The Bad News of Easter

“And they went out and led from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid.” (Mark 16.8)

A few years ago I participated in a seminar with clergy of several different denominations. In a discussion of the passion narratives of the four gospels, the pastor of a large Presbyterian church said, “I think we are embarrassed by the crucifixion.” After a moment of thought, I challenged him. “I don’t think the crucifixion embarrasses us as much as the resurrection. After all, we’ve all seen what the world does to brave people who speak out – they become martyrs. But what we haven’t seen is anyone rise from the dead.” We haven’t seen it; we don’t expect it; and maybe we would not only be embarrassed by it, we might even prefer that it didn’t happen.
Why would that be? Why might we wish the dead to stay dead? Well, for one thing, it’s much safer for all of us if the dead stay safely in their graves. We all admire Dr. King for raising his brave voice against discrimination and prejudice and leading the fight for civil rights. Does anyone not get teary-eyed when they hear his “I have a dream” speech? The nation mourned when he was assassinated in Memphis, and we designated a national holiday in his honor. But could there be just a tiny corner in most hearts that is relieved that he is silent? What might Dr. King have to say to us today? Would he speak out against the terrible disparity between rich and poor? Would he challenge our policies in the Middle East? Our indifference to the AIDS crisis in the developing world? We are familiar with martyrdom; we mourn when the good and the brave are cut down and silenced – the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Martin Luther Kings – but would we really want them to come back to challenge our complacency and indifference?
Could it be that Jesus’ disciples felt that way? The gospels tell us that on the morning of the resurrection, the women took spices and other embalming supplies with them to the place where Jesus had been buried. Of course, they were performing the last kindness that one friend can do for another – to prepare his body for its eternal rest. Of course, they were grief-stricken because their friend and teacher had been given a mock trial, tortured by the police, and put to death on the cross. But could they also have been a tiny bit relieved? Could they have thought, “We will miss his stories of good Samaritans and prodigal sons, wise maidens and unjust judges, lilies of the field and seed sown among the rocks and thorns. Who will restore sight to the blind and cleanse lepers, free the possessed from demonic power and .... but neither will he again challenge us to take up the cross, to lose our lives for the sake of the kingdom, to be glad when we are reviled and persecuted. Life is hard enough without that.”
But when they arrived at the tomb, they found it empty. How did they react? Did their hearts leap? Did they dance a jig or burst out in laughter or song because he had risen? The gospels tell us that their reaction was fear. What did they fear? They may have feared the challenges that Jesus had set before them and sets before us -- the challenge to be poor in spirit, to embrace mourning, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to seek service rather than self-aggrandizement. Life is so much easier without these things. We want comfort, not challenge; ease, not adventure.
By and large, we want life to be stable and predictable. However, we worship a God of surprises. We worship a God who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly; who feeds the hungry and sends the rich away empty; who promises us that life abundant and everlasting is to be found not in safety but in risking our lives for the sake of the gospel.
Life is so much easier when we have three meals a day; when we know that General Hospital is always on at one o’clock in the afternoon; when school is out at three and mom or dad comes home from work at five-thirty; when there are drinks at six and dinner at seven. But when a stranger barges into our lives and commands us to drop our nets and follow him; to put down our knitting needles or hammers or turn off our computers and plunge into the great adventure that is God’s plan for the universe –no, that’s a little too much for us. We want to know who will pay for our medical insurance, who will feed the dog or cat, how we will pay the Visa bill, who will pick the kids up after school. Thanks for the parables and miracles; they’re lovely and we’d like to keep them, but we can do without the resurrection.
But surprise, disruption, and resurrection has been God’s plan from the beginning. To be sure, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt; they moaned, they complained, they cried out and God heard them and raised up Moses to lead them out of bondage. But what happened as soon as they were free? “Why have you brought us out of Egypt only to let us die of hunger and thirst in this wilderness?”
Have you heard of Stockholm syndrome? Stockholm syndrome is the tendency of the captive to identify with the captor. It’s the reason that Patty Hearst assisted her captors in robbing banks and other terrorist activities. We saw a shocking example of it a few years ago in the case of Elizabeth Smart, the 14 year old Utah girl who was kidnapped and held for more than a year. When the police finally found her and arrested her kidnappers, she seems to have denied that she was the missing girl, not once but several times.
Captives identify with their captors because it is safer. We naturally assume that we are less likely to be harmed if we blend in, fade into the background of our environment, mouth the ideology of those with power over us. Perhaps this partly explains the reason that many in Russia say that the murderous Stalin was a wise and effective leader or why many Iraqis preferred life under Saddam to their new-found freedom.
We want life to be predictable, and the older we get, the more predictable we want it to be. But God finds ways to surprise, upset, and disrupt us. We prefer the sofa, the television, the internet; in short, we prefer the tomb of our own safety and comfort. But we worship a God of the living, not of the dead, a God who calls us out of the tombs of our own making. We worship a God of resurrection.
Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the ending of Mark’s gospel. There are at least three possible endings for Mark’s gospel, and all of them are well-supported by ancient manuscripts. However, the most likely ending of Mark is also the strangest. More than likely, the last four words of Mark’s original ending were: “and they were afraid”. What an odd, even bizarre ending! Why would the women who went to the tomb, saw an angel sitting there, and heard the outrageously good news of the resurrection flee in terror?
I think we know why. Resurrection seems too good to be true. We do not want to be hurt or disappointed. We want our lives to be safe, predictable, , boring, dead. I know I do!! But God has other plans for us. God’s plan for us is resurrection, surprise, amazement, joy incomprehensible and full of wonder. So lose your fear, forget about comfort, embrace God’s adventure, drop your net and make a mad dash after the mysterious stranger who invites you to participate in God’s magnificent, surprising, and unpredictable plan for your life. Sing, shout the Easter alleluia, dance a jig, for Christ is risen. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Dr. King Remembered - Jan. 18, 2009

