Proper 17A (August 28, 2005)

“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Have you ever been to a restaurant like that? Usually the menu is in French. The Germans, being sensible, if unimaginative people, may also have unreadable menus but bratwurst and beer isn’t that expensive, and they will at least tell you how much it costs.

Or perhaps you’ve seen the great movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s and remember the scene in Tiffany’s when Audrey Hepburn has to explain to George Peppard why there are no price tags on any of the items in the display cases.

There are many things that life asks us to buy without telling us the price first.

We have to choose a career without knowing how much it will cost us. We know that if we want to be a lawyer, then we will have to go to college and law school, then spend an unspecified number of years putting in 60 to 80 hours a week before we finally become a partner and then go on putting in 60 to 80 hours a week. So far, so good. But there’s no way to factor in the hidden costs – the evenings and weekends we could have spent with our spouse and children or just walking in the park.

If we want to be a doctor, then we have to go to college and medical school and spend many years as a resident and fellow before finally we can hang a sign on our door that says, “The Doctor is in.” But there is no way to determine the toll it may take on our families.

What about something really risky like getting married and having children? Study after study tells us that married people are happier and live longer than single people, but statistics also show that about 50% of marriages end in divorce. When we start out on the path of courtship and marriage we can't know whether we're investing in bliss or heartbreak.

Jesus would have made a terrible used car salesman. He was no negotiator. The sticker price is exactly what you pay. “If you want to become my follower,” Jesus said, “you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me.” Bottom line. No counter offers.

It sounds like a high price to pay, and it is. You must deny yourself and take up your cross. In short, you must let go of everything. And what do you get in return? You get it all back. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

That’s the paradox. If we hang on to things, we will lose them. But if we let it all go and follow Jesus, we get it all back.

What are the alternatives? If we hang on to everything, then we lose it anyway. Do you know the story of the two men talking at the funeral of the billionaire Aristotle Onassis? One asked the other, “How much did he leave?” And his friend replied, “Everything. He left everything.”

When I read these words, I despair. I know just how selfish I am, and how reluctant I am to give up anything. But if we hear these words as a call to run off to Calcutta and join Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity and spend the rest of our lives caring for the poorest of the poor, then we have misheard Jesus. He may in fact be calling you to do just that; only you can know. But Jesus calls very few of us to be Mother Teresas. He calls most of us to do exactly what we are doing—to be business people, and lawyers and doctors and teachers and priests and husbands, wives, and parents.

But remember: Just like Aristotle Onassis, you, too, will leave everything.

Fred Craddock once said that some are called to pay the price of discipleship in the lump sum payment of martyrdom, but most of us are called to pay it five and ten cents at a time. We are called to what may be the more difficult task of taking up our cross and letting go of our life every minute of every day.

The Mother Teresas and Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Martin Luther King, Jrs, stand out because of the dramatic way in which they paid the cost of discipleship. Most of the time we are called to exercise discipleship in the mundane business of everyday life and I suspect that it is as difficult and sometimes even more difficult to love the people we share a bathroom with than to love the crippled beggar on the streets of Calcutta.

The Christian journey is not like a fancy French restaurant. There is a price but you find out at the very beginning.

For sale (and not just one day only): Life everlasting and abundant. Price: Empty your pockets. The martyrs don’t even have to call the bank. They pour out everything right there. The vast majority of us, though, are on the installment plan – one day, one hour, one minute at a time.

Is this a deal you can’t pass up? You better believe it.

Proper 15A: Not taking "no" for an answer

There's at least one in every parish -- a difficult person. In every parish I've served there's been at least one (sometimes two or three) person who comes up to me at the end of every service or drops in to see me on a regular basis who never has a good word to say and is always offended by something I've done or said.

The Canaanite woman in today's gospel reading seems to have been that kind of person. The impression I have of her is that she was loud, pushy, aggressive, and obnoxious. And nobody, including Jesus, seems to have liked her.

The text tells us that she "came out and cried, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.'"

Look at this woman from the point of view of Jesus and the disciples. Apparently, they found this woman unpleasant and annoying. Jesus tried to ignore her: "He did not answer her a word." His disciples "begged him, saying, 'Send her away, for she is crying after us.'" Jesus even insulted her, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

But she was unfazed, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Why did she keep pestering Jesus? I believe that she was driven to this behavior because of three things: she was a woman; she was a Gentile; and she was desperate.

The first century world was dominated by men. In the normal course of things Jesus and his disciples would have had nothing to do with her, would not even have exchanged greetings with her. For a woman to speak to a man without being spoken to first was a serious breach of decorum.

Secondly, as chapter four of John's gospel tells us "Jews have nothing to do with Gentiles". Matthew tells us that she was a Canaanite woman; other gospels speak of her as a Syro-Phoenician. She was one of the original inhabitants of the land who had been conquered by the Israelites. She was not even a respectable Gentile, such as the Greeks and Romans.

Finally, she was desperate. Her daughter was possessed by a demon and in desperation she turned to a wandering Jewish miracle worker.

In other words, the woman's behavior was a strategy for getting Jesus' attention.

Do you know anyone like the Canaanite woman? Who are the difficult people in your life? Who are the people that nag you, who are constantly asking for your attention? Who are the people that you try to ignore and wish would go away?

Are there people in our lives who are trying to get our attention? Will they have to take extraordinary measures to get us to hear and respond to them?

Maybe the story of the Canaanite woman should prompt us to listen and watch and learn from those around us. Someone may be trying to say, "I'm hurting; I'm in need. Help me."

Now, Look at her behavior in a different light. Instead of doing what Jesus and the disciples initially did and ignoring her or trying to send her away, think of her behavior as praiseworthy.

She was persistent in the face of discouragement. When Jesus ignored her, she continued to plead for his help. When the disciples wanted to send her away, she came back. When Jesus dismissed her, saying, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs", she ingeniously turned his rebuke to her advantage: "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

It takes real courage and determination to behave as this Canaanite woman. What do we want as badly as this woman wanted healing for her daughter? For what cause or task will we labor persistently day after day, pleading and speaking out? What is that will make us willing to endure being ignored and rebuked?

Many put that kind of courage and determination into their careers. But what if we were willing to be as persistent and outspoken in God's service as this woman was in seeking healing for her daughter? What if we were to divert some of the energy we spend in self-advancement into the advancement of God's kingdom?

In conclusion, I want you to remember two things about this little story. First, be faithful. In the four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, how many people do you think Jesus singles out for their faithfulness? Any ideas? Only two. And who do you think they were? Peter? James? John? Mary Magdalene? No, the two persons whose faith Jesus commends were Gentiles: a Roman centurion seeking healing for his servant and this Canaanite woman seeking healing for her daughter. Both of them were outsiders. What do you think Jesus was trying to tell us? Sometimes it’s easier for those on the outside to see the truth and have faith than for those on the inside.

Faith is more than believing. Faith is belief plus behavior. John Wesley said that we are saved by faith alone but not by such a faith as is alone. We are saved by the kind of faith that the Canaanite woman had, a faith that made her willing to push beyond the bounds of propriety.

And that brings me to the second point I want to make. Like the Canaanite woman, be willing to be difficult for God’s sake, for the sake of compassion and justice.

Like her, we are to have compassion for those who suffer, the courage to try to change things that are wrong, persistence in trying to change things, and faith that God can change things. When we seek comfort for those who suffering or relief for those who are oppressed, we are not to take "no" for an answer, even when the “no” comes from the highest human authority and even when the “no” seems to come from God.

Transfiguration: In a new light

“Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white.” (Luke 9.28-29)

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... and God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light”. Have you ever thought about the fact that God created light before God created the stars, the givers of light?

A thread of light connects all three readings. There was the mysterious light shining from Moses’ face that frightened the Israelites. In 2 Peter the author speaks of the “prophetic message” he delivers as a “light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”.

And finally, there is the story of the Transfiguration, the story of Jesus’ journey to the top of a high mountain, accompanied by Peter, James, and John. While there the disciples saw Jesus transformed into a being of light: “While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white”. And they saw Jesus talking with the long-dead prophets Moses and Elijah.

I am inclined to think that the transfiguration of which we speak today was not so much in Jesus as it was in Peter, James, and John. The light that they saw pouring from Jesus had always been there; they just had not seen it before.

The life of Jesus had already shed a radically new light on the world. The poor had been regarded as unloved and unwanted by God, but in the light that Jesus brought they came to be seen as special objects of God’s favor. “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Tax collectors and prostitutes were shunned, but Jesus cast an entirely new light on their status when he shared meals with them. “He receives sinners and eats with them”. (Luke 15.2)

To the learned Pharisee Nicodemus, who came to him “by night”, Jesus brought light. “Very truly, I tell you, Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3.3). “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light...” (John 3.19) Jesus saw that Nicodemus’ real need was not a theological discussion but a radically new way of seeing. And Nicodemus, who arrived in the dark, left amidst God’s blazing light.

And then there was the “man blind from birth” (John 9.1) that Jesus and his disciples encountered in Jerusalem. But even the disciples were in darkness, for they saw this sightless man as nothing more than a theological dilemma: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9.2)

However, Jesus saw the man and his blindness as an opportunity to do the work God has been doing ever since the first chapter of Genesis: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him”. (John 9.3) And taking the dust from which God had made Adam and the water with which he makes the new Adam, Jesus gave that man blind from birth God’s first creation and gift to the world—light.

