoid bouncing checks in his businesses.
It works. For awhile.
But then everything falls apart.
The FBI discovers his scheme.
Kiting checks—sometimes, interestingly enough,
referred to as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
Whatever we call it, to the courts it is fraud. Plain and simple fraud.
Handsome, perfect, well-respected Neil White
is arrested and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
He tells his young children, “Daddy is going to camp.”
But this was no camp and no ordinary prison.
This prison was in Carville, Louisiana.
Carville was indeed a federal prison but it was also home
to the last people in the United States
disfigured by what we used to call leprosy.
The more respectful and preferred term
is Hansen’s Disease.
Even today we have no idea how people contract Hansen’s Disease.
95% of the population is completely immune—
but that other 5 % is not so lucky.
Even today there are over 3000 active cases in the United States.
There is treatment,
but there is no preventive vaccine
and no complete cure.
When Neil White discovers that he will share the same buildings
and grounds with “those people”
he is terrified.
As many of us would be.
Carville was the national leprosarium for the United States.
It was meant to be a place of refuge,
not a place of reproach or punishment.
But the truth is,
it was a place of forced quarantine.
People—even children—were taken there against their will
and sometimes against the will of their families.
Though sometimes,
families willingly took their children
and other family members there.
People were—and still are-- afraid of this incurable disease.
Those with Hansen’s Disease were not physically beaten or flogged.
They had not committed a crime;
they contracted and suffered from a random disease.
Yet they, too were, cast into the innermost cell.
Away from their families and away from the world.
Those suffering from Hansen’s disease were hidden away.
They became known as the “secret people.”
Yet these outcasts,
especially an older African-American woman
who had lost both her legs to Hansen’s Disease—
her name was Ella Bounds--
would teach Neil White how to confront his past with honesty,
how to begin to value the things in life that really matter,
how to sing and pray in the darkness.
Carville closed as a leprosarium in 1999 shortly after Neil White’s release
Most of the residents were moved to a hospital wing in Baton Rouge.
Thirty-six refused to leave.
Carville was the only home they knew. They were allowed to stay.
The story we hear this morning in Philippi is about being in prison.
But not just about Paul and Silas in prison.
The girl is imprisoned by her demon and her pimps.
The pimps are imprisoned by greed.
The magistrate is imprisoned by corruption.
The crowd is imprisoned by anger.
The jailer is imprisoned by fear.
Paul and Silas--the only two people in this scripture story today
who are in a physical prison—
are actually not in prison at all.
Even before the earthquake,
before the doors open and the chains are unfastened,
Paul and Silas are already free.
The jailer realizes that –
and he wants that kind of freedom too.
Neil White arrives at federal prison in chains,
both physical chains and spiritual chains.
But he has been trapped in a prison of self-centeredness
for a long, long time.
He has been held captive
by his desire to impress people,
to keep moving up, up, up in the world,
to protect his image,
even if it meant lying and cheating
and fraudulent money handling.
The earthquake for Neil White comes when he sees
those suffering from Hansen’s Disease
as people, as friends.
It is these outcasts who teach Neil White about unconditional love.
Neil White discovers his deep desire
to love like that, too.
Neil White wrote a book about his time at Carville.
It’s title is IN THE SANCTUARY OF OUTCASTS.
When he is released from Carville, he writes:
…at some point after I settled in Oxford [Mississippi] I would take Ella’s advice and find a church. Not just any church. A place like the church at Carville. Where the parishioners were broken and chipped and cracked….A place to ask forgiveness. A sacred place where people were not consumed with image or money. …I would pray. Not the kind of prayers I used to say for miracles or money or advancement. I would ask for something more simple. I would pray for recollection—pray that I would never forget.
Neil White caught a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven
in Carville, Louisiana
and he knew, at last, what he needed.
The jailer caught a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven
in a prison in Philippi
and he knew, at last, what he wanted.
We too sometimes find ourselves bound and held captive.
We too sometimes find ourselves
in the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, scariest, worst of all places.
Addiction. Bitterness. Illness. Grief. Abuse. Self-centeredness.
There are hundreds and thousands of dark, dark cells.
We too long for a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven usually shows up
in the most unlikely person or situation.
After a beating and a flogging in Philippi.
After hitting bottom and winding up in federal prison.
When our life is turned inside and out.
We begin to see grace in the midst of the brokenness.
