Life before and after the comma - A sermon preached at the memorial service for deceased members of the Harvard College Class of 1978 - Oct. 11, 2008

Once more the alumni office and its minions have worked their magic. “Fair Harvard, we join in thy jubilee throng, and with blessings surrender thee o’er,” although our blessings are not what they were before the Dow dropped below 9,000.  Harvard welcomes back its scattered sons and daughters to enjoy its hospitality; to see old friends; make new ones; to laugh or cry or blush as we remember how impossibly young we were when Derek Bok was president of Harvard; Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter occupied the White House and Peter Gomes had a mustache. 

Once again the Yard is thrown open to us, and we can enjoy the haute cuisine of the Houses, the evening at the Pops, the pomp of graduation. No, that’s not right, is it? What’s wrong with this picture? This reunion is in the fall, not the spring; there’s no evening at the Pops; and we’ve been banished from the Yard. Something is different this time. We seem to have been demoted. It appears that once our 25^th reunion passes we are no longer the darlings of the Alumni and Development offices. We are past our prime; over the hill; or (in the famous words of Tom Lehrer) “sliding down the razor blade of life.”

 But isn’t that simply a fact of life that we must all accept? Not all the botox, skin peels, knee and hip replacements, Rogaine, scalp plugs, gym memberships nor any of the infinite number of products guaranteed to restore youth or slow aging will long hide or delay the fact that “earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away. Change and decay in all around I see…” Or to borrow a song from that OTHER university: “we will pass and be forgotten like the rest.” 

And if we HAD forgotten any of those things, today’s solemn task would have reminded us. Amid the laughter and nostalgia, before the symposia and the football game, we pause to remember a Superior Court judge who also wrote book reviews for his local newspaper; a Rhodes Scholar who took time from his career as a lawyer to serve on numerous community boards; a computer scientist whose love of flying led him to develop cutting edge software for the aviation industry; and each of the others – a husband, wife, or partner; father or mother; sister or brother; whose passing leaves an emptiness and grief that, in time, will become less painful but will never completely heal. 

This memorial service inserts a note of reality into our reunion festivities. It puts a comma between the visit to classmate Governor Deval Patrick at the Statehouse and the symposium featuring classmate Governor Deval Patrick following the service. Without this pause, this comma, if you will, we would rush through our reunion and not remember the classmates who have gone before us. More importantly, we might not stop to think that one day our names, too, will be read out at this service.

 Punctuation is as important in life as it is in the written word. We all enjoy the exclamation marks: weddings, the birth of a child, the achievement of partnership in the firm or tenure, making it to the top of the mountain (either literal or metaphorical). And we all endure the question marks: the death of  loved ones, the loss of a job, the end of a marriage or love not returned. But I’m inclined to believe that the comma is the most important punctuation mark in life’s story. It invites us to slow down, pay attention, look around, and perhaps re-orient ourselves.

 In the play Wit elderly English professor, Evelyn Ashford, underscores the importance of punctuation when she criticizes her student Vivian, the play’s central character, for having used a poorly edited version of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets as the basis for an essay. “The last line should read, ‘Death’ comma ‘thou shalt die.’ Only a comma separates life and life everlasting.”

 On this day and in this place we may all be wondering if Dr. Ashford was correct. Is death a comma or a period? And if it is a comma, what comes after? Surely religion has the answer, because, after all, isn’t religion mostly concerned with what happens after the comma, with “life everlasting” rather than life in this world? 

In my opinion, that is the most common mistake that people make about religion – to believe that it is more concerned with what happens after the comma than with what happens before it, with life in the next world than with life in this world. 

We do well to remember and honor our classmates who have gone before us, who await us at the final reunion of the Class of 1978. But we do better to honor them by living our lives fully and energetically, by being as engaged in this world as possible.

 The following words, read at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, seem especially apt to me:

 

If I should die and leave you here awhile, 

Be not like others, sore undone, who keep 

Long vigils by the silent dust, and weep. 

For my sake - turn again to life and smile, 

Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do 

Something to comfort other hearts than thine. 

Complete those dear unfinished tasks of mine 

And I, perchance, may therein comfort you.

 Think of these reunions as great punctuation marks, commas in our own personal narratives. They give us a chance to pause, remember, and reflect about who we were thirty years ago, about who and what we hoped we might become and perhaps, even who we still might be.

 In reading our Thirtieth Class Report I was struck frequently by the number of you who have already experienced life after death. I mean, how many of you have found that life goes on after the death of a parent, a spouse, or even a child; how many of you have found new love after divorce; how many have found a new and more meaningful career after the loss of a job or after your old career had grown stale and had become dull and tedious, and how often the new career involves giving a significant amount of your time, energy, and financial resources to a cause greater than yourselves: to helping the hungry and homeless or seeking solutions to the global environmental crisis.

 My religion has a name for the new life that begins when the old one has died: we call it resurrection. Resurrection can happen any time. The only prerequisite is that first we must die. The death may be literal or it may be one of the thousand ways that we die throughout our lives.

 Perhaps we would fear death less if we made its acquaintance, if we realized that it visits us not once but many times, and that it is death that makes life infinitely precious. It is the very shortness and finitude of life that makes us cherish it and find it meaningful. Treasure every moment with the people you love because we are given such a small handful of them. Take full advantage of this reunion, this comma in life’s narrative. Laugh and perhaps even cry with old friends; make new ones; dive headlong into a pile of leaves in Harvard Yard.

 So, is death a comma rather than a period? Does only a comma separate life from life everlasting? I suspect that is a question we must each answer for ourselves. But I want to suggest that you will find the answer (or find that the question becomes irrelevant) if you follow poet Wendell Berry’s advice and begin right now to “practice resurrection:”

 every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

…

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

…

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

…

 In one of his parables, Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard points out that a student is allotted only so much time to complete an exam and whether she uses every minute of the test period or just a small fraction of the time, it makes no difference as long as she is finished before the time expires. But what if life itself is the test? If that is the case, then it would be tragic indeed to be finished with life before life is finished with us.

 But life is not finished with any of us. Whether you believe that only a comma separates life from life everlasting or that death is (as the British say) a “full stop”, we have all the time we need to lead a full and meaningful life. And the forty-seven classmates who have gone before us would surely expect us to do no less than to take up their unfinished tasks, to complete our own unfinished business, to be joyful even though we have considered all the facts.  

 

The Language of Heaven - St. Michael and All Angels - Sept. 29, 2008

Texts: Gen. 28.10-17 and Revelation 12.7-12.

When John and I were planning this service I asked him if he wanted it to include a sermon. He said, “Well, if you preach, it probably won’t be too tedious.” With encouragement like that, how could I not preach?

Actually, I was hoping that John would want me to preach this evening, both because it gives me an opportunity to say something about him, his extraordinary musical gifts, and his service to St. Alban’s, and also to say something about music.

However, tonight’s lessons are not about music and musicians but about angels. The collect tells us that God has “ordained and constituted in wonderful order the ministries of mortals and angels” and their function is to “serve and worship” God in heaven and to “help and defend” us on earth. The Old Testament reading is the marvelous and mysterious story of Jacob’s vision of the heavenly escalator upon which angels go to and from heaven and earth. And the New Testament reading is the even more enigmatic story from the Book of Revelation about the archangel Michael defeating Satan.

We know little about angels but from tonight’s collect and reading and also from other Biblical sources we know that angels are first and foremost messengers. Both the Hebrew malach and the Greek angellos mean “messenger” but we translate them as “angel.” Most of the time that angels appear in the Bible they are bearing messages: three angels appear to Abraham to tell him once again that he and Sarah will be the parents of a multitude. And of course, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce that she will give birth to Jesus.

Apparently, an important function of angels is also to be in some sense God’s “swat team,” leading the fight against evil and defending God’s people.

However, the single most important function of angels is to praise and worship God. Why, we might wonder, does God need or want the constant praise of angelic beings? But that, I think, is the wrong question. I think, rather, that angels, being by their very nature closer to God than we are, cannot help but praise God. Think of our reaction to the Grand Canyon or the Rocky Mountains. How beautiful and majestic we think as we see the sunset pour brilliant colors over the Grand Canyon or the mist that hides the peaks of the Rockies. How much more, then, must angels be overcome by the glory of God?

That, I believe, is why angels are so often portrayed holding and playing musical instruments. Praise invariably involves music because words fail us in the face of beauty of the highest order. Music can convey thoughts and feelings for which we have no words and music can give words power beyond their meaning.

Karl Barth, probably the greatest Christian theologian of the 20th century, was fascinated by both angels and music. A great fan of Mozart, Barth famously wrote that the angels sing Bach when they praise God but they play Mozart when they are playing for their own amusement. It is also said that toward the end of his life, Barth had his one and only mystical experience when he was attending a performance of some of Mozart’s music and saw the composer sitting on the stage and looking at him. Barth also made the enigmatic remark that Mozart must have been angel.