Today’s gospel retells the story of a moment when Peter, James, and John suddenly saw Jesus for who he was—a man filled with God’s light, the light that God created even before he hurled stars and moons and planets into the inky void.

The New Testament speaks of a world hovering between light and darkness. According to 2 Peter we are in that dim moment just before “the day dawns and the morning star rises” (2 Peter 1.19).

According to John’s Gospel Jesus is “the light of the world” (John 9.5). The darkness has not overcome the Light, but neither has the Light quite overcome the darkness. There are still those who, like Nicodemus, prefer to do their business by night. There are still those who saw not a great and wondrous miracle when Jesus healed the blind, but merely a sinner violating the Sabbath rules.

The light of which the New Testament speaks is not so much about heavenly bodies or luminous filaments; it is about opening our eyes and stepping out of the shadows. It is about taking the risk of adopting a new perspective.

There is darkness in every life. There is an unwillingness to see in each one of us.
A child who awakens from a nightmare may see the face of a monster on her wall, but when Mother switches on the light, it becomes the laughing face of a clown in a picture.
The Bible tells us of Saul who became Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus, who had seen the followers of Jesus as enemies, but suddenly came to see them as brothers and sisters.
By eerie and unsettling coincidence August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration, was also the day on which a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The overwhelming light generated by that nuclear explosion was quite different from the light that shone from Moses’ face or the light of Peter’s message, much less the light that frightened Jesus’ disciples atop the Mount of Transfiguration.

My father served in the Pacific, and I am deeply grateful that the destruction of Hiroshima prevented an invasion of Japan in which he would have fought. But even though the bombing of Hiroshima brought a terrible war to a quick end and probably saved the lives of thousands of troops, both Japanese and American, nevertheless it took the lives of thousands of men, women, and children.

For over forty years men and women saw the world in the light of nuclear destruction. The light that Jesus brought invites us to see the world in a radically different perspective.

Years after the end of the war between the U.S. and Japan American veterans of World War II returned to the sites of mighty battles and so did their German and Japanese counterparts. Peace sheds a new light on those battle fields. Men who once saw each other as enemies, now see each other as neighbors.

A little over a hundred years ago here many in this country saw black people as slaves. But the civil rights movement opened our eyes, so that we learned and are still learning that black and white people alike are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...”

According to the Talmud, a Jew must pray at dawn. But that begs the question, when is dawn?
It is said that a young student came to his teacher and asked, “Rabbi, when is dawn? Is dawn the moment when the last star fades from the sky, or is it when the sun creeps above the horizon?”

The wise old teacher replied, “No, my son. Dawn is the moment when you can look at the face of another and see not an enemy but a friend.”

In the light of Hiroshima we came to see half the world as our enemies, dedicated to our destruction. And we saw ourselves as their enemies, and dedicated ourselves to their destruction.

But in the light of the Transfiguration God invites us to see the poor as heirs of heaven; to see sickness not as divine punishment but as an opportunity to do God’s work; and to see each other as God’s beloved children.

Proper 13A: Take, bless, break, give

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds…”

There are four key words in today’s gospel reading: Take, bless, break, give. Four simple, one syllable words. Four words we have all used and will use many times in our lives. You have probably already realized that they are also four of the key words in the Eucharistic prayer. When I consecrate the bread and wine at the altar, I will remind you that Jesus took bread and gave thanks. In Hebrew to bless and to give thanks are virtually the same thing. And that after he had given thanks and blessed the bread, he broke it and gave it to his friends.

Take, bless, break, give. Four ordinary words. When Jesus fed the five thousand and later when he instituted the Lord’s Supper, why didn’t he do something elaborate, something memorable, something that would have attracted attention? Why didn’t he wave his hands or swirl the air with a magic wand? Why didn’t he say a long, complicated formula – something in Persian or some other difficult and relatively unknown language? Why didn’t he make people do something special before they could receive the bread, like handstands or somersaults? Instead, he just took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it. Just like that. Nothing special at all.

C.S. Lewis says somewhere that the gospels have the ring of truth about them because they are so ordinary. Of course, Jesus performs miracles but as miracles go, his are not all that dramatic. Rather, his miracles are … His miracles do not run counter to nature; they enhance nature. Think, for example, of the water that became wine. St. Augustine pointed out that water is always becoming wine; Jesus just speeded up the process. Or take any of the healing miracles. Even without divine intervention our bodies are engineered so that they heal themselves most of the time.

There are four canonical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – but there are other non-canonical gospels. The difference between the canonical and non-canonical gospels is vast. In the non-canonical gospels the boy Jesus turns his playmates into birds, he has a cherry tree bow down so that his mother can pluck the fruit. The Jesus of the canonical gospels is someone you can imagine having a conversation with; the Jesus of the non-canonical gospels is someone you would see on a stage in Las Vegas!

The extraordinary thing about Jesus is his ordinariness. God took human flesh and came among us not as a king, nor a warrior, nor a wealthy merchant but as a simple, ORDINARY peasant. A man who took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his friends hundreds of times in his life.

First and foremost, the gospel asks us to be faithful in ordinary things. The gospel asks us to be thankful for our food and clothing; it asks us to love our neighbor, that is the person in need whose path crosses ours, and most of the time that is the person in our own families.

The most extraordinary thing that the gospel tells us is that if you want to meet God, you do not need to cross rivers and oceans and climbs high mountains; the gospel tells us that God meets us right here in the ordinary, simple, and commonplace. That God is here in the bread and wine, in the hearts and lives of the persons seated around you, that God is here in your own heart.
Someone has pointed out that it would be more accurate to call the story the division of the loaves, rather than the multiplication.... This may seem to be a distinction without a difference, since the important point is that everyone gets fed, but there is a significant contrast: multiplying the loaves suggests just a change in quantity, whereas dividing the loaves implies a change in quality. Jesus makes do with what is a hand. Blessed and broken, touched by the power of God, it is these specific loaves which are now able to feed the multitude. Jesus doesn’t need to clone more loaves; rather, in breaking open the bread he brings forth as no one else could the possibilities and capabilities hidden in the depths of what is already there. And so of course he does with us as well. He breaks us open so that we have the capacity to be, and to do, far more than we otherwise could. He transforms us by making us more fully ourselves, by revealing that identity of which we ourselves are not fully are, the unique, unduplicatable way in which each of us is called to the image of God." (From "Model homily," Good News 26 (8): 274 (Liturgical Publications Inc., 2875 South James Drive, New Berlin WI 53151), 1999. Quoted by the Rev. Jerry Fuller in his sermon for Ordinary 18, Year A.)

Proper 12A: Wisdom and Questions

“There are no stupid questions.” That’s what I always tell my students, even though it’s not quite true. Occasionally, you really will have a student who will ask when the War of 1812 was fought or something like that.

The story is told of a rabbinical student who asked his teacher, “Master, why do you always answer my questions with another question?” To which his teacher replied, “So, what’s wrong with questions?”

Each of today’s readings hangs on a question.

In the Old Testament reading, God asks Solomon, “What should I give you?” And Solomon asks for wisdom, although in asking for wisdom Solomon showed that he was already wise. But as someone pointed out in Sunday School last week, the fact that Solomon had one thousand wives suggests that while he may have been a PhD in some ways, in the area of relationships he had a lot to learn.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is full of rhetorical questions. “What shall se say then? If God is for us, who can be against us? What shall separate us from the love of God in Christ?”

And finally, in the gospel reading Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, an exceptionally valuable pearl, a treasure hidden in a field, and a net which catches all manner of fish. If we read on to the next pericope, we learn that Jesus' friends and neighbors asked, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?"

All of us have questions. I would even say that the kind of questions we ask play a big role in defining the kind of person we are. At least some of the time, many (perhaps a majority) of human beings have to ask the basic questions of survival: Where can I find food and shelter? Others are focused almost entirely on questions of self-aggrandizement: What do I need to do to make a million dollars before I’m 30? What must I do to become CEO or partner or get tenure?

But there are some questions that all of us ask: Who am I? What is the purpose of life? Is death a period or a comma? A wall or a door? An ending or a beginning?

I believe that Jesus’ parables were intended less to serve as answers and more to prod his listeners to ask further questions. Matthew tells us that after Jesus told the parable of the wheat and the weeds that his disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the story of the wheat and the weeds.” And other listeners said, “Where did this man get this wisdom?”

Another great religious teacher who had a great gift for telling stories was the Buddha. Like Jesus the Buddha told stories that prompted questions that then led his listeners to go deeper and seek wisdom.

My favorite Buddhist story is also about a mustard seed. A woman named Kisa Gotami had one son whom she loved with all her heart, but tragically, he died. Desperate with grief, Kisa went to the Buddha and said, "Master, my son has died, but I know that you have the power to raise him from the dead." The Buddha looked on Kisa with compassion and said, "My daughter, I will raise him from the dead if you bring me a single mustard seed." And Kisa's heart leapt, for mustard seed was a common spice. Then the Buddha added, "But it must come from a house that has never known sorrow." So Kisa went from house to house and family to family, asking is they had ever known sorrow. And at every house she heard tales of sorrow and suffering. Finally, at the end of the day, Kisa sat down on the hill overlooking her village. The sun went down, the moon rose, and the lights in every house were lighted. Suddenly, it dawned on Kisa that sorrow is common to us all and that enlightenment is found, not in avoiding suffering but accepting it, not letting sorrow close our hearts but in allowing suffering to open our hearts to the suffering of others.