We begin to see light even in the darkness.
We begin to pray and to sing.
The stone is rolled away
and anything is possible.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Sermon for Year C Easter 6
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids-- blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.
--John 5:1-9
Do you want to be healed?
The year is 1955.
A man named Jake Worm is walking along the beach in California.
Jake is depressed.
His life is in ruins.
He has lost his job, destroyed most of his close relationships
and recently had to declare bankruptcy.
As Jake walks along the beach he wonders,
“What do I have to live for?”
He is 55 years old and nothing has gone right.
“Life is so unfair, so lousy,” thinks Jake.
Suddenly he looks down and sees a bottle in the sand.
He picks it up and sees that it is tightly closed by a cork stopper--
and yes, he sees there is a note in the bottle.
“Oh, this is ridiculous! This is like a grade B movie,” gripes Jake.
But he manages to uncork the bottle
and to remove the note.
He unfolds the note and reads:
To whomever finds this note I will give one half of my estate.
The other half will go to my attorney.
Signed, Daisy Alexander, June 20, 1937.
Jake scoffs.
“Right! This is some kind of joke!
1937—that was 18 years ago.”
He almost tosses the bottle into the ocean,
but decides to take it home.
He puts the note back in the bottle and puts it on the top shelf of his closet.
He leaves it there, in the dark.
He forgets about it.
One day, looking for something else, he comes across the bottle,
and remembers the strange note inside.
That day he meets a friend for coffee and happens to tell him
the story about finding the bottle and the note.
“Jake!” his friend says,
Daisy Alexander is a real person. Don’t you know who she is?”
“No,” says Jake, shaking his head.
“Never heard of her.”
His friend tells Jake
that Daisy Singer Alexander was the daughter and heiress
of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune.
Now Jake, eternal pessimist that he is,
still can’t believe this.
He does some research about Daisy Alexander and discovers
that she died in 1939 when she was 81 years old.
He discovers that she did indeed put a holographic will
(that means a handwritten and signed will)
into a bottle and that her estate was to be divided
according to that holographic will—
which had never been found.
Or so it was thought.
Jake Worm went to court to claim half of Daisy Alexander’s estate.
He had to hire an ocean expert to prove his case.
The expert confirmed that a bottle dropped in the Thames River
could indeed make its way through the English Channel
to the North Sea, through the Bering Strait,
into the North Pacific,
and on to the beach near San Francisco.
The ocean expert estimated that such a journey would take a bottle
fifteen to twenty years.
The judge awarded Jake Worm six million dollars.
Plus he collected about $ 80,000 dollars a year
in Singer Sewing Machine stock dividends for a number of years.
The hardest thing for Jake was believing
that something like this,
something this good,
could happen to someone like him.
The hardest thing for Jake was to take the bottle with the note
off the closet shelf,
to remove the cork
and to claim the gift that was already his.
Jake’s story is not so different than the man beside the pool in Beth-zatha. The pool at Beth-zatha was not a little kiddie-size pool.
Archeologists tell us this pool was about 100 yards long and 25 yards wide.
It was over 6 feet deep.
Originally built as a reservoir,
the water was believed to have amazing healing qualities.
Legends say that people believed
that occasionally an angel would stir the waters in the pool,
making the waters bubble and ripple.
When that happened,
the first person to enter the pool
would be completely healed, cured, made well.
Of course there was that one catch:
You had to be the first one to enter the pool to be healed.
Now this man that Jesus encounters by the side of the pool
has been sick for 38 years.
THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS!!!
And he still hasn’t made it into the pool first.
Now he, like most of us, has his excuses—
there’s no one to help me get into the pool..
somebody always pushes ahead of me…
it’s not MY fault…
Jesus sees the man and asks him,
Do you want to be made well?
Now we might think that someone who has been sick for 38 years--
Well, duh, Jesus! Of course he wants to be made well!
But it is a very good question that Jesus asks—
a question that goes right to the heart:
Do you WANT to be made well?
Jesus knows that sometimes we hold on to our illnesses
and our addictions and our bad habits, to our inertia,
and even to the injustices done against us—
because we are afraid of what the unknown will bring
and what others might expect of us.
Being sick may be miserable, being oppressed may be hurtful,
Being addicted may be killing us,
but being well and healthy,
the removal of all our excuses—
that can be terrifying!