Why not? If angels are musicians, why can’t musicians be angels? Angels bring us God’s messages for our lives; so do musicians. How often as we listen to music have we felt that it was telling us something, that it communicated something about the majesty of God, about our own need for God, that it told us of the glory and wonder of life on earth, or that it moved us to tears with a message for which not only had no words but no coherent thoughts?

Remember, too, that angels quite often deliver messages that frighten. I think the choir would agree that John frequently delivers messages of that sort!

I don’t want to overstress the connection between angels and musicians, but I believe there is one. One of John Donne’s most famous prayers says that in heaven there is “neither noise nor silence but one equal music.” My personal opinion is that music is the language of heaven because music both orders and enhances our words and thoughts. Music also takes us out of ourselves and binds us together in community. That is obviously the case when we sing together, but I believe it is also the case when we listen to music. An audience or congregation listening to music are caught up together in a common experience.

The prayer for church musicians and artists in the Prayer Book tells us that it is the function of church musicians to “perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and beseeches God grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled.”

Tonight we give thanks not only for the ministries of angels but also for the ministry of John King Carter who has perfected our praises and given us glimpses of divine beauty. May you continue that ministry in your new parish, John.

The race to the bottom - Proper 21A - Sept 28, 2008

It would hardly come as a newsflash to point out that we are coming to the end of one of the longest presidential campaigns in U.S. history. I believe that senators McCain and Obama are both honorable and patriotic men who sincerely desire the best for their country. However, no one, especially in our time, can become president of the United States without possessing a degree of ambition that is almost unimaginable. The discipline of an Olympic athlete pales beside the discipline it takes to sit in the Oval Office. Furthermore, to become president one must be absolutely convinced that one is qualified to wield more power than any other single individual in the world and possibly more power than anyone else in human history. Finally, I also suspect that no one can become president without a degree of ruthlessness. I don’t necessarily mean that in a pejorative sense, but the pursuit of the presidency requires a willingness to put aside one’s own needs and often to put aside the needs even of one’s spouse and children. It requires a willingness to punish one’s enemies promptly and without sentimentality.

Today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians tells us about another race, not a race to the top, but a race to the bottom. Paul tells us that Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave [or servant]”. Paul outlines five steps in Jesus’ race” to the bottom: he emptied himself of his divine nature; he took human form; he became a slave or servant to others; he was crucified; and he died.

What a contrast to the presidential campaign! One is a race to the top and the other a race to the bottom. One is about having more and more power, and the other is about having less and less power. One is about seeking the highest office and the other is about seeking the lowest place in the universe – the grave. Don’t misunderstand me: we live in an imperfect world. We need officials, including presidents, monarchs, and prime ministers to order human affairs. The United States long ago decided that the office of president would be filled by someone elected to it for a four year term. In order to be elected, one must want to be elected and campaign for the office. And not even our greatest presidents have had unmixed and pure motives for seeking the presidency. But Christ bids us seek service rather than self-aggrandizement. He invites us to join him not in a race to the top but in a race to the bottom, a race to the place of greatest need.

The steps Paul outlines in Philippians are also the steps we have to take. First, Christ “emptied himself.”. We, too must empty ourselves. There are times when we must put the needs of others before our own, God’s priorities ahead of our own priorities. Now, because we are human and finite, we must also exercise good self-care. Without caring for ourselves, we would have nothing to give to others. But if we are attentive to God, then we will find that at times God calls on us to throw caution to the wind and in ways both large and small to give ourselves for others.

Second, Paul tells us that Christ took human form. We also have to get inside the skin and the minds of others – to learn to see the world from other points of view, to empathize with those different from ourselves. The world looks very different from the point of view of the developing world than it does in most of North America. If we are white, we would do well to imagine what it is like to be black in a majority white culture. Christians should occasionally stop and imagine the world through Jewish or Muslim eyes.

Third, Christ took the form of a servant. It sounds simple and it is simple to serve others. We do it every day. We prepare a meal for someone else; we even sometimes do the gracious thing and let the jerk in the approach lane cut in traffic ahead of us. But to be a real servant is to give up some of our power, our prestige, our place of honor. It is to step back and step down and let another have the higher place. It is to be willing to receive orders, rather than to give orders, and these are things I find very difficult to do and suspect you to, too.

Fourth, Christ embraced the cross. To understand what that meant in the first century, we must know that crucifixion was the most shameful form of death in the Roman world. The great Roman orator Cicero said, “Far be the cross from even the mention of a Roman or free-born person.” For us to embrace the cross is to embrace that thing, that place, that we find most disturbing, most difficult, even most shameful. Our cross might be our willingness to let others think less of us in order to save the reputation of another. It might be our willingness to tell the hard truth instead of the easy and face-saving lie.

Fifth and last, Paul tells us that Christ embraced death itself. We die not once but many times. We accept death when we refuse the job with more power and a higher salary because it will require moral compromises. We might die a bit when we reorder our financial priorities so that we can give more to the church and other worthy causes.

Winston Churchill once remarked that we make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give. For Christ, life was less about having and more about giving. And that is the mind, the attitude, that Paul tells us we should all have.

In Sunday School last week I pointed out that the Roman world put the highest value on honor but that Christianity reversed Roman values by pu tting the highest value on humility. The cross was the most shameful form of death but Christianity put the cross in the very center of their faith. Christianity also seems to reverse the values of our world.

I have no quarrel with those who seek the presidency in order to serve the common good. It is a noble task, and I believe that some are called to it. But all of us are called to seek not the place of highest honor and greatest power but the place of least power and greatest humility. Because that is where we will also find the most profound meaning for our lives and the source of greatest satisfaction. That s where we will find God and the very power of Christ’s resurrection.

Life on this side of the comma (Proper 20A) Sept. 21, 2008

The play Wit is about a 40 some odd year old English professor who is dying of ovarian cancer. In one scene the play flashes back to her grad school days when her principal professor takes her to task for her analysis of a poem by John Donne based on an inferior edition. The older professor says, “It should read ‘Death, comma, thou shalt die.’ Only a comma separates life and life everlasting.”

A lot of people seem to have the idea that religion is mainly about life on the far side of the comma – life everlasting. But Jesus’ parables strongly suggest that religion is more concerned with what comes on this side of the comma, with life in this world rather than life in the next.

Jesus spoke of a merchant going about his business who was set upon by thieves and how a member of a despised minority rescued him. He spoke of a woman who scoured her house from top to bottom to find one of ten coins that had been lost. He spoke of a young man who demanded that he receive his inheritance from his father while the older man was still alive. He spoke of a shepherd who went after a single lost lamb, even though ninety nine were safely in the pen. And in today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks of three groups of workers who receive the same wages even though the first works all day, the second a half day, and the third only an hour.

Did you notice a common thread in all these parables? They all show an interest in and an awareness of the details of money, business, and commerce. The parable of the good Samaritan is about a merchant traveling along one of the principal routes of commerce in the ancient Near East – the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The woman in the parable of the lost coin had lost ten percent of her savings. The shepherd in the parable of the lost lamb seems to be making a foolish decision in putting 99 percent of his wealth at risk to search for one percent. The younger son in the parable of the prodigal son is invoking his inheritance rights as specified in the laws of Israel.

It almost seems too coincidental that the parable of the workers in the vineyard comes at the end of a week of economic news so bad that one could almost describe it as apocalyptic. What does Jesus have to say to us at the end of this week of meltdowns, bailouts, and bankruptcies?

First, I take comfort from the fact that Jesus displayed familiarity with the workings and details of finance and commerce. Make no mistake: Jesus took the side of the poor and blessed them. He told the wealthy and pious young man who sought everlasting life to sell all that he had and give the profits to the poor. He told us that the wealthy would find it as hard to enter heaven as a camel who tried pass through the eye of a needle. But he did not curse wealth or the wealthy; the well-to-do Joseph of Arimathea was one of Jesus’ disciples and provided a resting place for Jesus’ body. For Jesus wealth presented a spiritual problem but was in no sense a sin.

Second, today’s parable does not take sides. The point is not that the employer was unfair in giving less to the workers who worked all day than to those who worked only one hour. Nor is the point that the workers who worked only one hour took unfair advantage of the vineyard owner or of their fellow workers. The point of the parable is that God’s gifts do not get distributed evenhandedly, and that those who enjoy a greater share of the good things of this world are not more loved by God than those who enjoy a smaller share.

So, what message, if any, is there for us in this parable after this week’s extraordinary economic news?

I think there is both a message of comfort and a warning.

We can take comfort in the fact that no matter how late the workers showed up at the vineyard they were rewarded. God is generous and provides for the needs of his children. Furthermore, God gives us more than we deserve, although seldom as much as we desire.