Like Solomon, the Buddha was a man of extraordinary wisdom, but there are limits to wisdom. When we face the great question of death, wisdom can teach us resignation but it cannot offer us any hope that death is not the last word. When we face the question of death, then we need to ask the question that Paul asked, “What can separate us from the love of God in Christ?”

It was not an open-ended question. It was a rhetorical question, a question to which Paul knew the answer. Paul surveyed heaven and earth. He set up straw figures only to knock them down. Can heights or depths separate us from God? Can past, present, or future? Can angels or principalities or any other spiritual being? Can even life and death separate us from God's love?

In our day we might add to Paul’s list. Can terrorism and violence? Can unemployment or financial difficulties? Can physical or mental handicaps? These questions take us beyond the limits of wisdom into the realm of faith.

Paul was convinced and I am convinced and I want you to be convinced that nothing, nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God which lived among us and taught in parables and died upon a cross and rose again and is seated at God’s right hand and will come again in power and great glory. Amen.

Proper 12, Year A -- A few random thoughts

The great Disciples of Christ preacher Fred Craddock entitled one of his books Overhearing the Gospel. His point is that some truths are easier to overhear than to hear. We are likely to reject some ideas if they come at us directly, but if they come at us sideways or from the edge of our consciousness, they might just slip past our defenses and plant themselves deep within our conscious or subconscious like a farmer’s seed landing on good and fertile earth. That seems to be what Jesus was doing in his parables. “Who is my neighbor?” asked the scribe. Jesus could have said, “You know perfectly well who your neighbor is; it’s any person in need whose path you cross” but instead he told a story, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves…” And I feel sure that the scribe never again asked who his neighbor was.

Parables are not unique to the Christian faith. Probably every great religious teacher has employed parables for communicating ideas that cannot be expressed directly. The Old Testament and the rabbis of Jesus’ day often told parables, but the other religious teacher I most associate with parables was the Buddha. There are many wonderful parables that are attributed to the Buddha but my favorite parable is one that, like today’s gospel reading, also uses a mustard seed to teach a lesson.

One day a grieving woman named Kisa Gotami went to see the Buddha. “Master,” she cried, “My only son has died. I know you have the power to bring him to life again.” The Buddha looked on the woman with compassion. “I will cure your son if you bring me a mustard seed from a house where no one has died.” So the woman went from house to house to house, inquiring if anyone had died there. Finally, at the end of the day Kisa realized that death is common to us all and that salvation is to be found not in avoiding suffering but in opening our heart to the suffering of others.

For Jesus the mustard seed is an illustration, but for the Buddha it is a device, an excuse to get the grieving mother to move toward enlightenment. However, the Buddhist story provides an opportunity to connect the gospel with Romans 8. (And by the way, if you're using the Episcopal eucharistic lectionary, please write the Standing Liturgical Commission and tell them that a break between Romans 8.34 and 35 practically eviscerates what is arguably the most important chapter in the New Testament.)

The Buddha's answer (or non-answer) to Kisa Gotami is full of wisdom and we would do well to learn what he had to teach, namely, that when grief closes our hearts to others, it also closes our hearts to healing. But Paul's answer to Kisa Gotami is much more satisfying to me. "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The Rocky Soil of our Hearts (Proper 11, Year A)

Today’s gospel reading follows naturally from last week’s parable of the sower. Last week we were told that God spreads the good news of the kingdom as a farmer scatters seed. However, about three fourths of the seed perishes for one reason or another. Only about one fourth lands in good soil and flourishes. This week Jesus tells us that even where seed flourishes weeds will also flourish.

The meaning of this parable seems to be that it is not up to us to decide what is a weed and what is a wholesome plant. In other words, God alone is the judge of the heart. I cannot know your heart and you cannot know mine. But God does know the heart and there will be a day of reckoning. Now what I like to believe is that on the day when God separates the weeds from the wheat, the surprising thing may be not that there are so many weeds but that there is far more wheat than we ever knew. But then, I’m an optimist!

William Temple who was Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II once said, “If I get to heaven [note that he said if not when] my first two questions will be: What are you doing here? And where’s old so and so?”

I’d like to offer three applications of this parable: the political, the personal, and the ecclesiastical.

The bombing in London and the larger war on terrorism is still much on my mind. This week British PM Tony Blair spoke to the House of Commons about “uprooting evil.” Blair is a practicing Christian, and I wonder if today’s gospel reading occurred to him when he used those words.

The gospel tells us that in trying to “uproot evil” we may also uproot much that is good. In every war there is so-called “collateral damage.” That is the euphemistic phrase we apply to the killing of non-combatants: children, the elderly, and so on.

A straightforward and un-nuanced application of this parable would seem to warn us against doing anything at all about uprooting evil, but I think that would be a mistake.

When he was president Jimmy Carter often quoted a phrase by Reinhold Niebuhr: “It is the sad duty of a politician to administer justice in a sinful world.” It’s a good phrase. This week I would paraphrase it like this: “It is the sad duty of a politician to distinguish the weeds from the wheat and pluck up and burn the weeds before they choke and kill the wheat.” And from the beginning of time until now there has never been a public official who has completely succeeded in doing that. Virtually every application of force in the defense of the good will do at least some harm to the innocent as well as the guilty.

Think of World War II. I cannot think of any war that was more justifiable than the Second World War. And yet even in that conflict many innocent people lost their lives. That did not make the war unjust. It simply meant that the price of justice was costly.

Jesus’ parable teaches us that the price of justice IS costly. If we wade into the field with our machetes, plucking up the weeds and burning them, we will destroy at least some of the wheat, too. The parable’s prohibition against plucking up the weeds applies primarily to the church. But in the larger field, the field of the world, Jimmy Carter and Reinhold Niebuhr’s admonition applies. Politicians and elected leaders do, in fact, have the sad and difficult duty of trying to distinguish the weeds from the wheat, of nurturing and cultivating the latter and restraining or destroying the former.

My one caution to PM Blair and Pres. Bush and others is that they must always administer justice with humility and great care. If it is necessary to separate the weeds from the wheat, then we must do so fully aware of the cost that will be paid by the innocent.

The second application of this parable I offer is the personal. Last week I suggested that the four destinations of the seed may all be inside each of us. Similarly, I believe that weeds and wheat grow side by side in our hearts.

One of the early church fathers spoke of ploughing the rocky soil of the heart. How true that is! The soil of our hearts is rocky and (as Jesus reminded us last week) thorns are as likely to grow as wholesome plants. But sometimes we want to pluck up what we think are weeds but which turn out later to be lovely flowers.

Each of us is a combination of light and darkness. The psychologist Carl Jung spoke of the “shadow side” of the human personality. The great Jewish book of wisdom the Talmud says that great people have great impulses. These impulses can be harnessed in both positive and negative ways.

Pres. Clinton is a good example. I am told that he is a man of enormous charisma. A friend who met him told me that every eye turns to Clinton when he enters a room. Obviously, he is capable of using this charisma positively and is presently doing so in his capacity as a fundraiser for victims of the Asian tsunami. But just as obviously he can also abuse this great personal magnetism

Or consider the emotions and feelings that we all possess. Happiness, sadness, anger and the other human emotions are what make us human. As such, they are God’s gifts and are good. But each of them can also be abused. The capacity for happiness can turn into the obsessive quest for pleasure. Sadness can become depression. And anger can become hatred. But if we were to rid ourselves of all emotions and feelings we would become something less than fully human. In the field of our hearts, we need to be careful not to burn the wheat along with the weeds.

Finally, there is the ecclesiastical application of this parable.

Do you know the story of the man who was stranded on a desert island for many years? When he was finally rescued, they noticed that he had built 3 shacks on the island. “What are those shacks?” they asked him. “Well,” he replied, “this is my house and this is my church and the one over there is the church I used to go to.”

Someone once said that the church is like the ark: if it weren’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the stink inside! As churches go, the Episcopal Church and its fellow churches that make up the Anglican communion, may be more like the ark than most other churches.

I remember talking to a young Roman Catholic man several years ago. He asked me what Episcopalians believed about the eucharist, and I explained that some of us believed this and others believed that. Then he asked about the pope… and abortion.. and so on, and in each case, my answer was the same. Finally, he stopped asking questions and we both had a good laugh.

There are 2 fundamental mistakes we make about the church. The first is to believe that there are no tares or weeds, that one plant is as good as another. Plainly, this is not true. Not everything growing in the field is wheat. There are weeds that can choke the wheat. The other mistake is to believe that we can distinguish the wheat from the tares in the here and now. But not all cats are gray. There is right and wrong and what we believe matters.

Anglicanism is a huge umbrella which can tolerate a wide array of opinions or to change the metaphor, Anglicanism is like an enormous rubber band. It can stretch to include a sometimes bewildering array of people and ideas and causes but Anglicanism is not infinitely elastic. At some point the rubber band may break.

Some believe that the election of Gene Robinson to be bishop of New Hampshire was such a breaking point. That with his election the rubber band snapped. Others believe that Bishop Robinson’s election is a hopeful sign for people who have not been invited to the table.It is not for me to tell you what to think. Reasonable people can have diametrically opposed ideas about Bp Robinson and what he represents.