C.S.Lewis wrote:
“A familiar captivity is frequently more desirable
than an unfamiliar freedom.”
Becoming whole, being healed,
means we are going to have to do just what the man
at the pool of Beth-zatha had to do:
Stand up, take your mat, and walk.
Being healed means no more lying beside the pool.
Being healed means no more complaining or blaming.
Being healed means letting go of our old rationalizations,
our old habits, our old inertia,
our old flying by the seat of our pants way of doing things.
Being healed means accepting the gift
that has been ours to claim all along.
What we don’t hear in this gospel is the rest of the story.
We don’t know what happens to the man.
We don’t know about all the hard work he has ahead of him—
finding a job, a place to live,
rebuilding relationships with people,
learning to relate to his physical body in a different way,
letting go of being the victim,
reflecting on this encounter he had with Jesus.
But what we do know is that he listened and he heard
He heard what Jesus said:
Stand up, take your mat,and walk.
And he did just that.
Sometimes when we cling to our old destructive
or unproductive ways,
we need to stop and listen.
.
We need to listen for how we are being called into action.
Stand up. Take your mat. Walk.
All action verbs. All imperatives.
In today’s language it might sound more like,
“Buck up! Take an aspirin! Get on with your life!”
or maybe in even simpler form,
“Just do it. No fear.”
What’s at stake here really is a fortune.
Because it is our very life. The only one we have.
Our life as a child of God.
Our life as a church of God.
Our life as the world of God.
We cripple ourselves with our fear of change.
We need to take the gifts we have received from God,
uncork the bottle,
and drink a toast.
Drink a toast
to all we have been given,
the big things and the little things.
A toast to our life
and a toast to our lives together.
At the communion rail today,
You will find a basket of corks.
I invite you to take one.
Take one as a reminder to let your gifts out of the bottle,
to let your light shine,
to replace fear with love,
to live your life fully uncorked.
If we can do that,
individually and together,
we will all be rich
beyond our wildest dreams.
+ ++ +
The story about Jake Worm (and I have found his name spelled Worm, Wurm and Wrom) can be found in many places and on many websites. I checked and confirmed the story as true on SNOPES.com ).
--John 5:1-9
Do you want to be healed?
The year is 1955.
A man named Jake Worm is walking along the beach in California.
Jake is depressed.
His life is in ruins.
He has lost his job, destroyed most of his close relationships
and recently had to declare bankruptcy.
As Jake walks along the beach he wonders,
“What do I have to live for?”
He is 55 years old and nothing has gone right.
“Life is so unfair, so lousy,” thinks Jake.
Suddenly he looks down and sees a bottle in the sand.
He picks it up and sees that it is tightly closed by a cork stopper--
and yes, he sees there is a note in the bottle.
“Oh, this is ridiculous! This is like a grade B movie,” gripes Jake.
But he manages to uncork the bottle
and to remove the note.
He unfolds the note and reads:
To whomever finds this note I will give one half of my estate.
The other half will go to my attorney.
Signed, Daisy Alexander, June 20, 1937.
Jake scoffs.
“Right! This is some kind of joke!
1937—that was 18 years ago.”
He almost tosses the bottle into the ocean,
but decides to take it home.
He puts the note back in the bottle and puts it on the top shelf of his closet.
He leaves it there, in the dark.
He forgets about it.
One day, looking for something else, he comes across the bottle,
and remembers the strange note inside.
That day he meets a friend for coffee and happens to tell him
the story about finding the bottle and the note.
“Jake!” his friend says,
Daisy Alexander is a real person. Don’t you know who she is?”
“No,” says Jake, shaking his head.
“Never heard of her.”
His friend tells Jake
that Daisy Singer Alexander was the daughter and heiress
of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune.
Now Jake, eternal pessimist that he is,
still can’t believe this.
He does some research about Daisy Alexander and discovers
that she died in 1939 when she was 81 years old.
He discovers that she did indeed put a holographic will
(that means a handwritten and signed will)
into a bottle and that her estate was to be divided
according to that holographic will—
which had never been found.
Or so it was thought.
Jake Worm went to court to claim half of Daisy Alexander’s estate.
He had to hire an ocean expert to prove his case.
The expert confirmed that a bottle dropped in the Thames River
could indeed make its way through the English Channel
to the North Sea, through the Bering Strait,
into the North Pacific,
and on to the beach near San Francisco.