However, in the last words of today’s gospel reading, as well as in the parable itself, there is a warning.

We do well to pray and sing “God bless America.” By and large, America has been a good global neighbor. The Marshall plan rebuilt America’s adversaries after World War II; NATO checked Soviet expansion; and the Peace Corps brought education and health care to isolated parts of the world.

But it would be a mistake to assume that America’s wealth is a sign that we are in some way God’s favorite or that we are being rewarded for being especially virtuous.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard tells us that, like the vineyard owner, God distributes his gifts without regard to deserving. In world terms, America is a young nation. We are, if you will, workers who have come at the end of the day but have been rewarded for a full day’s work.

What will tomorrow or next week or next year or the next century bring? Americans are a small percentage of the world’s population but enjoy a percentage of the world’s wealth far in excess of our numbers relative to the rest of the world. Perhaps tomorrow we will be the workers who work an entire day and receive no more pay than the workers who sign on at 5 pm.

The final words of today’s gospel reading sound a more ominous note: “the last will be first and the first will be last.” The 20th century was the American century but what will the 21st century bring? Will we be first or last or somewhere in between?

Pres. Reagan frequently described America as a “shining city on a hill” and I believe that in some sense that is true. He borrowed that image from Puritan leader John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” who, in turn, borrowed them from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the 5th chapter of Matthew’s gospel. But the words are more ambiguous than they seem. Jesus said, “A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” In other words, the city on a hill would be an example to others: an example for good if it succeeded or an example of failure if it did not succeed.

Winthrop linked the success of the Puritan settlement in New England (and by extension, all of American history) with Micah’s admonition to “love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly before God.”

"Now the only way to avoid… shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to [modify our own desires and needs], for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace… [God] shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, 'may the Lord make it like that of New England.' For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. "

Whether the stock market goes up or down, whether the 21st century is as much the American century as the 20th century was, whether our financial institutions succeed or fail are beside the point. We shall be the “shining city on the hill” if (as Winthrop said) we “uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality… delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”

I can do no better than conclude with the prayer for America by Katherine Bates, who also invokes the image of America as “a shining city on a hill:”

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

Amen.

Forgiveness (Proper 19A) Sept. 14, 2008

It was the wrong question. It was also not the real question that Peter wanted to ask Jesus. What Peter really wanted to say was, “Lord, if someone gets on my wrong side, when can I let ‘em have it?” But Peter figured that Jesus wouldn’t respond too well to a question like that, so instead, he asked, “If a member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Thinking that he might win some extra points with Jesus for being patient and kind and forgiving, Peter set the bar high for putting up with all the mean and difficult people we have to deal with: “Shall I forgive as many as seven times?”

I am sure that Jesus knew the question that Peter was really asking and also knew that Peter thought that seven times was a lot of times to forgive anyone. His answer floored Peter and should floor us, if we really understand what Jesus is saying: “Peter, don’t just forgive seven times but seventy-seven times.” Jesus was NOT saying that there is a limit to forgiveness; rather he was saying, “Forgive until you have lost count how many times you have forgiven.”

Forgiveness may be the most difficult discipline of the Christian life. In his book Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis says, “I suddenly discovered today that I had forgiven someone who wronged me twenty-five years ago.” It can take 25 years to forgive someone who really hurt us; it can take a lifetime; perhaps it can take even longer than a lifetime. I don’t know anyone who is really good at it, and that includes me. In fact, I think I’m especially bad at it. This may be more than you want to know about me, but I believe there are two kinds of anger: I call them “fast burn” and “slow burn.” People whose anger is “fast burn” lose their temper quickly but then they also get over it quickly. People whose anger is “slow burn” don’t lose their temper quickly or easily; it takes a lot to get them riled up. But when they get angry, they stay angry. I’m embarrassed to admit that my anger is the “slow burn” variety. It takes a lot to get me angry, but when I do get angry, it can take a very long time for me to stop being angry and a long time for me to forgive someone who has angered me. I’ve gotten better about it, but it’s still a problem I wrestle with.

But forgiveness is not only a discipline of the Christian life, it is also an essential discipline for our well-being. Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University has done extensive research on forgiveness and claims that practicing forgiveness enhances all aspects of our health – mental, spiritual, and physical. Luskin even claims that forgiveness may help lower blood pressure and reduce stress that damages cardiac health. Luskin teaches that there are nine steps to achieve forgiveness, but I think the nine can be summarized in this way: acknowledge your feelings, choose to feel differently, don’t give away your peace of mind and self-control to the person, institution, or situation that hurt you. And keep in mind that forgiveness doesn’t not necessarily mean condoning what happened to hurt you. (For more information go to http://www.learningtoforgive.com)

The New Testament hints at some of the problems associated with the unwillingness to forgive. A few weeks ago the gospel reading included Jesus’ statement to Peter, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” One way to understand forgiveness is to understand it in terms of binding and loosing. However, the paradoxical thing is that when we forgive someone, we are not releasing that other person, we are releasing ourselves. We are untying the mental and spiritual knots that bind us.

One of my best friends in college was John. A few years after graduation, John did something that I found enormously offensive, and if I were to describe it, you would probably agree that it was offensive. I told John that I was offended but he not only never acknowledged that he had done anything wrong, he was unwilling to give me a hearing. The result was that we were estranged for more than a decade. Finally, at our 25th college reunion, John apologized. As soon as he did, my anger and estrangement instantly evaporated. Now, John was not the one who was bound; I was the one who was bound by my anger. I could have unbound myself at any time by forgiving John.

The trick is to distinguish between accountability and forgiveness. John needed to be held to account for what he had done, but I believe it is possible to hold someone accountable and at the same time to forgive them.

Note that Jesus did not tell Peter to forgive and forget. Sometimes, especially in intimate relationships, we need to both forgive and forget. When your spouse forgets to take out the garbage or put the top back on the toothpaste tube, then we need to forget as well as forgive. But the child or spouse who is abused needs to find a way to forgive or at least let go of the anger, but they do not, indeed they must not forget. In fact, healing begins with remembering things that have long been forgotten.

Near the exit from the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem is a sign bearing a quotation from a 17th century Jewish mystic: “Remembrance is the path to redemption but forgetfulness is the path to exile.” We don’t have to forget the harmful things that people have done for us, and it20may be necessary to remember them in order to heal them. Indeed, forgetting them, sweeping them under a mental carpet, can make it possible for the perpetrators to harm us or others again. But we also don’t have to hang on to the feelings that those harmful events caused.

It is interesting that this gospel reading comes at the end of the week when we remembered the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Can we forgive those terrorists? Can we forgive Al Qaida? Can we forgive Osama bin Laden?

I believe that forgiving and also holding people accountable are perfectly compatible. I believe that in some sense all Americans, perhaps even all civilized people, were attacked on 9/11. But I also believe it is possible to forgive them. Forgiving does not mean excusing or condoning but it does mean operating from a position of love, not anger. However, the loving thing to do may be to do whatever is necessary to bring terrorists to justice and prevent them from harming others.

One of the best portrayals of the power of forgiveness I’ve ever seen is the film Dead Man Walking. In it we see two couples who are quite understandable filled with rage at a man who murdered their children and they are even angry at the nun who becomes his spiritual advisor. It powerfully illustrates the truth that the inability or unwillingness to forgive binds us, ties us up in knots that only we can untie. Thefilm also illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding about capital punishment. The two couples want their children’s murderer executed because they believe it will bring them peace of mind and heart and in some way will right the wrong of their children’s murder. But there are some wrongs so great that I don’t believe they can ever be made right on this side of heaven, and I doubt that capital punishment has ever brought anyone peace of mind and heart.

Now, even though I am personally opposed to capital punishment, I believe that it may be possible to forgive someone and still believe that the only proper punishment for their crime is to have their life taken from them. What is wrong and indeed contrary to the spirit of Christ is to seek revenge. Capital punishment may be the most appropriate punishment for a small number of crimes, but it must be understood as a penalty imposed by the legal system. It must under no circumstances be understood as a way of righting a terrible wrong or an act of revenge. What brings us peace of mind and heart is forgiveness – letting go of our feelings of hurt and angry and revenge and trying to practice love.

The story is told of a young Roman Catholic seminarian who was verbally and emotionally abused by the head of his seminary. Finally, the head of the seminary expelled him and forced him out of the seminary on a dark, cold, and snowy evening. The seminarian seethed with rage toward this man for years. Once when he was telling the story of this man’s cruelty to an old, wise priest for the millionth time, the older priest said, “My son, you must forgive him.” The young man said, “Oh, yeah, sure… you don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know ….” The older priest interrupted him, “What I mean is this. When you say your prayers, say, ‘Heavenly Father, please kill this man who has so cruelly mistreated me.’ And keep on praying that prayer until God changes the prayer to ‘Heavenly Father, forgive him.’”