My personal opinion is that the kingdom is wider and different than any of us realize. But I also believe that there is a doctrinal center to the Christian faith and we must proclaim and hold fast to that center and that we relinquish it at our peril. But I also believe that there is more to it than doctrine.

Humorist Garrison Keillor grew up in a small fundamentalist sect in northern Minnesotat that he calls the Church of the Sanctified Brethren. The Brethren were always fighting over obscure doctrinal points. He says that no sooner would they form a quartet, than they would discover that one member of the quartet was unorthodox on some point of doctrine, and they would be back to a trio.

When Keillor first went to a Lutheran church he was amazed by the size of the choir. He was certain that there must be some members of the choir who were not absolutely orthodox in their theology and wondered why the choir tolerated heretics singing the praises of God.

I’m not prepared to say that everyone belongs in the choir, but I am prepared to welcome anyone who sincerely desires to sing God’s praises.

The parable of the wheat and the tares reminds us that we cannot tell the difference between the healthy, nourishing wheat and the noxious weeds. For now, they look pretty much the same to us. Some of the things we think are weeds may be wheat and vice versa.

Whether the field is the world, our hearts, or the church our task is to tend the field, to sing in the choir, and perhaps to appreciate the beauty of the field without deciding what is wheat and what is goldenrod. God doesn’t ask us to be perfect, just faithful.

"Ears to Hear" (Proper 10, Year A)

On Thursday, July 7, terrorists detonated bombs at three locations in London: King’s Cross station , Edgware Road, and Liverpool Street. Thursday’s bomb blasts in London would have horrified me under any circumstances, but I found them especially shocking because I have been through King’s Cross many times on my way from Edinburgh to London and the bus that blew up was near the British Library where I have done research.. So, on Thursday I had a “there but for the grace of God” moment.

July 7, 2005, March 11, 2004 (the Madrid bombings) and September 11, 2001 are dates that separate one age from another. The civilized world has entered a new age, an age of anxiety and uncertainty, and I don’t hesitate to say that those who fly planes into office buildings and blow up commuters on the way to work have no part of the civilized world. We have no way of knowing when (not if, but when) there will be another attack. When the Soviet Union fell near the end of the 20th century, one historian wrote a book entitled The End of History. His point was that the Western world had triumphed. Our values -- free markets, free speech, the rule of law, religious toleration, and so on-- seemed to prevail everywhere. It wasn’t quite the new heaven and new earth promised in the Book of Revelation but it might be as close as a secular world could achieve. And then on a beautiful September morning, we turned on the television and saw airliners crash into the World Trade Center. History had not ended; it had only turned the corner and been mugged.

We are not the first people nor will we be the last to discover that the world we built had come crashing down. Why? we ask. We are good. We work hard. We go to church. We even help the poor both at home and abroad. We want to help the rest of the world to become as prosperous as we are. We don’t deserve to have terrorists destroy our skyscrapers and plant bombs on trains and buses. Don’t they appreciate all the things we’ve tried to do for them?

Israel had a similar experience in the 6th century BC. Judah, the southern kingdom, was very small; it wasn’t much more than the city of Jerusalem and its suburbs. Israel, the much larger northern kingdom, had been destroyed by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. This made the people of Judah a bit smug. They assumed that God had punished their northern cousins for worshiping false gods and failing to heed God’s law. We obey the law, they thought. We have the Temple and the priesthood. But the prophet Jeremiah mocked this attitude. Jeremiah stood in the forecourt of the Temple and said, “Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘We have the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’ … for I will do to this place what I did to the Northern Kingdom and cast you out of my sight.” (Jer. 7.4ff paraphrased)

And Jeremiah was right. The Babylonians invaded Judah in 587 BC, destroyed the temple, and took the people of Judah into exile. It shattered their most fundamental convictions. They were God’s chosen. God had made “an everlasting covenant” with them. Where was the God who had led them out of captivity in Egypt, through the wilderness, and established them in a land flowing with milk and honey? Were the gods of Babylon greater than the God of Israel?

Our situation is not the same as that of Israel in the 6th century. We have not been carried into exile nor have our holy places been destroyed. We do not lament (as Israel lamented in Psalm 137) that “by the waters of Babylon our captors required of us songs… How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

However, I do believe that we have crossed some kind of line, that the world this week is very different from the world last week, and is vastly different from the pre-9/11 world. We have crossed a line and there is no going back to the way things were.

So in a sense, we, too, are exiles. The safe, predictable world we knew no longer exists. Life seems more dangerous and fragile. After last week’s terrorist attacks there seems to be less light and more darkness in the world.

Today’s reading from Isaiah appears to be overwhelmingly joyous and upbeat: “…every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price….you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” But in the midst of this glorious hymn of God’s abundant grace, Isaiah suddenly breaks off and says, “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous his thoughts… For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways…”

When life is good, when we are successful and healthy and the stock market is going up and we have just hit a hole in one on the golf course and the Atlanta Braves are in the playoffs, we are not much bothered by the notion that God’s “thoughts are not [our] thoughts and God’s ways are not [our] ways.”

But when things are not going well, when we’ve been laid off and the credit card payment is overdue and the doctor wants to do more tests, then these words are not so reassuring. What if God’s idea of success is not my idea of success? What if God’s thoughts about my life are 180 degrees different from my thoughts about my life? What if God’s path takes us through wilderness and exile and we have no idea when we will enter the Promised Land?

Jesus’ parable of the sower does not offer us any easy answers, either. “A sower went forth to sow,” Jesus said. “And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where it quickly withered. Other seed fell among thorns that choked it. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

The seed, Jesus tells us, represents the “word of the kingdom.” Presumably, the “word of the kingdom” means God’s message, the good news or gospel. Why doesn’t God only plant the seed of the gospel in good soil? Why are there rocks and birds and thorns in the first place?

Both the readings from Isaiah and Matthew invite more questions than they answer. Isaiah assures us that God’s word will “accomplish” its purpose, and “prosper.” But Jesus seems to suggest that about 75% of the time God’s word does not prosper but rather shrivels in the sun or is choked by weeds or is carried off by the “evil one.”

We long for a world in which God’s word does accomplish its purpose, a world in which there are no rocks or thorns but only fertile soil in which the gospel flourishes. But God did not create that kind of world. Instead God created a world in which good and evil are next door neighbors, a world in which swords can be beaten into plowshares but plowshares can also be beaten into swords.

God created a world in which mighty Babylon could overwhelm tiny Judah, and in which the even mightier Persians overwhelmed Babylon in turn.

How are we to live in a world of both beauty and terror, a world in which the commute to work can become even more terrifying than Israel’s journey through the wilderness?

Both Isaiah and Matthew give us some guidance.

While God’s covenant with Israel was eternal, it was not unconditional. As soon Isaiah told Israel that God desired to make an “everlasting covenant” with them, he immediately reminded them that the wicked and unrighteous must “forsake” their ways and “return” to the Lord. Every human heart is an alloy of good and evil; the human task is to purge the evil and refine the good.

The parable of the sower in Matthew speaks of four kinds of soil, but the truth is that all four are in every human heart. Sometimes the thorns that choke the word come up out of the depths of our being; sometimes the word withers in the heat of our indifference; sometimes trivial cares and concerns whisk away the word like crows pecking at the young corn.

Both Isaiah and Matthew give us a solution to our dilemma that is at once profoundly simple and terribly difficult. Jesus introduces his parable with a one word command: "Listen!" In Isaiah, God commands Israel to “Incline your ear and come to me; listen that your soul might live.”

Listen for that still, small voice. Listen to those who have no voice. Listen to the silence because the silence may be God’s way of saying things for which we have no words.

The world is God’s creation, not ours. The divine wisdom fashioned a world in which both good and evil can flourish for a time, but our faith and hope is that the day will come when evil will wither and be choked by thorns and good alone will flourish. Listen, for even now we can hear hills begin to sing alleluias and the trees’ vast hands clap together.

Proper 10, Year A ... some random thoughts

How can you not love Isaiah 55? I don't care whether there were one, two, three, or seventeen Isaiahs. Whoever wrote Isaiah 55 was a great poet.

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Do you know the story of evangelist Dwight Moody and his friend Scottish New Testament scholar Henry Drummond? Moody was quite conservative and Drummond was fairly liberal, but they were close friends. Moody invited Drummond to speak at a conference, and Drummond responded by saying, "Are you sure you want me to speak? After all, I believe that there were three Isaiahs." Moody replied, "Henry, there are people here who don't know there was one Isaiah!"

I don't remember if composer Randall Thompson used this particular bit of Isaiah in his oratorio, The Peaceable Kingdom, but for some reason it's been running through my mind as I read these words. That made me think about the Bible and music. From beginning to end the Bible seems to beg to be set to music.

That inspired a somewhat heretical thought. You can almost judge the value of a text by how readily it can be set to music. The texts that have inspired the best music also seem to be the ones that take us most deeply into God's mysteries. Think of the texts that Handel chose for Messiah or Brahms set in his German Requiem.

But there are also some important texts that are not easily set to music. Much of Paul is either not easily sung or is so closely argued that one would have to set whole chapters to music. Also the parables of Jesus would be a real challenge for composers. (Although they might make terrific mini-operas. Benjamin Britten composed a setting of the Prodigal Son and even avowed atheist Sergei Prokofiev wrote a ballet based on the same parable.)