The ocean expert estimated that such a journey would take a bottle
fifteen to twenty years.
The judge awarded Jake Worm six million dollars.
Plus he collected about $ 80,000 dollars a year
in Singer Sewing Machine stock dividends for a number of years.
The hardest thing for Jake was believing
that something like this,
something this good,
could happen to someone like him.
The hardest thing for Jake was to take the bottle with the note
off the closet shelf,
to remove the cork
and to claim the gift that was already his.
Jake’s story is not so different than the man beside the pool in Beth-zatha. The pool at Beth-zatha was not a little kiddie-size pool.
Archeologists tell us this pool was about 100 yards long and 25 yards wide.
It was over 6 feet deep.
Originally built as a reservoir,
the water was believed to have amazing healing qualities.
Legends say that people believed
that occasionally an angel would stir the waters in the pool,
making the waters bubble and ripple.
When that happened,
the first person to enter the pool
would be completely healed, cured, made well.
Of course there was that one catch:
You had to be the first one to enter the pool to be healed.
Now this man that Jesus encounters by the side of the pool
has been sick for 38 years.
THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS!!!
And he still hasn’t made it into the pool first.
Now he, like most of us, has his excuses—
there’s no one to help me get into the pool..
somebody always pushes ahead of me…
it’s not MY fault…
Jesus sees the man and asks him,
Do you want to be made well?
Now we might think that someone who has been sick for 38 years--
Well, duh, Jesus! Of course he wants to be made well!
But it is a very good question that Jesus asks—
a question that goes right to the heart:
Do you WANT to be made well?
Jesus knows that sometimes we hold on to our illnesses
and our addictions and our bad habits, to our inertia,
and even to the injustices done against us—
because we are afraid of what the unknown will bring
and what others might expect of us.
Being sick may be miserable, being oppressed may be hurtful,
Being addicted may be killing us,
but being well and healthy,
the removal of all our excuses—
that can be terrifying!
C.S.Lewis wrote:
“A familiar captivity is frequently more desirable
than an unfamiliar freedom.”
Becoming whole, being healed,
means we are going to have to do just what the man
at the pool of Beth-zatha had to do:
Stand up, take your mat, and walk.
Being healed means no more lying beside the pool.
Being healed means no more complaining or blaming.
Being healed means letting go of our old rationalizations,
our old habits, our old inertia,
our old flying by the seat of our pants way of doing things.
Being healed means accepting the gift
that has been ours to claim all along.
What we don’t hear in this gospel is the rest of the story.
We don’t know what happens to the man.
We don’t know about all the hard work he has ahead of him—
finding a job, a place to live,
rebuilding relationships with people,
learning to relate to his physical body in a different way,
letting go of being the victim,
reflecting on this encounter he had with Jesus.
But what we do know is that he listened and he heard
He heard what Jesus said:
Stand up, take your mat,and walk.
And he did just that.
Sometimes when we cling to our old destructive
or unproductive ways,
we need to stop and listen.
.
We need to listen for how we are being called into action.
Stand up. Take your mat. Walk.
All action verbs. All imperatives.
In today’s language it might sound more like,
“Buck up! Take an aspirin! Get on with your life!”
or maybe in even simpler form,
“Just do it. No fear.”
What’s at stake here really is a fortune.
Because it is our very life. The only one we have.
Our life as a child of God.
Our life as a church of God.
Our life as the world of God.
We cripple ourselves with our fear of change.
We need to take the gifts we have received from God,
uncork the bottle,
and drink a toast.
Drink a toast
to all we have been given,
the big things and the little things.
A toast to our life
and a toast to our lives together.
At the communion rail today,
You will find a basket of corks.
I invite you to take one.
Take one as a reminder to let your gifts out of the bottle,
to let your light shine,
to replace fear with love,
to live your life fully uncorked.
If we can do that,
individually and together,
we will all be rich
beyond our wildest dreams.
+ ++ +
The story about Jake Worm (and I have found his name spelled Worm, Wurm and Wrom) can be found in many places and on many websites. I checked and confirmed the story as true on SNOPES.com ).
Missing posts
Some of you may wonder why there are no sermons posted for certain Sundays. That's because there are Sundays when our wonderful deacon, the Rev. Tim Jones, preaches. He posts his sermons on his own blog. If you want to read Tim's blog (and I highly recommend you do) you can link to it from our website: www.stjohnsasheville.org
Sermon for Year C Easter 5
Who was I that I could hinder God?