Be honest with God about your feelings. Pray for your enemies, even if the prayer starts out with “Dear God, please kill them.” But keep on praying and try to change your prayer and your behavior by learning to practice love toward those who have harmed you or harmed someone close to your heart. Henri Nouwen once said that forgiveness is the name we give to the kind of love practiced by people who love poorly and the truth is that all of us love poorly. And because we love poorly not only do we need to forgive others, it is an indisputable fact that there are lots of others who need to forgive us, too.

The Gospel of the God who is with us (Proper 18A) (Sept. 7, 2008)

Text: Matthew 18.20: “...where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18.20)

If it were up to me, I would give Matthew’s gospel a new title. “The Gospel according to St. Matthew” has an impressive dignity, weight, even majesty, about it, but it just isn’t very catchy. I would re-christen Matthew’s gospel as “The God Who Is With Us”.

Matthew’s gospel begins with the story of Joseph’s mysterious and troubling dream in which an angel prophesied that Mary’s child was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that a child would be born to a young woman and that the proper name for that child would be “Emmanuel”, God with us. (Mt 1.23) Matthew ends with the Risen Christ’s promise to his disciples, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mt 28.20) And in the very heart of Matthew’s gospel is Jesus’ great promise that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he is there among them. (Mt 18.20)

“The virgin shall... bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.... God is with us”.

“Remember, I am with you always...”

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

The Gospel of the God who is with us.

I want to focus on the three parts of Matthew’s great theme: God is with us.

First, it is GODwho is with us. When one of you enters the hospital for surgery, you certainly want your family to be there, and you would probably like to have one of the parish clergy there. It’s comforting when a friend or family member promises us, “It’s OK; I’m here for you”. But Matthew’s promise is of a different magnitude altogether. It is the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible who promises to be by our side.

But do we really want to take God up on his promise? Having the Almighty at our side might be more terrifying than comforting.

Annie Dillard famously asked, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares: they should lash us to our pews.”

The God who promises to be with us is like TNT – a source of infinite but uncontrollable power. The God who promises to be with us loves us unconditionally, but God also invites us to take up our cross and follow him, to lose our lives for the sake of the Kingdom. Along with the comfort and assurance we receive from God comes the demand of discipleship.

Secondly, God promises to be WITH us.

Anthropologists tell us that different cultures have different ideas of the appropriate space between persons. It’s a bit of a generalization, but people in Mediterranean cultures often talk very animatedly almost nose to nose. Northern Europeans (and most North Americans) prefer a little more distance.

The God who promises to be with us appears to be more Mediterranean than northern European. This is a God who does not maintain a polite distance. This God promises to be with us, to be in our midst, to be among us. This is a God we cannot keep at arm’s length. This is a God who is closer than our next breath.

God does not say to us, “I’ll be right over here if you need me. Just give me a shout.” This is not a God to whom we can say good bye at the end of today’s service and leave in church until next week. This is not a God who will leave us alone.

Francis Thompson’s great poem, “The Hound of Heaven” speaks of this God who does not maintain a safe, polite distance:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind: and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

And it ends:

Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

Finally, the God of Matthew’s gospel promises to be with US.

God promises to be with us, with frail, fallible human beings. This may be the most remarkable part of Matthew’s theme.

It would make more sense if God promised to be with the stars in the Milky Way. That would make sense to us. God, after all, is majestic, splendid, all-powerful, and all-knowing. We would expect God to inhabit the vast reaches of space. It might make sense if God promised to be in the crashing waves of the ocean. To paraphrase the prophet Elijah’s great insight, God is not in the earthquake, fire, and whirlwind; God is in the still, small voice, and in that frailest of all vessels – the human heart.

God promises to be with us. Now note something very important here. The “us” God promises to be with in today’s gospel, indeed throughout Matthew’s gospel is plural. That is not to say that God is not with us when we are alone, but the promise, the assurance, the certainty of God’s promise, is to us not individually, but corporately. “...where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18.20)

That’s a hard saying for many of us, including myself. I tend to be a loner. I want to do things on my own. We live in a culture that is individualist to the Nth degree. But God tells us to come together and promises that when we do come together under his banner and in Jesus’ name, that he will be with us.

The reason that God makes this promise to us corporately is that it is only through others that we are able to receive love from God and offer love to God. Jesus’ great promise to be present wherever two or three are gathered in his name is prefaced by a discussion of what to do when a member of the community hurts or offends another member. Jesus was nothing if not realistic. Even the community gathered in his name and experiencing his presence will be a place of conflict. We know that all too well. But he tells us to come together anyway.

“...where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18.20) God is among us, because corporately we are Christ’s body, the sacrament of Christ’s presence in the world. Perhaps C.S. Lewis put it best when he wrote: “There are no ordinary people You have never met a mere mortal... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ... the glorifer and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

The message of Matthew’s gospel is so simple, I can sum it up in three phrases: GOD promises to be with us; God promises to be WITH us; God promises to be with US. Amen.

Thank goodness for pushy women - Proper 15A - Aug. 17, 2008

I suspect that “pushy” women do an enormous amount of the work that keeps the world going. One very popular pushy woman is Baroness Thatcher of Grantham, the first woman to serve as Britain’s Prime Minister. In the late 1980s, Mrs. Thatcher was often criticized for being “school-marmish” and “hectoring.” But if she were a man, wouldn’t they admire her for being decisive and forceful?

Today’s gospel reading includes a story about a woman most of us would probably characterize as pushy, and perhaps aggressive and obnoxious, too. Matthew tells us that Jesus “went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.” Tyre and Sidon were in or near present-day Lebanon, an area occupied mostly by Gentiles. Word of Jesus' visit somehow got out, and a woman of the region came to Jesus seeking help for her daughter who was possessed by a demon. Matthew identifies her as a "Canaanite." He does not tell us how often she came to Jesus with her request or what she said initially, but Matthew tells us that she cried out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.” Matthew also implies that she came to Jesus at least twice and to his disciples at least once.

Sermons on this text generally spend most of their time trying to justify Jesus’ grossly insulting rebuke to this nameless woman: “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But Jesus does not need us to defend him, and even if we wanted to defend Jesus, there’s no way to do it. However, it’s worth noting that God became incarnate not only in a person but also in a culture, and here Jesus gives voice to two of the most fundamental prejudices of his culture: Jewish men did not speak to or allow themselves to be spoken to by women in public, and observant Jews tried to minimize their contact with Gentiles. First Corinthians 14:34 expresses the standard attitude of Jewish men toward women in public places: they are to be “silent.”

By far the most interesting person in this story is the nameless Gentile woman who didn’t mind being pushy and who cleverly turned Jesus’ insult to her own advantage. There are two ways to look at her. First, let’s try to see her as Jesus and the disciples must have seen her: unpleasant, annoying, and impossible to get rid of. She wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. “Don’t call us; we’ll call you” would not have satisfied her. If you put her on hold and hoped she would eventually hang up, you would have been disappointed.

Now, let’s try to see her more objectively. Sometimes being pushy, aggressive, and annoying is the only way to get things done. Sometimes in hindsight we can see that “pushy,” “aggressive,” and “annoying” were just other words for “courage,” “persistence,” and “determination,” and that is we ought to see the woman in today’s Gospel reading. She defied social conventions. In Jesus’ world, women were expected to be more or less invisible and silent, but in spite of any number of spoken and unspoken cultural assumptions, the Canaanite woman would not be silent and persisted in seeking healing for her daughter.

Another famous “pushy” woman was the late Rosa Parks. On her way home from work in Montgomery, Alabama, in December of 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus and sat in the last seat reserved for “colored people.” When a white passenger boarded at the next stop, the bus driver demanded that Ms. Parks yield her seat to the white passenger. Parks refused and was arrested. But the simple act of refusing to give up her seat had a profound effect on history. It launched a boycott that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to international prominence, and it was the beginning of the civil rights movement that did so much to secure basic human rights that had long been denied to African Americans.

Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat may have had influence far beyond her time and country. In the waning days of the Soviet Union, reactionaries sought to reverse the process of democratization by overthrowing the Soviet leader, Gorbachev. During the tense days of the attempted coup the world watched as Moscow’s mayor, Boris Yeltsin, literally stood up to tanks attempting to disperse the Soviet parliament. When asked what inspired him to face down tanks, Yeltsin said that he was inspired by Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in Poland. When Walesa was asked what inspired him, he said that he had long admired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, civil rights campaigns. When Dr. King was asked what inspired him, he said that he admired Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat. Is it possible that Rosa Parks’ defiance of injustice helped bring down the Soviet Union?