Isaiah 55 and Matthew 13 are an obvious pairing. They both speak of a God of extravagant generosity. One thing is certain: God did not go to Harvard Business School and would not do very well on The Apprentice! This God does not keep an eye on the bottom line. Rather, God offers "wine and milk" to "those without money".

In Matthew the sower seems to represent God. Again, God seems extravagant, even careless, in broadcasting the "word of the kingdom." God seems not to care if it falls on good soil or rocks or among thorns.

But in both Isaiah and Matthew God's word has a life of its own. Isaiah tells us that God's word "shall not return... empty" but will "accomplish [its] purpose." In Matthew the soil is the random factor; the seed will flourish if the the soil gives is half a chance.

The idea that God's word has a life of its own intrigues me. We think of words as insignificant. We say or write things carelessly. Deeds, not words, are the important thing. Do you remember what Eliza Doolittle sings in My Fair Lady?

Words! Words! Words!
I'm so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?
Don't talk of stars, burning above;
If you're in love, show me!

But words are powerful and often take on a life of their own. I think of Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal..." They were words that changed the world. Indeed, they changed the world in ways that Jefferson did not imagine they would and in ways he did not want the world to be changed. They brought about a revolution not just for white male property owners but eventually for African Americans and women, too.

The Bible's words have a remarkable power to change lives. When St. Augustine was struggling with whether or not to become a Christian, he heard a child singing the words, Tolle lege... tolle lege. ("Take and read... take and read.") and he picked up an open Bible and read the words, "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." And from that moment Augustine sought baptism and never looked back.

Encountering God's word changes us because to encounter the word is to encounter God. Each word that we speak carries just a bit of ourselves with it. How much more then do God's words represent God?

God's words change the world and change us. God scatters or broadcasts the divine word prodigally, liberally, extravagantly. God invites us to receive the word, but we should be aware that we do not know how it will change us.

Isaiah tells us what happens when we hear and heed God's word.

For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

A prayer for America (invocation for the U.S. Senate on Sept. 29, 1993)

Several years ago I had the privilege of serving as "chaplain of the day" for the United States Senate. It seems appropriate to post this to my weblog as Independence Day approaches.

Prayer for the U.S. Senate.

September 29, 1993.

God of our fathers and mothers, God of our children and grandchildren, yours alike are the Rockies' proud peaks and Shenandoah's green tranquillity; yours are the span of the Golden Gate and the slums of Watts and Harlem.

Hear us as we pray for this land between the shining seas, this home of the pilgrims' pride, these United States of America.

We praise you for America's diverse quilt; for pilgrims from Europe and Africa, from Asia and Latin America, for Creek and Choctaw and Sioux and all our native peoples. Bind our ethnic strands together in a pattern of harmony, peace, and understanding.

Grant the women and men of this great assembly keenness and openness of mind; where vision is bound to personal gain or partisan good, liberate it. Stay their minds upon justice and their hearts upon compassion; may their ears be open to the voices of the voiceless and their eyes to the problems of the present and the possibilities of the future.

Grant that all the people of the United States may employ their hands and hearts and minds and bodies in work that satisfies and delights.

May peace unfold in freedom and justice, and may conflict issue in creative reconciliation.

And grant that in all things we raise our hearts and voices in gratitude to you, O judge of nations and peoples, for in your wisdom you have set us upon a strong and high place, given us peace and prosperity, and called us to walk confidently into the future.

Amen.

Proper 9A: Wonder and secrets

I know I'm dating myself, but as a small child I loved the TV game show What’s My Line? Every week the celebrity panelists tried to guess the mystery guest’s secret. One week the guest would be an astronaut in training. Another week the guest would be the Sweet Potato Queen from Hickory, North Carolina.

Secrets seem anathema to the Christian faith. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world" and "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." And yet, he often cautioned those he had healed to tell no one about his miraculous powers. In today's gospel reading, Jesus claims that even God has secrets. "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants..."There are some truths that seem more apparent to children. Hans Christian Andersen recognized this in his story, "The Emperor's New Clothes." The adults are all conditioned to believe that the emperor is wearing clothes so wondrously made that they are invisible or else they are afraid to tell the emperor the truth. But a little boy in the crowd spontaneously shouts out the truth that adults are too stupid or frightened to say: "The emperor has no clothes!"

It is commonplace in some churches to believe that the Christian faith may be more easily understood by the poorly educated than the well-educated, as though a lack of education confers some kind of special insight. John Wesley once received a letter from a man, who wrote, "Dear Mr. Wesley: God has no need of your fine learning." Wesley replied to him, saying, "Dear Sir: I am aware that God has no need of my learning. God has no need of your ignorance, either!" Jesus is not denouncing learning nor is he conferring a privileged status on ignorance or childishness. Rather, I think he is saying something like what Hans Christian Andersen was saying in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Sometimes it is children or others with little or nothing to lose who can see what others miss or at least what they are afraid to point out.

Author Robert Fulghum claimed that he learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten. Obviously, that's not quite true, but the lessons of childhood are perhaps the most important lessons of all. Share your toys and cookies; if someone is tired and discouraged a big hug is better than a martini; say your prayers every night. Compared to these lessons, a Ph.D. seems almost trivial.

So, what are the things that God has hidden "from the wise and the intelligent" and revealed to infants? Jesus has just finished denouncing the villagers of the Galilee. Matthew tells us that Jesus was going through the villages of Galilee, proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of Heaven, healing the sick, and teaching. Then he sent out the Twelve to do what they had seen him do. And yet, his words and deeds of power seem to have had little effect. He denounced the villages of Galilee and compared them to Sodom. He seems to have meant that just as Sodom was grossly inhospitable to the angelic messengers who visited Lot, so the villages of Galilee had been inhospitable to Jesus and the Twelve.

Children possess the gift of wonder. When adults say that "Christmas is for children," they mean that a small child still believes and hopes and wishes with all her heart that reindeer fly and that Santa can squeeze down the chimney; she still sees the magic in a handful of tinsel and a few strands of twinkly lights on a scraggly spruce tree; and she still believes that the box of fancy soap she bought at Walmart for $5 is the best gift her mother will ever receive.

Adults too often have lost that sense of wonder. That's not entirely a bad thing. Adults have to pay taxes; go to work; and have the oil changed in the car. A sense of wonder can get in the way. But it's an expensive trade-off. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote of the "second naiveté." The first naiveté is the wonder of childhood, which, in time, inevitably evaporates. Children grow up and become adults. Adult responsibilities drive out childish wonder. And if that were the end of the story, it would be sad indeed. But sometimes we recover a sense of wonder; that's the second naiveté. We know that reindeer do not fly but we may still be able to feel the magic and excitement in the story.

Perhaps the villagers of Galilee had lost their first naiveté but not yet arrived at their second naiveté. Miracle workers and itinerant teachers were no unusual sight in first century Palestine. When Jesus came to the Galilean villages and restored sight to the blind, cleansed lepers, and freed the oppressed from demonic power, did they yawn and say, "Very nice but last week we saw a rabbi make his assistant float in the air and then vanish. Do you know that one, Jesus?"

How is it with us? Have we lost our first naiveté but not yet acquired a second naiveté? What has happened to our sense of wonder? Do you still marvel at the works of God? Do you see God's hand at work when the clouds part and the sun shines through? When you look up at the starry sky, do you see God wind up his arm like a major league pitcher and scatter diamonds all across the deep blue of heaven? And above all do you marvel at the young prophet who embraced death on the cross to reconcile the world to God and who rose to new life on the third day? Does it strike you mute with wonder that God loves you and embraces you as a beloved child?

If wonder is missing from your life, if you no longer feel grateful beyond words for what God has done and is doing, try this: tell someone else the story. Tell a child, if possible, because their sense of wonder is contagious. Tell someone how God summoned worlds out of empty space; grabbed a lump of clay and fashioned humankind; called one people out of all the nations of the earth; and then in time's fullness came among us as one of us. Tell the story and you may feel again the wonder that you once knew. Because God hasn't really hidden anything. God's marvels are right in front of our eyes, if only we will open them.

Proper 8A: Making room for God

Say the word "hospitality," and what comes to mind? Do you think of a relative -a grandmother or an aunt, perhaps - who had the gift of hospitality? Who made everyone feel welcome in her home? Whose dinner table always had an extra place and who never let anyone leave the table without an extra helping of peach cobbler?Hospitality is an important and often overlooked theme in the Bible. God instructs Israel in no uncertain terms to show hospitality to strangers. “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deut. 10.19) According to the Old Testament, hospitality is not optional. It's a mitzvah, a commandment, a matter of justice.

The New Testament, too, places a premium on hospitality. When the religious leadership accused Jesus of "welcoming sinners and eating with them," (Luke 15.2) they were saying that he had showed hospitality to the wrong people. When Paul criticized the Christians at Corinth for letting the poor go hungry when the celebrated the Lord's Supper, (1 Cor. 11.20-21) he was accusing them of a breach of hospitality. And the author of Hebrews says that hospitality is important because some have "entertained angels unawares." (Heb. 13.2)

In today's gospel reading, Jesus commends hospitality four times: Normally, a rabbi would argue "from the lesser to the greater," but Jesus reverses the usual order and argues from the greater to the lesser. "Whoever receives you, receives me; whoever receives a prophet, will receive a prophet's reward; whoever receives a righteous person, will receive the reward of the righteous, and whoever "gives even a cup of cold water" to a "little one" will be rewarded.