I want you to sing something with me.
It’s not hard.
And it’s also not a hymn.
But I imagine that many of you know it.
It’s actually a Beatles song.
And it goes like this:
All you need is love
(and then the choir will sing: Doot de doot de doo…)
All you need is love (Doot de doot de doo)
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.
Let’s try it together now…
All you need is love
(and then the choir will sing: Doot de doot de doo…)
All you need is love (Doot de doot de doo)
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.
Okay, now if you need to doze off during the rest of my sermon,
what we just sang is the Cliff notes
for what I am preaching today!
Because what we hear today in the scripture readings is this:
God’s love is BIG!
God’s love is for everyone.
Everyone.
Our scripture seems quite clear and direct:
God has enough love to go around—
and around and around and around!
Enough love for both the Jews and the Gentiles.
Today we can expand and say
God’s love is big enough for
the Jews, the Gentiles, the Muslims, the Christians, the Hindus,
the Wiccans, the Buddhists,
The believers, the doubters and the non-believers.
God’s love is BIG and inclusive.
God’s love includes you and me—
As the old song goes,
“He’s got the whole world in his hands!”
None of US get to pick and choose
Who receives God’s love and who doesn’t.
God doesn’t need human beings to pick and choose.
There is no evidence that God works like that.
Peter comes to understand this through a dream.
Peter thinks he has all his religious rules down pat.
Then he has a dream.
Down comes this giant picnic cloth from heaven,
and when Peter refuses to eat,
because he is worried that some of what is there
might be unclean, unholy--
God says, “Give me a break, Peter.”
God says my feast is enormous,
abundant, generous.
Who are you to judge what is clean or unclean,
what is holy or unholy?
There is plenty for everyone.
and everyone has a place at the table.
God’s love is BIG.
And Peter gets it.
Peter understands that God is telling him
there is no “them” and “us.”
Peter hears and understands
…What God has made clean, you must not call profane.
Peter understands
that he is not God.
Peter understands
that he is not the One who makes all things new.
Peter says to those who are criticizing him,
criticizing him for being inclusive and welcoming,
Peter says, Who was I
that I could hinder God?
Who are any of us
that we can try to limit the love of God?
That has never been part of the gospel.
Never.
In John’s gospel today we hear the new commandment—
directly from Jesus.
Jesus says “love one another”.
Jesus does not say
love people that are just like you.
Jesus does not say
love the people that are easy to get along with.
Jesus does not say
love the people that will love you back.
Jesus says love EVERYBODY.
Jesus says this is how people will know
that you are my disciples--
by the love you show to one another.
Not the love you feel, but the love you SHOW.
This love is not a theory.
This love is how we treat one another.
Yes, we feel love in our hearts
but love can truly be seen.
Love is incarnate.
Love is how we speak to one another.
Love is our actions and our tone of voice.
Love is standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.
Love is being infinitely patient with the people who drive us crazy.
Love is speaking up
when someone talks about someone behind their backs
or tells a joke that diminishes a person because of their race or
religion, their gender or sexuality.
Love is wiping tears from the eyes of those who are suffering
and feeding those who are hungry.
Love is about being kind and gentle
in our own households,
behind closed doors,
when no one is around to see or hear or be impressed.
Love is seeing the whole world
as our household.
There is a story, a midrash, that many of you may have heard.
You are about to hear it once more.
Many centuries ago,
the Pope decreed that all the Jews
had to convert to Christianity or leave Italy.
There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community,
so the Pope offered a deal.
He would have a religious debate
with the leader of the Jewish community.
If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy and did not have to convert.
If the Pope won, they would have to convert or leave.
The Jewish people met
and selected an old but wise Rabbi
to represent them in the debate.
However, the Rabbi spoke no Latin
and the Pope spoke no Yiddish,
so they all agreed that it would be a silent debate.
They would need to communicate with sign language.
On the chosen day, the Pope and Rabbi sat opposite each other.
They stared into each other’s eyes
for a full minute before they began.
The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.
The Rabbi looked back and raised one finger.
Next, the Pope waved his hand above and around his head.
The Rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.
The Pope then brought over
a loaf of communion bread and a chalice of wine.
The Rabbi reached into his pocket and pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up
and declared that he was beaten,
that the Rabbi had won the debate,
and that the Jews could stay and not convert.