So although I'd like to give at least one and a half cheers for pushy women, being pushy is not enough. You also need to know whom to push. The Canaanite woman went to the one person who could command the demonic spirit to leave her daughter and restore the girl to soundness of mind: Jesus.

This story shows Jesus in the worst possible light, so why did Matthew include it? Maybe it’s in the Gospel to encourage us. Like the Canaanite woman, we often come to Jesus with desperate needs: we’re out of work and need a job, or someone we love is dying, or someone has just shattered our heart. Like the nameless woman, we may pray to God day and night but find no relief. But more than likely, we pray about something once or twice and then forget about it. It’s difficult to explain why God hears and answers some prayers and seems to leave others unanswered. But God seems to expect us to be persistent in our prayers (maybe even a little pushy) and come back again and again.

The final thing we should notice about the Canaanite woman is the nature of her request. Begging Jesus to free her daughter from demonic power was no idle, off-hand petition. The woman was not asking for a trip to Cancun or a new car: she was seeking justice.

Thank goodness for pushy women and even pushy men. Thank goodness for people who defy social conventions in their quest to right wrong. But above all, thank goodness for those who kneel at Jesus’ feet day and night and pray without ceasing. Thank goodness for women and men who seek justice and will not accept “no” for an answer – even when the “no” seems to come from God.

Outside Agitator - Remembering Jonathan Myrick Daniels (Aug. 13, 2008)

Almost from the very beginning, Southerners in general and Alabamians in particular have resented what they have called “outside interference.” At least as far back as the Civil War, Southerners complained that Yankees just did not get it; they did not understand the Southern way of life. Of course, what that meant in antebellum Alabama was that Yankees wanted to put an end to slavery but did not really understand what a good, kind, and benevolent system slavery really was!

More recently, during the Civil Rights’ movement of the 1960s Southerners complained that Yankees (and Yankee journalists especially) did not understand the dynamics of the relationship between black folks and white folks in the Deep South. If they did, then they would just go back home and leave us alone.

There may be just a little bit of truth to the charge that Yankees don’t get us. How can you explain sweet tea, cornbread, Hank Williams (both junior and senior), Mardi Gras, and any number of other Southern institutions to anyone from Massachusetts, Ohio, or California? Having spent a good part of my life as a missionary to New England, I know what I am talking about.

Today we remember Jonathan Daniels who was one of those folks that Southerners accused of “outside interference.” Indeed, his biography is entitled Outside Agitator. Forty-two years ago today he was arrested and less than a week later unemployed highway engineer Thomas Coleman killed Daniels with a shotgun as the young man tried to protect a young black girl. Coleman argued that he had acted in self-defense and an all white, all male jury exonerated him.

Alabama’s bishop at the time of Daniels’ murder was Charles Carpenter. Carpenter deeply resented the “outside interference” of Yankees who came to Alabama to take part in the civil rights’ movement. I still find this hard to believe but Bishop Carpenter’s one and only public statement about Daniels’ murder and Coleman’s acquittal took place at the diocesan convention that followed. Carpenter criticized "the crowd of visitors whose presence motivated by various objectives caused us much difficulty and brought unwarranted confusion and tragic consequences."

I don’t know how fully Daniels, a New Hampshire native, “got” the South, but at least he was aware that there was something he did not quite grasp. Not long before he was killed he wrote these words in his journal:

“I began to lose self-righteousness when I discovered the extent to which my behavior was motivated by worldly desires and by the self-seeking messianism of Yankee deliverance! The point is simply, of course, that one's motives are usually mixed, and one had better know it.”

I love the phrase “self-seeking messianism of Yankee deliverance.” We’ve all encountered it, and it can be very annoying to say the least. But I think all of us here tonight would also give thanks to God for the “Yankee messianism” that motivated people like Jonathan Daniels and Catholic priest Father Richard Morrisroe and Unitarian minister James Reeb and others to risk and sometimes give their lives in the struggle to secure equal rights for African Americans.

But the Episcopal church designated Jonathan Daniels a martyr not because of his “yankee messianism” nor because he, like so many other young men and women from the north, came south to help register African American voters. We honor Jonathan because he gave his life so that another might live and because he was where he was and was doing what he was doing for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A martyr is a reminder. He or she is a sign in our midst reminding us of two things: First, they remind us that grace is costly. As Bonhoeffer said, “Grace is free but it is never cheap.” The cross shows us just how costly grace is. Indeed, if grace were not offered to us freely, we would be unable to afford it. But if we accept the grace offered to us in baptism and at the Lord’s table, then we may have to pay a very high price indeed. Daniels and other martyrs show us just how high the price might be.

Secondly, martyrs are God’s gift to the church to remind us that God is alive and well and active in the world. They are also God’s gift to the world, daring the world to explain away someone who gives her or his life for the sake of the gospel. If the crucifixion is a bonfire, then martyrs are the sparks from the fire. For a brief, brilliant moment, they light up the darkness. They give us just enough light to see the outline of a better world..

For several years now the Dioceses of Alabama and the Central Gulf Coast have sponsored a pilgrimage to Hayneville where Jonathan died and his killer was acquitted. The most moving part of that event to me takes place during the offertory. Members of the congregation carry large photos of persons who died in Alabama during the struggle for civil rights. As the names of the persons in the photos are called, the photos are brought forward and each simply says, “Present.”

There’s no disputing the truth of that. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer affirms that when we sing the Sanctus we are joined by “angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven.”

The letter to the Hebrews reminds us that “we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses”. But it is especially in the eucharist that the church on earth and the church in heaven become one.

Today’s significance is not just remembering men and women who gave their lives in a great struggle. And it is certainly not about beating ourselves up and feeling guilty because of what Bishop Carpenter did or failed to do or because we or our parents or grandparents could have done so much more to support the civil rights’ movement.

The message of Jonathan Daniels’ life and death is about the transforming power of God’s love. It is the message of Christ’s resurrection. What happened outside a country store in Lowndes County 42 years ago is caught up and redeemed by what happened in a borrowed tomb in a garden outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago. Light defeats darkness; justice overcomes injustice; life conquers death. But Jonathan stated it more eloquently:

“I lost fear in the black belt when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord's death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God…. As [we] said the daily offices day by day, we became more and more aware of the living reality of the invisible "communion of saints"--of the beloved community in Cambridge who were saying the offices too, of the ones gathered around [God’s] throne in heaven--who blend with theirs our faltering songs of prayer and praise. With them, with black men and white men, with all of life, in Him Whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout, whose Name is Itself the Song Which fulfils and "ends" all songs, we are indelibly, unspeakably ONE.”

The Sound of Silence (Proper 14A) Aug. 10, 2008

Text: 1 Kings 19.9-18

John Cage was a somewhat eccentric composer who made a name for himself in the 60s and 70s. He did such things as write music for toy pianos. His musical scores sometimes did not even specify which instruments should be used. I believe that one piece of music starts with the instruction: “For any number and combination of instruments.” Others simply tell the musicians to play any notes between C and F sharp or something to that effect. But perhaps his most famous piece of music (and I use that term loosely) is entitled “4’ 33””. It can be played on any instrument but I believe it was premiered on a piano. The pianist came on stage, sat down at a piano, and pulled out a stop watch, and sat there for four minutes and 33 seconds. Then he walked off stage. I don’t believe there was any applause and I’m pretty sure there was no encore.

One critic who despised Cage and his music wrote, “We may hope that Mr. Cage writes more and longer pieces like this.”

Kind of silly, right? It’s like hanging a blank canvas in a museum and telling visitors that the real art is what they can see in their minds’ eyes. Or like giving diners in a fine restaurant empty plates and having them imagine a marvelous meal.

On the other hand, maybe Cage had a point: Like a painting in a museum, music has a frame. Silence frames and surrounds music. When we go to a concert, there’s usually a brief moment of silence before the pianist’s hands touch the keyboard or the conductor’s baton falls. It enables to concentrate and really hear the music. Perhaps Cage was saying that we cannot really hear music until we are comfortable with silence.

How much more important, then, might it be to be silent before we listen to God?

We live in an amazingly noisy world. At any moment at least a dozen noises are distracting us: the radio, the telephone, 2 or 3 people speaking, the truck going by on the street, the timer going off on the stove. Now God could just pull the plug on all that. Can you imagine the eerie feeling you would have if suddenly every appliance, every radio and television, every cell phone and landline in your house fell silent? It would seem like one of those moments in a horror movie when you know the serial killer or monster is just about to gobble up the victim. But of course God doesn’t work that way. God expects us to do some of the work: to turn off the vacuum, the computer, the television, to sit still and listen. Maybe we need to do what Cage did: to get our stopwatches and just sit there for four minutes and 33 seconds. That’s a lot of silence and it’s not easy to sit silently for that long.