Just prior to today's gospel reading Jesus sent out the Twelve to do the works they had seen him do - proclaim the nearness of the kingdom, heal the sick, and cast out demons. He sent them out with only the essentials - no money, no bag, no change of clothes - In other words, they were entirely dependent on hospitality.

We need to hear the Bible's message of hospitality because we live in a remarkably inhospitable world, a world of gated communities and exclusive country clubs. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam sounded the alarm in his book Bowling Alone. Putnam argues that since World War II social engagement between Americans of all kinds has fallen off drastically. We no longer join the PTA and the Rotary Club; church and synagogue attendance has fallen off; we less frequently entertain people in our homes. Instead, we live in a world in which people are "cocooning" - staying at home, watching DVDs instead of going to the movies and having pizza delivered to their door. In short, we live in a world that needs hospitality.

Hospitality has two dimensions: First and foremost, the Bible commands hospitality because of the vulnerability of the stranger. In the ancient world the stranger was just as vulnerable and marginalized as the widow or orphan. Indeed, when the Bible speaks of widows and orphans, it often speaks of the stranger, too. “Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the alien residing within you suffers extortion; the orphan and the widow are wronged in you.” (Ezek. 22.7) Travelers who were miles away from their homes had no claim on the protection or hospitality of those among whom they traveled. There were no hotels and restaurants, no police forces, no means of easy communication in times of crisis. The Bible's command to show hospitality to strangers is of a piece with the imperative of justice. The imperative of justice is to care for those who have no right to claim our kindness and hospitality. In other words, we are to behave toward others as God has behaved toward us: compassionate toward those who have no claim on our compassion.

The second dimension of hospitality is how it affects those who show hospitality. Why do you suppose our world is so inhospitable? I think the answer is simple: fear. To be hospitable makes us vulnerable and we are afraid of vulnerability. To open our homes to others, especially strangers but even friends, opens us to criticism, the judgment of others; it could even open us to crime. So we wall out the world. We isolate ourselves behind the walls of our houses; behind fences and security systems; behind police forces and deadly weapons. We isolate ourselves in front of our televisions and computer terminals, not letting in anyone - the stranger on the corner, the friend down the street, not even God. In short, the failure to be hospitable is a failure of faith. We do not admit the stranger to our homes and lives because we are not sure that we can depend on the God who mandates hospitality.

What would happen if we heard and heeded the Bible's message of hospitality? It would certainly be good news for the hungry and homeless. The streets of our great cities are full of those who would be glad of a blanket, a warm place to sleep, and a bowl of soup. But it might be even better news for those of us who show hospitality to them, because it would bring us out of the cocoons of our own making into the light and fresh air. It would free us to show compassion and mercy. And most of all, it would open us to God. The outrageous promise that Jesus makes to those who show hospitality is that if they open themselves to those with no claim on their compassion and kindness, they will be opening themselves to God. "Whoever receives me, receives the one who sent me..." And after all, who really needs hospitality? Is it the bag lady rooting through the dumpster? The vet who stands at the end of the freeway offramp with his American flag and homemade sign? Of course, they need our hospitality, but not as much as every single one of us needs God's hospitality. God shows us what hospitality is all about by receiving those who have no claim on the divine love, by extending the circle of divine compassion to include the unlovely and unloveable, and by inviting every single one of us to sit down at the heavenly banquet.

Proper 7A: Family values

A recent PBS documentary set the cat among the pigeons by implying that Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalene. Conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics, in particular, were scandalized at the thought. It is unlikely in the extreme that Jesus ever married, but there is something odd in the furor inspired by the PBS program. Does it strike you as strange that it is precisely the people who are most upset by the suggestion that Jesus might have been married are also the ones who are most vociferous about so-called "family values"?"Family values" has become the rallying cry of the religious right, and in many ways, I think they are on to something important. Drug abuse, crime, education, divorce, unwanted children, domestic abuse… Certainly better parenting and healthier families would do a lot to alleviate these and other social problems.So, of course, we would expect Jesus to be on the side of family values.

What did Jesus have to say about family values? Listen to these words from today's gospel reading:"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household." (Matt. 10.34-35)Uh oh... I hope the Christian Coalition doesn't hear about this. They might try to have Jesus banned from the Internet or at least have the National Endowment for the Humanities cut off his funding.

I'm not trying to be facetious, but it's a little difficult to see Jesus waving the banner of family values as understood by many on the religious right. Jesus' relationship with his own family seems to have been very troubled, and the trouble started at the very beginning. When Joseph learned that his fiancée Mary was pregnant before the marriage, he seriously considered calling the whole thing off, and was only dissuaded from it by a direct message from God delivered in a dream. When he was 12 years old, the boy Jesus remained in the Temple rather than returning to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. When they found the boy missing from their traveling party, they returned to the Temple and found him conversing with the learned men. Mary scolded Jesus rather sharply and said, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold your father and I have been looking for you anxiously". And Jesus replied equally sharply, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

By identifying the Temple as "his Father's house" rather than Joseph's house in Nazareth, the 12 year old Jesus was already declaring his independence from his family. Wouldn't that be an interesting Gospel reading for Father's Day?And when Jesus finally launched his ministry of teaching and miraculous cures, his family believed that he was possessed by a demon and tried to seize him and bring him home with them.

It was as though a family in our day and time were trying to abduct and "de-program" a child who had joined a cult. When Jesus learned what his family was trying to do, he looked around at his disciples and said, "Who are my mother and brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister and mother".(Mark 3.34) In effect, he disowned his earthly family and announced the creation of a new, spiritual family.Jesus and family values are an uneasy combination. Between the beginning of his ministry and his crucifixion his family consisted of a motley group of disciples that included both men and women. Many of them seem to have abandoned their own families. The gospels tell us that when Jesus called Peter and James and John that they dropped their fishing nets and followed him. In other words, they simply walked away from jobs and families to follow an itinerant prophet. This "family" that followed Jesus wandered from place to place. They seem to have supported themselves by asking for handouts. No wonder Jesus made the authorities nervous!

Now, don't misunderstand me: Jesus never endorsed disobedience to parents or encouraged husbands to leave their wives or vice versa. And Jesus was no advocate of irresponsibility. But the teachings of Jesus radically challenged the idea of family in the first century and perhaps in our world, too.In the first century, family was everything. One was a Jew because one's mother was Jewish. One didn't choose the Jewish faith; one was born into it. That was why Nicodemus found Jesus so puzzling. "You must be born again," Jesus said to Nicodemus, and the learned Nicodemus replied, "How can this be? Can one enter again into one's mother's womb?" Nicodemus saw no need for a second birth. He had been born a Jew and a Pharisee and no greater heritage was imaginable. We've become so accustomed to the phrase "born again" that we do not see what a revolutionary idea it was in first century Judaism. It implied a radical rejection of the whole structure of Judaism. One was to be born again not by blood but by the spirit. One was to be born not into an earthly family but into a spiritual one. One's earthly ancestors became completely irrelevant.It was not just first century Judaism that made the family central. It was true of the Roman Empire, as well. Family was everything. The family was the central institution in Rome. The father of a family was known as the paterfamilias, and he had almost absolute power over those in his household. But Jesus taught his disciples to call no one father except God. With a stroke, Jesus severed the ties that bound his disciples both to their earthly families and to the larger societies of which families were and are the basic units."I have not come to bring peace but a sword. I will set father against son and mother against daughter..." Jesus came to found an entirely new kind of family. And it didn't take long before first the Jewish authorities and later the Roman authorities realized just how dangerous his ideas were.

A tribe is just an extension of the family or a collection of families. It is odd at the beginning of the 21st century to find tribalism reasserting itself. The conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent are tribal wars. In a sense, they are family warfare. Protestant families against Catholic families; Muslim families against Jewish families; Hindu families against Muslim families. People are hated and killed simply because of who their parents and grandparents were.

At their best, families are places of love and warmth and nurture. And I would venture to say that the healthiest families are those in which there is enough love not only for those who have a claim to it by their birth but also for those outside the circle of the family. God is constantly probing at us and our families to see if our love excludes or includes, if we will constrict the circle of our love or open our arms wide. Jesus challenges our idea of family values because he preached a gospel of love without limits. Nowhere does Jesus encourage neglect of family. Rather, he asks us to love the poor, the hungry, and the homeless alongside our own parents and children. Jesus preached a "both/and" love, not an "either/or" love.

Did Jesus preach an impossible ethic? Yes. Does that mean that the bar is set so high that we might as well not even try? Not at all. Instead, Jesus expects us to learn to love by loving those in our families and then extending that love to those outside, to those with no claim on our love, to those whom no one loves. God put us in families because families are schools of love. Our families are schools of love, because it's very difficult to love someone you share a bathroom with! We are put in families because it's usually easiest to love those who are similar to us, but unfortunately, that's where we stop all too often. Loving those whom we know, loving people who love us, is only love's most basic arithmetic, but Jesus challenges us to go on and learn love's advanced calculus. We must love our families, to be sure, but that is only the first step on love's journey, a journey whose ultimate destination is to learn to love those who are completely different from us and perhaps even repellent to us.