Later, the Cardinals met with the Pope,
asking what had happened.
The Pope said,
First, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity.
The Rabbi responded by holding up one finger
to remind me that there is still only one God
common to both our beliefs.
Then, I waved my hand in the air
to show him that God was transcendent,
all around us.
The Rabbi responded by pointing to the ground
to show that God was also right here with us.
I brought over the wine & bread of communion
to show that God is generous and forgives all our sins.
The Rabbi pulled out an apple from his coat pocket
to remind me of Adam and Eve in the garden and original sin.
The Rabbi had me beaten & I couldn’t continue.
Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered around the Rabbi.
“How did you win the debate?” they asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” said the old Rabbi.
“First he said to me that we had three days
to convert or get out of Italy,
so I raised my finger to say, “Don’t’ even think about it!”
Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews
and I said to him, we’re staying right here.”
“And then what?” asked a woman.
“Who knows?” said the Rabbi,
“He brought over his lunch, so I took out mine.”
Every day we debate similar—often silent --battles with one another.
We think we are speaking the same language.
But what I say and what you hear
and what you say and what I hear,
may be worlds apart.
Sometimes we think we hear God saying one thing
but who knows?
Maybe God is saying something completely different!
God tells Peter through a dream
that God’s world is not about the human norms
of insiders and outsiders,
of rules and regulations,
of winners and losers.
God’s world is about abundance and plenty.
God’s world is about everyone
being welcome to come to the feast.
God’s love is so enormous
we can’t even imagine it,
not even in our wildest dreams.
We worry and fret and criticize and judge.
We misinterpret one another’s words and actions.
We clutter our minds and our hearts
with so many things
that are really no concern of ours.
The gospel message to love one another is difficult to live.
Indeed.
Extremely difficult.
But fortunately Jesus was a man of few but profound words.
He gives us a mandate short enough to easily remember:
Love one another.
Even those of us with the worst memories can probably manage 3 words:
Love one another.
Or maybe if we can just keep on singing that Beatles’ song
to help us remember.
Maybe we will start to remember a little more often,
a little better,
each and every day.
Let’s try it one more time…
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
Love is all we need.
Amen.
I want you to sing something with me.
It’s not hard.
And it’s also not a hymn.
But I imagine that many of you know it.
It’s actually a Beatles song.
And it goes like this:
All you need is love
(and then the choir will sing: Doot de doot de doo…)
All you need is love (Doot de doot de doo)
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.
Let’s try it together now…
All you need is love
(and then the choir will sing: Doot de doot de doo…)
All you need is love (Doot de doot de doo)
All you need is love, love,
love is all you need.
Okay, now if you need to doze off during the rest of my sermon,
what we just sang is the Cliff notes
for what I am preaching today!
Because what we hear today in the scripture readings is this:
God’s love is BIG!
God’s love is for everyone.
Everyone.
Our scripture seems quite clear and direct:
God has enough love to go around—
and around and around and around!
Enough love for both the Jews and the Gentiles.
Today we can expand and say
God’s love is big enough for
the Jews, the Gentiles, the Muslims, the Christians, the Hindus,
the Wiccans, the Buddhists,
The believers, the doubters and the non-believers.
God’s love is BIG and inclusive.
God’s love includes you and me—
As the old song goes,
“He’s got the whole world in his hands!”
None of US get to pick and choose
Who receives God’s love and who doesn’t.
God doesn’t need human beings to pick and choose.
There is no evidence that God works like that.
Peter comes to understand this through a dream.
Peter thinks he has all his religious rules down pat.
Then he has a dream.
Down comes this giant picnic cloth from heaven,
and when Peter refuses to eat,
because he is worried that some of what is there
might be unclean, unholy--
God says, “Give me a break, Peter.”
God says my feast is enormous,
abundant, generous.
Who are you to judge what is clean or unclean,
what is holy or unholy?
There is plenty for everyone.
and everyone has a place at the table.
God’s love is BIG.
And Peter gets it.
Peter understands that God is telling him
there is no “them” and “us.”
Peter hears and understands
…What God has made clean, you must not call profane.
Peter understands
that he is not God.
Peter understands
that he is not the One who makes all things new.
Peter says to those who are criticizing him,
criticizing him for being inclusive and welcoming,
Peter says, Who was I
that I could hinder God?