There are some messages that can only be conveyed in silence, some truths so enormous that mere words are not enough. The late John Claypool lost a daughter to leukemia when she was only 11 or 12 years old. His friend, the theologian William Hull, preached at the funeral and took his text from the first verse of the 8th chapter of the book of Revelation: “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Perhaps silence is the best response to the death of a small child. It is an event that transcends and defies words.

Just prior to the story we heard in today’s OT reading the prophet Elijah had defied not only the prophets of the false god Baal; he had defied Israel’s ruler, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. They had introduced the cult of Baal. To defy Baal was to defy the king and queen. It was an act of treason. So Elijah was fleeing for his life when he took refuge in a cave. And God said to him, “Get out of there. Go back and finish the job.” But Elijah was terrified, “they are seeking my life to take it away.” Elijah did not want to hear God’s message. So God had to get Elijah’s attention. So he sent an hurricane; then an earthquake; then a wildfire. But Elijah was still in the cave. He wasn’t listening. Then came the most ominous sound of all: sheer silence. The older translations call it “a still small voice” but I prefer “a sound of sheer silence.”

Silence gets our attention because we do not expect it. Silence reorients our sense and perceptions. After silence we hear things we had never heard before and hear old things in new ways. We may hear our spouse saying, “You have not been listening to me. We are drifting apart.” You may hear your children say, “We never see you and need you to pay attention. We are adrift in sea of moral confusion and do not know where to turn.” But most importantly, you may hear God say, “Are you listening? I’ve been trying to talk to you. I have something important to say: I love you. You are of infinite value. If only you valued yourself a small fraction of how much I value you.”

I studied piano for about a year with a woman who was a very serious practitioner of Buddhism. We always began our lessons by meditating. Remarkably, I played better after meditating because I heard things in the music that I’d never heard before.

Whether you call it meditation or not, I recommend silence, because there are many worthwhile things we can only hear if we learn how to listen.

Wrestling - and dancing - with God (Proper 13A) Aug 3, 2008

Text: Gen. 32.22-31

The Beijing Olympics begin next week. Even those of us who would usually prefer a root canal to watching a sports’ event find the Olympics fascinating. As ABC’s Wide World of Sports used to say, it’s all about the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

One of the oldest sports is that of wrestling. The original Olympics long ago in Greece included wrestling, running, throwing various objects, and not much else.

Wrestling is an intuitive sport. Men are aggressive; there’s no way around it. One of the reasons that men die at younger ages than women is that our hormones drive us to do risky and stupid things, such as drive too fast and get in fights. Put two young men on a mat and with the slightest provocation they are likely to “duke it out” or one will try to wrestle the other into submission.

Dancing is at least as old as wrestling and resembles wrestling to a degree. I suspect that dancing channels some of the aggressive urges that might otherwise go into wrestling or other forms of violent behavior.

Dancing, like drama, the visual arts, and music, began as a religious activity. Dancers acted out their relationship with the gods. They ritually portrayed their adoration of the gods, their submission to the gods; they danced to persuade the gods to send rain or victory in battle.

But even wrestling had at least a brush with the sacred. The ancient Olympics were sacred to the god Apollo and began with a priest sacrificing a bullock.

Another similarity between dancing and wrestling is that originally dancing was not a matter of choosing an attractive partner of the opposite sex for an hour or so of relatively innocent physical contact while moving rhythmically to the strains of music. Originally, dancing was exclusively a same sex activity. Indeed, today in many parts of the world it still is. In traditional cultures, men dance in groups and women dance in groups but they never dance together. When the waltz was invented in early 19th century Europe, it caused quite a scandal when young men and women actually touched each other as they twirled gracefully around the ballrooms of Vienna.

This morning we heard the story of the most famous wrestling match of all time: Jacob wrestled with a messenger of God. It was a match of Olympic proportions that went on all night. And in the end, God won only by playing dirty: he had to dislocate Jacob’s hip.

It seems to me that our relationship with God can usually be characterized as either dancing or wrestling. Sometimes we dance with God and sometimes we wrestle.

There are people who seem to dance through life. They seem to lead charmed lives and go from victory to victory. They move to music only they can hear and are graceful and confident.

Others seem to wrestle every step of the way. Nothing comes easily. Life is a constant contest, a battle.

I don’t begrudge those who dance their way through life, although I confess to feeling envious. But I can’t help thinking that perhaps there are things that can only be learned through conflict and defeat.

Jacob was more a wrestler than a dancer. He wrestled his brother Esau for the blessing of their father Isaac and won. He wrestled his uncle Laban to gain the hand of his daughter Rachel. And finally he wrestled with God.

I’d like to point out several significant features of the story of Jacob wrestling with God’s messenger:

First, it took place in the dark. I imagine that most of us sometimes and perhaps a lot of the time, wrestle with God in the dark. The wrestling matches often occur during those sleepless hours after midnight and before dawn when our minds just won’t stop. Where are you God? we want to know. Why is life so hard? Just like wrestlers who wrap their arms around each other in a rough embrace, our minds wrap themselves around these questions, and we tumble over and over until our minds are as out of joint as Jacob’s hip.

Second, Jacob emerged from his wrestling match injured. As I said earlier, God fought unfairly. He employed an illegal move and dislocated Jacob’s hip. Why was that? Certainly God did not need to injure Jacob. I think the best explanation I can give comes from a short play by Thornton Wilder. In the play a man who has lived with chronic illness is told that “in love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.” Think of that. The armies of earth’s nations accept only those who can pass rigorous fitness tests, but the armies of love are made up of the wounded. That is because it is our very wounds that enable us to love. Without our wounds, how could we feel the pains of others? Without our wounds, how could we learn compassion?
Imagine the armies of love marching into battle. One limps; another leans on a crutch; another is in a wheelchair. And yet no army on earth is more powerful. The very wounds that cripple love’s soldiers make them invincible in love and compassion.

Thirdly, Jacob sought a name for God and received a new name for himself. Whether we know it or not, we try to name God in our wrestling matches. In the Old Testament naming always implied that one had a degree of control over the things and people one named. In Gen. 2. God brought all the creatures of earth before Adam who named each one of them. Symbolically, this indicated Adam’s lordship every other creature God had made. We want to name God, acquire a degree of control over God, but cannot be named or tamed. When Moses asked who spoke to him from the burning bush, the divine voice said, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” In other words, “mind your own business, Moses.”

On the other hands, Jacob did acquire a new name – Israel. We never leave a wrestling match with God unchanged. It always changes us in ways we do not expect and sometimes it makes us new people altogether.

Finally, Jacob entered the wrestling match as a solitary individual but emerged from it as a people. Jacob had sent his entire entourage on ahead of him before he lay down to sleep for the night and woke to find himself wrestling with God. But when the match was over, he was no longer Jacob the Trickster, the Deceiver, the Conniver; he was Israel – God’s own people. All religion is inescapably corporate. Every religion involves us in relationship with others. To become a Muslim one must confess that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet in the presence of three Muslims; to become a Buddhist one makes the so- called “refuge vows”: “I take refuge in the Buddha; I take refuge in the dharma (teaching); I take refuge in the sangha (community).” The most fundamental Jewish prayer begins “Blessed are you, O Lord, our God”. It’s never my God but our God. In early Christianity, a person being baptized stood in a pool of water to be baptized, and as the bishop poured water over the convert’s head, she or he would say “I believe in God the Father…” but when they entered the church to participate in the eucharist for the first time, they confessed “We believe in God the Father…” They entered the water of baptism an individual but emerged part of a people.

With apologies to Lee Ann Womack, I hope you dance more often than you wrestle with God, but I suspect that every life is some combination of wrestling and dancing. There is one other similarity to note between wrestling and dancing: they both involve contact with another. If you dance with God, then follow God’s lead wherever it takes you. And if you wrestle with God, don’t let go. Because whether you wrestle or dance, you will be changed. You may not emerge unscathed, and you may even walk with a limp for the rest of your life, but however bumpy the ride, hang on for dear life,

The arc of the universe (Proper 12A; July 27, 2008)

Paul’s letter to the Romans was one of the last letters that Paul wrote, and by just about any standard, it was his most important letter. Why was that? First, Paul was writing to introduce himself to a Christian community that did not know him. All of his other letters are either to churches he had a part in founding or to individuals he knew. But the church in Rome predated Paul. We do not know who started the Christian community in Rome, but we do know that Paul had no part in starting it. Secondly, the church in Rome had great significance because it was in the city that ruled the world. That is why the bishop of Rome (whom we know today as the pope) became the most important bishop in the western church. As the emperor’s power diminished and eventually disappeared, the bishop of Rome’s power increased, but that is a topic for another time. Thirdly, Romans is Paul’s longest letter. It had to be lengthy because Paul was summing up all that he had learned and taught. And fourthly, the church at Rome may have been a little suspicious of Paul because he had not been among the twelve apostles whom Jesus called during his earthly ministry. Paul describes himself in 1 Cor. 15 as “the least of the apostles.” Paul had been a fierce critic and persecutor of Christians and their beliefs who was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted by the risen Christ.