Love your spouse. Love your children. Love your parents. Love your sisters and brothers. Love yourself. But don't let your love stop at the front door. Instead, keep your hearts and your homes wide open, because Jesus is coming to knock on your door.

Proper 6A: The two movements of the Christian life

Have you ever seen a labyrinth or walked one? Whether or not you’ve seen or walked a labyrinth, you probably know what I’m talking about.

A few years ago, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco reintroduced the labyrinth as a spiritual discipline. A labyrinth is simple a large circular pattern which one walks as a means of mediation of prayer. The labyrinth at Grace Cathedral is a copy of a very ancient labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France.

In an article The Birmingham News did about labyrinths a few years ago, they noted that "Walkers sometimes find themselves near each other; sometimes not. They find themselves sometimes near the center/destination, then suddenly distant, then unexpectedly at the end of the journey."

I want to suggest that there are two fundamental movements in our spiritual lives that such a maze or labyrinth reveals to us: the movements are coming in and going out.

The gospels suggest much the same thing.

In last week's gospel Jesus summoned Matthew to follow him, "Follow me". It was, as I pointed out, a phrase Jesus used at critical points in his ministry. He summoned Peter and Andrew, the first disciples with the same words: "Follow me". And he invited his followers to "take up their cross" and follow him.

In today's gospel reading having already called the Twelve to follow him, having already invited them in, Jesus sends them out. "...he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and eveyr infirmity.... These twelve Jesus sent out..."

As it is in the great maze of Chartres Cathedral, so it is in our lives. We are both invited to move in toward the center and also sent out to the edge. Jesus invites us into his fellowship, saying, "Follow me", and he also sends us out in mission and ministry.

These are the two fundamental movements of the Christian life. We are invited to follow Jesus and learn from him. He pours his life into us. But then we are sent out.

The Christian life is much like the growth of a child into an adult. As infants we can do nothing for ourselves. We are carried about, our parents change our diapers, feed us, and in time educate us. But the time comes when we reach a certain age and can be given responsibility. At first, the responsibilities are simple; we are told to clean our rooms, to feed the dog, to take out the garbage. But eventually we are given more responsibility. We go to college, get a job, get married, and eventually have children of our own. But we never cease to need the loving care and concern of others.

And so it is with the Christian life. Imagine the Christian life as a spiral. It begins with baptism when we are baptized into Christ, put on Christ, are filled for the first time with the Spirit Christ pours out on all those who are baptized. This following Christ and being filled by him continue as we learn about the Christian life.

But as we grow and learn as Christians, we, too, are given responsibility. There comes the time when Christ says to us, as he said to the Twelve, "... heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons..." Sound scary? Good! It is. But it is not impossible.

Coming back home for rest and nourishment and going out in service -- these are the two parts of the Christian life. If either part of the Christian life is missing, then something is gravely wrong. We constantly need to be renewed in worship and the sacraments. And we also constantly need to take that life offered to us and give it away.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Christ calls us, he bids us come and die." Bonhoeffer phrased that a little too dramatically. I think it would be more accurate to say, "When Christ calls us, he bids us come and give our lives." We can give our lives dramatically, as when a martyr dies for the faith, but we can also give our lives day by day, offering to the world the life that God is constantly pouring into us.

The gospel is founded on the concept that the death of Christ brings life to those who put their faith in the God who was in Christ. The classic statement of this is in today's epistle: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

In other words, the death of Christ was sacrificial. The idea that Christ's death was sacrificial is troubling to many. Sacrifice seems such a primitive and unpleasant concept. But the idea behind sacrifice is simple and true. A sacrifice is simply the giving of life in order that life may be received.

In some mysterious way, the death of Christ upon the Cross opened a channel through which God was able to pour life and grace into the world. We are the recipients of that life and grace. In response, we are asked to make our lives sacrificial. We are asked to be channels through which that life and grace can flow to others. "Freely have ye received, freely give."

Coming in and going out... the two movements of the spiritual life. Of the two parts, I suppose the one more likely to be overemphasized is coming in. We are content to go to church, sing hymns, and listen to sermons (provided they are not too long), but when we are dismissed, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord", do we hear those as anything more than the last words of the liturgy? Do we in fact go out "to love and serve the Lord?"

Worship mirrors life. The liturgy starts with the same words with which we are baptized: "Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" and then they end with the words, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” I want to suggest that the words of dismissal are not the last words of the Sunday liturgy. They are the first words of the liturgy in which we are all engaged every day of our lives.

Update

I just want to let people know that I haven't abandoned my blog. I am working feverishly right now to finish up the first 100 pages or so of a book for the University of Alabama Press. The tentative title is Bishop, Bourbons, and Big Mules: The Episcopal Church in Alabama from 1830 to 2000. Several years ago I wrote a brief history of the Diocese of Alabama as the introduction to a collection of photographs of all the parish churches in the diocese. At that time I suggested to the Press that I expand the essay into a book, and they were interested. Then I got busy with other things and put it aside. Early this year they contacted me and (in effect) asked, "So, how's the book coming?" And I decided that I'd get back to work and finish it. I'm making a lot of progress and have nearly finished the section from 1830 to 1861 (1861 was the year that the first bishop died, the second bishop was elected, and the Civil War broke out).

Anyway, I will be updating this blog from time to time but not as frequently as I was. However, I am also taking on a short-term interim and so hope to have some fresh material to add to the blog.

Those of you who have linked to my website and blog, please don't give up on me! And if you read my website even casually, please let me hear from you.

In the meantime, have a look at some of my sermons and watch for new ones I'll be adding. I've reviewed at least one more book for "What I'm reading" but have to work on the website machinery so that you can see it, and that may take a while.

Blessings!

Trinity Sunday: "In the beginning..."

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” In my mind’s ear I always hear the opening words of the Bible set to music, sung by a chorus of thousands, and accompanied by an orchestra with offstage trumpets and trombones. Alternatively, I hear it read by James Earl Jones, who has a voice so deep and resonant that I’m sure even God is envious.

However, today the focus is not on creation but on the Creator. The first chapter of Genesis begs the question, “Who is this God who created and creates, who spoke and who speaks yet?” And the church throughout the ages answers by telling us that God is Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… Eternal Majesty, Incarnate Word, and Paraclete.

But before we come to the doctrine of the Trinity, let’s consider another way of naming or knowing God. When you meet a stranger, after you have asked their name, the second question is likely to be, “What do you do?” And that more fully identifies or names that person. “I’m Barry, and I’m a priest.” Or “I’m David, and I’m a city planner.” So if we were to interview the God of Genesis and say, “Help us to know you better. What is it that you do? What is your job description?” On the basis of the first chapter of Genesis, God might say, “I speak, create, and rest.”

First, God speaks. “Let there be light, and there was light.” Cue the brass choir, timpani, and lasers. Cue the Big Bang. When God speaks, people listen, and things happen. When we speak, there are no trumpets, timpani, or lasers pouring light into the void. It would be as futile for us to try to materialize a cup of coffee by saying, “Let there be Starbucks,” as for us to say, “Let there be light.” But God speaks with power and authority; our words seem puny in comparison. Or are they?

On Trinity Sunday we hear God speak the heavens and the earth into being, but last week on Pentecost, we heard Jesus’ followers also speak a new world into being. And here we have a clue to the Trinity: God puts divine power into our speech, too. As I said last week, words are powerful. They create and they destroy. The doctrine of the Trinity arose out of the church’s experience of a God who was not only in heaven but also on earth. They found God beyond them and also among them, and yet they knew that God was one. So gradually they began to name this God among them as the Holy Spirit. As they told the new story of how God had come among them as Jesus of Nazareth, they discovered that their words had power.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus gives a commission to his followers that is largely about using words: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” And note that he commissioned them in the Name of the Trinity. Do not discount the power of words. The followers of Jesus converted the world not only by martyrdom but also by telling a new story, more persuasive than the old ones. The Star Wars’ movies thrive not only because of their special effects, but also because the story of the courageous Jedi battling the Dark Lords has captured out imagination. Go and tell the story, and watch how powerful your words can be. Watch new worlds spring into being.

Secondly, God creates. We are not only like God in being able to speak powerfully; we are also like God in being creators. Note that I did not say that we are like God in being creative (although I think everyone is creative, too). All of us create. Is your job routine, boring, and humdrum? Are you retired? Are you unable to work because of some handicap? It doesn’t matter. You are still a creator. The chief way that both God and humans create is through love. Love is the most powerful creative force in the universe.

The answer to the old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is simple. Because of love; specifically, because God loves. To be sure, God loved before the first whale swam in the Pacific or antelopes grazed on the Serengeti or before there was a single star in the Milky Way. God loved before all these things because God is Trinity. But God created because it is the nature of love to create and the nature of true creativity to love.

Love creates. When you fall in love with someone, doesn’t a whole new world come into being? When you vow to love someone until death do you part, you are vowing to create a world with that person, however slow and painstaking the process. Parenting is largely about loving a child into being, in other words, parenting is about creating a new world, or at least a new corner of an old world.