Who are any of us
that we can try to limit the love of God?
That has never been part of the gospel.
Never.
In John’s gospel today we hear the new commandment—
directly from Jesus.
Jesus says “love one another”.
Jesus does not say
love people that are just like you.
Jesus does not say
love the people that are easy to get along with.
Jesus does not say
love the people that will love you back.
Jesus says love EVERYBODY.
Jesus says this is how people will know
that you are my disciples--
by the love you show to one another.
Not the love you feel, but the love you SHOW.
This love is not a theory.
This love is how we treat one another.
Yes, we feel love in our hearts
but love can truly be seen.
Love is incarnate.
Love is how we speak to one another.
Love is our actions and our tone of voice.
Love is standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.
Love is being infinitely patient with the people who drive us crazy.
Love is speaking up
when someone talks about someone behind their backs
or tells a joke that diminishes a person because of their race or
religion, their gender or sexuality.
Love is wiping tears from the eyes of those who are suffering
and feeding those who are hungry.
Love is about being kind and gentle
in our own households,
behind closed doors,
when no one is around to see or hear or be impressed.
Love is seeing the whole world
as our household.
There is a story, a midrash, that many of you may have heard.
You are about to hear it once more.
Many centuries ago,
the Pope decreed that all the Jews
had to convert to Christianity or leave Italy.
There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community,
so the Pope offered a deal.
He would have a religious debate
with the leader of the Jewish community.
If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy and did not have to convert.
If the Pope won, they would have to convert or leave.
The Jewish people met
and selected an old but wise Rabbi
to represent them in the debate.
However, the Rabbi spoke no Latin
and the Pope spoke no Yiddish,
so they all agreed that it would be a silent debate.
They would need to communicate with sign language.
On the chosen day, the Pope and Rabbi sat opposite each other.
They stared into each other’s eyes
for a full minute before they began.
The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.
The Rabbi looked back and raised one finger.
Next, the Pope waved his hand above and around his head.
The Rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.
The Pope then brought over
a loaf of communion bread and a chalice of wine.
The Rabbi reached into his pocket and pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up
and declared that he was beaten,
that the Rabbi had won the debate,
and that the Jews could stay and not convert.
Later, the Cardinals met with the Pope,
asking what had happened.
The Pope said,
First, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity.
The Rabbi responded by holding up one finger
to remind me that there is still only one God
common to both our beliefs.
Then, I waved my hand in the air
to show him that God was transcendent,
all around us.
The Rabbi responded by pointing to the ground
to show that God was also right here with us.
I brought over the wine & bread of communion
to show that God is generous and forgives all our sins.
The Rabbi pulled out an apple from his coat pocket
to remind me of Adam and Eve in the garden and original sin.
The Rabbi had me beaten & I couldn’t continue.
Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered around the Rabbi.
“How did you win the debate?” they asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” said the old Rabbi.
“First he said to me that we had three days
to convert or get out of Italy,
so I raised my finger to say, “Don’t’ even think about it!”
Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews
and I said to him, we’re staying right here.”
“And then what?” asked a woman.
“Who knows?” said the Rabbi,
“He brought over his lunch, so I took out mine.”
Every day we debate similar—often silent --battles with one another.
We think we are speaking the same language.
But what I say and what you hear
and what you say and what I hear,
may be worlds apart.
Sometimes we think we hear God saying one thing
but who knows?
Maybe God is saying something completely different!
God tells Peter through a dream
that God’s world is not about the human norms
of insiders and outsiders,
of rules and regulations,
of winners and losers.
God’s world is about abundance and plenty.
God’s world is about everyone
being welcome to come to the feast.
God’s love is so enormous
we can’t even imagine it,
not even in our wildest dreams.
We worry and fret and criticize and judge.
We misinterpret one another’s words and actions.
We clutter our minds and our hearts
with so many things
that are really no concern of ours.
The gospel message to love one another is difficult to live.
Indeed.
Extremely difficult.
But fortunately Jesus was a man of few but profound words.
He gives us a mandate short enough to easily remember:
Love one another.
Even those of us with the worst memories can probably manage 3 words:
Love one another.
Or maybe if we can just keep on singing that Beatles’ song
to help us remember.
Maybe we will start to remember a little more often,
a little better,
each and every day.
Let’s try it one more time…
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
Love is all we need.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