Halfway through the sixteen chapters of Romans, Paul reaches his main point. What comes before and what comes after chapter 8 are important, but I believe that the last few verses of chapter 8 are the pivot about which Paul’s letter turns. Indeed, I would say that they are the pivot about which Paul’s theology turns. And it would not be overstating it to say that these verses are the heart and soul of the New Testament. So what is that pivot? In a word: love. Does it seem strange to say that love is at the very heart of Paul’s theology? If so, that is because Paul has unjustly acquired a reputation for harshness. Make no mistake: Paul was undoubtedly a difficult person. He was proud and perhaps a little insecure. Remember that Paul was not a part of the “inner circle”. Writing to the church at Corinth, Paul seems a little overly proud of his Jewish heritage. Comparing himself to some so-called apostles who were undermining his teaching, Paul wrote, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I? Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I? Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one!” One wants to say, “OK, Paul, we get the point. Now chill out!”

However, if we filter out Paul’s personal quirks and foibles, we find his letters suffused with love. When Paul writes to the Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit, he lists love first (Gal. 5.22). When he writes to the Ephesians, he prays that they may be “rooted and grounded in love.” (Eph. 3.17) When he writes to the Philippians, he says, “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” (Phil. 2.2) And above all, there is the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. The greatest of the Spirit’s gifts, the “more excellent” way, is love that “hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things.”

But I think it is in Romans 8 that Paul explains both the character of love and the nature of the Christian faith more fully than anywhere else in his letters. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” the “who” is misleading; it could just as easily be translated “what”. So Paul answers his own rhetorical question, one by one checking off the things that try but cannot separate us from the love of Christ: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword, death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth… And finally Paul sums it all up: nothing “in all creation” can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It’s the climax of Paul’s theolo gy; it’s the sun breaking through the clouds after a week of rain; it’s the New York Philharmonic and a chorus of hundreds singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Paul is saying that at the very heart of the universe there are two competing forces: a force for disintegration that tears things apart and a force for integration that holds things together. There is a name for this force for integration; we call it love. Love is the gravity that draws us toward one another and toward God. But there is always a competing force that tries to separate us from each other and from God. And here in Romans 8, Paul is telling us which of those forces will win in the long run.

This week in England the bishops of the Anglican communion are meeting. There is much talk of schism, break up and separation. Just a few weeks ago conservative bishops met and more or less declared that if they did not get their way, if they did not win, they would separate themselves from the Anglican communion. About one fourth of the bishops of the Anglican communion are boycotting the Lambeth conference. I cannot and do not believe that any good can come from this conservative movement. I believe that they have aligned themselves with the forces of disintegration, rather than the forces of integration. I believe that they have taken sides against the love, which (as Paul says in Colossians) “ binds all things together in perfect harmony.” (Col. 3.14)

I understand that they are troubled by the election of Gene Robinson to serve as bishop of New Hampshire. I understand that a few are still troubled by the ordination of women to serve as priests and bishops. I understand that many are troubled by what they perceive to be unorthodox beliefs held and taught by some Anglican leaders. None of these are small issues. All of them deserve prayerful and thoughtful consideration. But I do not believe that any of them is so momentous that it should break up the Anglican communion.

No one is calling for us to tear up the Bible. No one is saying that we should abandon the creeds. No one is suggesting that we should toss the Ten Commandments in the waste paper basket. We can and should discuss, deliberate, even argue about many things, but at the end of the day, Anglicans still believe that Jesus is Lord. And because of that we believe that nothing can separate us from the love of God that took human form, was born in Bethlehem, taught in parables, took the side of the poor and marginalized, was betrayed by one friend and abandoned by the rest, was nailed to a cross and died, rose again on the third, and reigns forever at the right hand of the Eternal Majesty, the love we name as Jesus of Nazareth.

In his last sermon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “We shall ov ercome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I would like to paraphrase Dr. King’s remark: “We shall overcome, because the arc of the universe bends toward love”

But Paul said it even better than Dr. King, “…I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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.”

All Washed Up (Epiphany 5C (Feb. 4, 2007)

Have you ever felt all washed up? Peter and James and John did. They had been fishing all night on the Sea of Galilee and had caught nothing. In the morning they came ashore and were washing their nets when a stranger came by and said, “Have you tried fishing over there? That spot near the southeastern shore looks a good fishing hole to me.” Right, Peter thought. Everyone’s an expert. Peter knew the Sea of Galilee the way you know your backyard, and he had been all over it the night before and nothing was biting. But… but what? But something about the way the man suggested that he try again caught Peter’s attention. “Mister,” Peter said, “I’m not sure you’ve ever baited a hook, much less spent all night trying to catch fish, but what the heck? It won’t hurt to try again.” And off they went – Peter and James and John – and by golly if the stranger wasn’t right. And the fish they caught! They were almost too much for the threadbare nets that they had mended and mended and then mended again on top of the old mends.

Gideon felt all washed up, too. Israel was a tiny country surrounded by larger nations with better weapons and better-trained armies. Israel had fought and lost and then fought and lost again. They just barely managed to maintain a foothold on the rocky central hill country between the coastal plain and the Jordan River that ran from the Galilee in the north to the Dead Sea in the South. Like Peter and James and John, Gideon had his head down and was minding his own business. While Gideon was threshing the wheat to release the grains that could be ground into flour, an angel appeared to him. Things like that happened back then. People knew what angels looked and sounded like, so Gideon knew that this was an angel. And the angel announced in the standard angelic manner, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.” But Gideon had a good measure of what his distant descendants would one day call chutzpah, so he threw it right back in the angel’s face. "OK, mister, but if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian." Gideon was not only washed up, he was fed up.

Have you ever felt washed up? Have you ever felt as though you might as well give up on your hopes and dreams? Did you ever decide just to stick to the tried and true – going to the office every day, vacationing at the beach every summer, having a cocktail or two every evening, ordering Chinese on Sunday nights? Leave adventure and big dreams to someone else. Been there, done that, got the bruises and scars to show for it.

There is much to be said for the routine and the mundane. In many ways the disciples and even Gideon had a lot going for them. The disciples had their boat and their customers. They didn’t make a lot of money and there were certainly nights when they didn’t catch a thing, but most of the time they did OK. Gideon’s life was a little more precarious; then as now Israel was surrounded by enemies who would just as soon see them run into the sea. But Gideon had his farm; the harvest was enough to live on. He could make do.

And then along came God. “Cast your nets out into the deep.” “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.” God has a mission for you. Yeah, right… I’m on a mission for God…

But that’s the way God works. God comes along when we feel all washed up… when we’ve been up all night and have nothing to show for it except bags under our eyes… when we’ve been beaten up again by the bullies down the block or in the corner office… when we’ve just had the umpteenth knock down/drag out fight with the person who was once the love of our life and we’ve begun to think that divorce sounds pretty good… when we’ve just had our twelfth unsuccessful job interview and all we want to do is go home, eat a box of Godiva chocolates and pull the covers over our head… when we’ve prayed and prayed and prayed again and our prayers seem to go no higher than the ceiling. Along comes God and says, “Let down your net… try again… I am with you, you mighty warrior.”

All of us have times when we feel fed up and washed up… when the last thing we want to do is try again. Even churches have times like that. I have a feeling that this church or at least quite a few members of this church may have gone through such an experience. Have you wondered, “What’s the point? It’s just too hard.” Well, I can tell you what the point is. The point is this: All around you is a sea of human beings who are hungry for a relationship with God, thirsty for a connection with the divine. God wants us to go back out on the sea and let down our nets again. God wants us to go beneath the surface. “The Lord is with you, O might warrior.”

Sometimes I feel all washed up, but I know that I have not yet gone down far enough, that God is inviting me to go down deeper, to experience adventures of which I have not yet dreamed. When I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, “mighty warrior” is not the first thing that comes to mind. More often it is “middle-aged priest who needs to lose a few pounds and go to the gym more frequently” but that is because I cannot see myself with God’s eyes. When we learn to see life from God’s point of view then it is an adventure, a great fishing trip, a battle in which we are already the victors.

God has a knack of showing up just at the time when we feel all washed up. It was after an all-night fishing trip that had barely yielded a minnow when God came to Peter, James, and John. It was when Israel was outnumbered and outgunned that God came to Gideon. And it was only after Jesus had cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” that God reached down into a tomb on a Judean hillside and raised Jesus to life eternal and triumphant. I can’t tell you when God will show up in your life, but as Bishop Miller likes to say, God is never late. Push out into the deep. Lower your nets. God is with you… God is with you.