Finally, God rested. What are we to understand about this assertion that God rested on the seventh day? Does God get tired? Does God need to take naps? A rabbinic tale might help us to understand this. The rabbis say that the Holy One filled all immensity before the world was and there was no place where God was not. Neither was there any room for a world, for God was all and in all. So God drew back the robe of the Divine Glory to make room for a world. The rabbis explain that this means that God gives the world room to be itself. God is not merely the divine watchmaker, nor the world just a piece of wind-up machinery. Rather, God created the kind of world in which the world and all its inhabitants also have the power to create. God makes the world so that it makes itself, for only so can the world be itself.

What I understand by Genesis’ statement that God rested is that God drew back a little. God granted the world (and especially human beings) a degree of autonomy. We now have the responsibility to create as God created, to love as God loves. Where things are amiss, we are to set them right; where the world is broken, we are to mend it. Another helpful idea from the rabbis is tikkun olam, which literally means “repairing the world”. Tikkun olam, repairing the world is the task God has given us to do.

One of the early Church Fathers said that God became human so that humans could become gods. In other words, God became human so that humans could fully share the divine life. We already share the divine life to the extent that we tell God’s new story, love one another, and participate in mending the world. The God Who Is Three and One has placed the divine image in each heart. Our task is to live into that image and so share the divine life.

And so to God our Mothering Father, God the Incarnate Word, and God the Holy Spirit, ever three and ever one, be blessing and honor and glory and majesty, both now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Religion and Politics: A letter to The Atlanta Constitution

On May 2, Joel Bookman of The Atlanta Constitution published an editorial entitled "Faith should be personal, not political." I agreed with his overall conclusion but not with the route he took to get there. Here's a link to his article followed by my letter to Bookman about his editorial.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/2005/050205.html

Dear Mr. Bookman:

Like you , I am outraged by the attempt to place far right jurists on the federal bench via an assault on the Senate’s filibuster rule, but I’m troubled by your reasoning. In your editorial of 5/2/05 (“Faith should be personal, not political”) I believe you reached the correct destination but took several wrong and potentially dangerous turns to get there.

You state that one of the “traditional values of the American people” is that “religion should never be “injected directly into politics” and that “…religion and politics, when mixed, inevitably corrupt each other.” Not so. Religion has been “injected directly into politics” a number of times in American history, mostly with beneficial results.

In spite of Jefferson’s celebrated “wall” between church and state (a good thing, in my opinion), religion has an important role to play in the public square. Jefferson himself wrote in the Declaration of Independence that one of the “self-evident” truths we hold is that “all men are created equal [and]… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” he was injecting religion into politics. Or when Lincoln opined in his second inaugural address that the Civil War had been God’s “scourge” upon America for “the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil,” he was making an explicitly religious statement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was injecting religion directly into the political bloodstream when he began every one of his marches and demonstrations with prayer or when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and proclaimed that “I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed and nonviolent redemptive good will will be proclaimed the rule of the land.”

The practice of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam cannot be merely private devotional exercises. These faiths lead their followers to take certain positions that have public implications. The abortion debate is a good example. Some Christians are persuaded by the Bible and the church’s teaching that human life begins at conception and deserves the protection that all human life enjoys. Other Christians are equally persuaded that human life does not begin at conception and that a woman’s right to exercise control over her body outweighs the rights (if any) of the fetus.

Religious ideas, like all other ideas, have the right to be considered in the intellectual and political marketplace. The public square should neither privilege religion nor exclude it. However, the public square is a religiously-neutral location and once there religious ideas are on an equal footing with all other ideas. In the church (or synagogue or mosque) it may be enough to say, “Thus says the Lord…” but that does not work in the public square. In the free marketplace of ideas, reason and pragmatism hold sway. Abolitionism and equal rights for African Americans were conceived in prayer and Bible study, but they prevailed in public because their advocates argued and won their debate through passion, reason, and the willingness to put their livelihoods and sometimes their lives on the line.

The wall between church (or synagogue or mosque or temple) and state exists to prevent the imposition of a state-endorsed religion upon the American people. It should not prevent the faithful from fighting for their convictions using the time-honored tools of persuasion. We cannot and should not (and it would be dangerous if we could) exclude religion from the public square. Religion speaks with many voices and these voices have as much right (no more but no less) to speak out on issues that confront us as any other voice. To make religion purely personal and private (as you call for in your article) would impoverish our public conversation. Furthermore, it would require a drastic revision of American history beginning with “We hold these truths…” and ending with “I have a dream…”

Yours sincerely,

The Rev. J. Barry Vaughn, Ph.D.

Easter 6A: "If... then..."

Way back in 1978 someone told me that computers were going to be important some day and I should take a computer class, and I believed them. Silly me! I was silly not because they were wrong. Obviously, they were right. In the 27 years since graduation, computers have become far more important than either my friend or I could have imagined. I was silly because what I learned in that class was probably obsolete even before the end of the semester. However, if I’d taken another class on Shakespeare or Plato, I would have benefited from that for the rest of my life. That’s the sermon I preach to my students at the University of Alabama, but it’s not the sermon I want to preach to you today.

There was one thing I learned in that computer class that has stuck with me and seems applicable to today’s gospel reading. One of the fundamentals of computer language is the “if/then” statement. In the code, that is, the language in which software is written, one of the most common commands is “if/then”/ For example, when you are using a word processing program and try to exit the program without saving the document, the program will stop you and say, “Do you want to save this document before exiting the program?” Obviously, one of Bill Gates’ employees in Redmond, WA, wrote an ‘if/then” command which goes something like this, “IF Barry Vaughn is absent-minded enough to exit Word without saving his sermon, THEN stop him before he loses everything he has typed and remind him to save it.”

If/then commands aren’t just part of computer software, they are a part of life. Sometimes life seems to be mostly about “if/then” commands. If you want a paycheck at the end of the month, then you need to get up and go to work five days a week. If you don’t want to sleep on the sofa, then you need to remember to send your wife some flowers for Mother’s Day. If you want your car to keep on running, then you have to put gas in the tank and change the oil. And on and on it goes…

Most of the “if/thens” we encounter in life are either neutral or beneficial, such as the three I mentioned. However, some “if/thens” are toxic. Sometimes families expect certain behaviors in exchange for love. “No son or daughter of mine is going to marry outside our race or religion, so If you want to continue to be a part of our family, THEN you will marry someone we approve of.” Or sometimes the conversation goes like this, “You must be crazy to want to study Shakespeare instead of computer science. If you want us to help you pay for college, THEN you better study something that we think is practical.”

Do you see what’s wrong with those “if/then” statements? Our families should be places of unconditional love, but in dysfunctional families, there are certain expectations that must be met in order to receive love. Of course, family members can and should hold each other accountable, but it’s wrong to make love conditional on a family member’s “performance” or willingness to toe the family line.

The Christian faith is about unconditional love from beginning to end, but in today’s gospel reading it sounds as though Jesus is putting conditions on his love. “If you love me,” Jesus says, “you will keep my commandments.”

Jesus seems to be saying that his love is conditional: “If you love me, then I will love you” and I believe that that is the way that most Christians understand the gospel. In spite of the great principle of the Reformation that God’s love is a free gift, the majority of us act as though we have to earn God’s love. One Sunday when the gospel reading was the parable of the prodigal son, one of my older parishioners said, “I always thought the father let that boy off way too easy!” And probably at times, most of us have felt the same way. God seems to let some people get off way too easy. However, the truth is God lets all of us off easy.

The Christian life involves discipline and is demanding, but that doesn’t mean that God’s love toward us is conditional on our ability to meet certain requirements. But the grace, mercy, and love of God are poured out on us in abundance in spite (not because) of our behavior. This was Paul’s stunning insight in Romans 5.8: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were YET sinners, Christ died for us.”

This is also what Jesus is saying in John 14.15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The “if” misleads us. We read this as though Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments, then I will love you.” But keeping the commandments does not persuade God to love us; rather, loving God motivates us to keep the commandments. It is the same insight that Augustine had when he said, “Love God, and do as you please.”

Jesus tells us about a God whose love contains no “if/thens.” Even as I say that I feel uneasy, and maybe some of you do, too. It sounds far too simple. What about the commandments, the rules, the obligations that go along with being a Christian? No question about it: there are plenty of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” in the Bible. But if we believe that the Bible is one big “if/then” statement, then we’ve misunderstood it. In today’s gospel reading Jesus does NOT say, IF you keep my commandments, THEN I will love you.” Rather, he says, “If you love me, then you will keep my commandments.” Obedience is our response to God’s love; not a condition for receiving it.

It is only human to believe that God’s love is something we must earn. Observing the numerous temples and altars on Athens’ Areopagus, Paul said, “I see that you are very religious in every way.” And so they were. Greek and Roman religion (and nature religions of every kind) operate on the belief that there are powers or gods that are by their nature indifferent or hostile to us. The purpose of religion is to win their favor by performing rituals and offering sacrifices. The great insight of Judaism and Christianity is that God loves us and longs to have a relationship with us. Make no mistake: like any relationship we go through bad patches. We often make each other angry. But the Bible assures us that (like the father in the parable of the prodigal son) God’s arms are always wide-open.

The gospel is good news, not bad news. It is not about a set of conditions we have to fulfill in order to be loved. The Bible is a love story or better yet a love letter with your name and my name on the envelope. It is an invitation to fall in love with the God who loves us first, last, and in between.