The Beatitudes: Open Hands, Open Hearts

J. Barry Vaughn. Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Epiphany 6C (Feb 11, 2007)

In the spring of 1990 I was part of a group of Jews and Christians from Alabama who visited Israel and Palestine under the auspices of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. We visited the usual holy places – the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Loaves and Fishes. But one of the loveliest shrines is the Mount of the Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee. While I was taking in the vista, our Israeli guide came up to me, and knowing that I was an assistant professor of religion at Samford University in Birmingham, he asked if I would say a few words to the group about the Beatitudes. Imagine how I felt – I was standing in the very place said to be the location of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and I had about five or ten minutes to come up with something appropriate to say about the Beatitudes to a group of some 20 or 30 Jews and Christians.

Somehow I managed to come up with a pretty good spur of the moment lecture. I pointed out that to understand the Beatitudes we must keep in mind that Jesus was a Jew, and the Beatitude is a classically Jewish literary form. Today’s readings give us excellent examples of this.

The Psalmist writes:

Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *…

Their delight is in the law of the LORD, *and they meditate on his law day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *everything they do shall prosper.

It is not so with the wicked; *they are like chaff which the wind blows away.

Jeremiah also gives us a beatitude but being the gloomy sort of prophet he was, begins not with a blessing but a curse. I guess you could say that Jeremiah gives us as much attitude as beatitude.

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
…
They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
…
Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.

And finally Jesus:

"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

"Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.

"Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.

"Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.

"Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.

Notice that in each case blessedness is contrasted with its opposite: the Psalmist contrasts those who keep the Law, the Torah, with those who do not. Jeremiah contrasts those who trust God with those who do not. So far, so good. We can understand that. It makes sense to us to imagine that those who work hard, play by the rules, go to church on Sunday, and eat their vegetables will flourish. That’s what we’ve always been told. We’ve also been told that those who flout the rules, call in sick when they’re really going fishing, never darken the door of a church, and prefer cake and ice cream to broccoli and Brussels sprouts will (as the Psalmist says) “be like chaff which the wind drives away.”

Then along comes Jesus and stands conventional wisdom on its head. Like the Psalmist and Jeremiah, Jesus, too, draws a line between those who are blessed and those who are not. But he draws the line in a completely different place. Jesus draws the line not between those who play by the rules and those who do not but between those who are successful in the world’s eyes and those who are failures. Even more surprising, he tells us that it is the failures who are the objects of God’s blessing.

Blessed, esteemed, honored, he says, are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and above all those who are reviled and scorned because of the Son of Man. Alternatively, shame will come down on the rich, those whose bellies are full, who laugh, and those who are held in high regard and “spoken well of”.

The Beatitudes (as they are given in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels) are some of Jesus’ hardest words. We hear them read in church; perhaps we have memorized them in Sunday School; we may even have sung them. But these are words that should trouble our sleep and haunt us.

We do not esteem the poor; we do not honor the hungry; we long to be spoken well of and to have our mouths filled with laughter. The Beatitudes outline the way of the Cross. “Take up your cross and follow me,” Jesus said. If we would learn how to take up our cross, we would do well to study the beatitudes. The way of the cross is to rely on God’s abundance and not our bank accounts; to feed the beggar on the street before we pull up to the takeout window at McDonald’s; to weep for those for whom the everyday comforts we take for granted – a roof over our heads, three meals a day, a good job – are an impossible dream.

Before I go any further, I want to say something as clearly as possible. The beatitudes are not a recipe for guilt. We need not feel guilty because we are happy and successful. Rather, the beatitudes are an invitation -- an invitation to put our trust not in our bank accounts, careers, degrees, and well-stocked pantries. The beatitudes invite us to put our trust in God.

Blessed, honored, and esteemed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are reviled and scorned because they may be more open than the rest of us to trusting God. The beatitudes tell us that we must come to God with empty hands and open hearts. They tell us that if we come to God with hands full of possessions and accomplishments that God will have no place to put the blessings that God wants to give us. The beatitudes tell us that if we come to God with our heads and hearts full of a sense of our own importance that we may not be able to hear God telling us that how much we are loved and that our worth is derived from divine love alone.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells the story of a colleague who said to a member of his congregation, “Whenever I see you, you’re always in a hurry. Tell me, where are you running all the time?” The man answered, “I’m running after success, I’m running after fulfillment, I’m running after the reward for all my hard work.” And Kushner’s colleague replied, “That’s a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to elude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn’t it possible that those blessings are behind you, that they are looking for you, and the more you run, the harder you make it for them to find you?” Kushner observed that God may have all kinds of blessing in store for us – “good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves turning in the fall – but we in our pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that God can’t find us at home to deliver them”! (Lawrence Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (New York, 1986), pp. 146-147)

Our response to the beatitudes need not be to rush out and liquidate our bank accounts, sell our cars and houses, empty our refrigerators and give everything we have to the poor and hungry. Rather, the message is to stop running after success and fulfillment and to realize that God is ready to fill us with all good things if only we will open our hands and hearts to receive them. Amen.

Constructive Forgetfulness

J. Barry Vaughn. Episcopal Church of the Ascension (Birmingham, AL). Lent 5C (March 25, 2007).

“Remember” is one of the most powerful and important words in the OT. In Hebrew zakor is the imperative verb “remember”. A friend of mine who teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University wrote an entire book simply entitled Zakor –“Remember.”

The OT is full of stories of how important it is to remember. At the end of the story of the flood in Genesis, the rainbow is placed in the sky as a way to help God remember not to annihilate humankind again. And the commandment not to work on the Sabbath is because Israel remembers that they were slaves in Egypt.

So, it’s at least a surprise and maybe even a shock when the prophet Isaiah says, “Do NOT remember the former things or consider the things of old.” Why? What value can there be in forgetting?

There is both constructive memory and destructive memory. As an historian, my job is to help people remember, to help them connect to the past in a constructive way. I very much believe that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, although we have to keep in mind that the past never repeats itself exactly. Karl Marx was wrong about almost everything but was correct when he said, “History repeats itself first as tragedy and second as farce.” Think Nixon and Watergate and then Bill and Monica.

The opposite of remember is not to forget but to dismember, to be cut off from those things, events, stories that made us who and what we are.

However, there can also be a pathological remembering, a destructive connection with the past. We see this especially in the Middle East and more generally in militant Islam. In the Middle East, Arabs still refer to European as Franks. “Frank” was the medieval name of the French who were the most important group of Crusaders who invaded and massacred Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Orthodox Christians in the 11th century. Talk about long memories!!

Pathological remembering is most evident in people with mental and emotional illness. We all know people who cannot forget how badly they were wounded by their parents or by a wife or husband or by an employer. The inability to let go, to forgive, and in a sense to graciously and gracefully forget or at least act as though one has forgotten can keep us stuck and miserable.

When Isaiah says “Do not remember the things of old”, he was speaking to Israelites in captivity in Babylon. They were stuck. Mighty Babylon had invaded Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and carried them into exile. That was an enormous burden to carry around, and Isaiah invited them to let go of it, to forget the past, forget defeat.

Instead, Isaiah announced that God was doing a “new thing.”

Paradoxically, people who obsessively remember old hurts and wounds often do not want to let go of their unhealthy connection to the past. Someone has defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. But healing begins when they are able to change old patterns, to stop doing “business as usual,” to believe that God might do a new thing in their lives.

It can be frightening to worship a God who does new things but that is that kind of God we encounter in the Bible. God did a new thing when he called Abraham to be the father of a great people; God did a new thing when he called Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt; and above all, God did a new thing when he came among us as one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

However, there are many Christians who believe that God stopped doing new things 2000 years ago. I think they are wrong. I believe that God may still surprise us. How would we know if God was doing a new thing in our time and in our midst? I think we can recognize God’s hand at work among us by looking for several characteristics.

First, the new things that God does are likely to be counter-intuitive. In other words, I believe that God is most likely to work through the poor and disenfranchised than through the wealthy and powerful. Last Thursday night, we are studying Luke’s gospel and looked at the Magnificat or song of Mary. Mary tells us that God is going to exalt the humble and humble the mighty; to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty.

Second, whatever new thing God does will be life-giving. We worship a God who frees the captives, who breaks down barriers. I believe that God did a new thing when the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet empire was destroyed. One of my college classmates wrote a note in our 25th reunion class book: “I danced on the Berlin Wall on New Year’s Eve in 1989 … to all my left-wing friends in college, you were wrong about everything!”

I am equally certain that God did a new thing when the South African apartheid system fell and Nelson Mandela became the first president elected by all the people of South Africa.

But the new thing God does may come with no fanfare. It may affect only one person or one family, rather than the whole human race. The new thing may be freedom from addiction, the healing of a broken marriage, reconciliation between parent and child.

So what Isaiah told Israel long, long ago I tell you. “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old… Behold, God is doing a new thing…”