I grew up in Alabama in the age of the civil rights movement. I was born in 1955, the year that the Montgomery bus boycott catapulted Dr. King to national prominence. I was eight years old in 1963, the year of Dr. King's Birmingham campaign and the horrific bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the deaths of four little girls who were waiting for Sunday school to begin. 

I would like to be able to tell you that I have vivid memories of these events, but I don't. I remember some fear and anxiety in my family over the demonstrations that were going on in Birmingham. I am embarrassed to admit that I remember seeing separate drinking fountains and rest rooms and being told by my grandmother not to drink from the so-called "colored" drinking fountain. I remember that I was not allowed to take swimming lessons at the newly-integrated Birmingham YMCA because of fear of … well, I'm not really sure what the fear was about. And I remember being nervous when my elementary school was integrated, although I am certain I was not nearly as afraid as the black children who suddenly found themselves in a room full of white children. 

Even though I don't personally remember much about the Birmingham campaign, the Selma march, and so on, I had the good fortune many years later to know some persons who did know a lot about these events from their personal experience. At two different universities in Birmingham I taught a course on religion and American history. Each of the three years that I taught the course, I invited a speaker to the class who had been personally involved in the movement. The first speaker was the Rev. John Porter, pastor of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, who had been Dr. King's associate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. The second speaker was Rabbi Milton Grafman, the rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, and the third was David Vann, who had been city attorney for the city of Birmingham during the Birmingham campaign. 

The most illuminating speaker by far was Rabbi Grafman. A good and gracious man, Rabbi Grafman led Birmingham's Temple Emanu-El wisely and well for many years. However, he will forever be remembered as one of the seven white clergymen who wrote to Dr. King urging him to delay his protests in Birmingham. Dr. King replied to them in his best-known essay, "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail". When Rabbi Grafman and his colleagues urged King to wait, he replied, "To the Negro, 'wait' has meant 'never'. We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights". Rabbi Grafman came to my class and gave my students and me a very persuasive explanation for why he urged Dr. King to wait. After he had left, I asked my students to tell me who they thought had been right: Rabbi Grafman or Dr. King. Every one of the students in my class was white, middle-class, and southern, and unanimously they said that Rabbi Grafman had been wrong and Dr. King had been right. 

Undoubtedly, Dr. King's greatest accomplishment was his role as a leader in the civil rights' movement and a catalyst who must be given a large share of responsibility for the civil rights' legislation of the 1960s. However, I want to mention two other accomplishments for which he should be remembered. 

Dr. King came to national prominence in the late 1950s. We remember the 50s as the age of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and "I like Ike". Historian of religion Mark Noll argues that complacency characterized American religion the 50s: "Conservative evangelicals... translated the gospel into forms of entertainment that looked as much like versions of youthful diversion as alternatives to it. Mainline Protestants… were also busy creating a religion of the lowest common denominator with less and less that was distinctly Christian". (Noll, p. 441) And then suddenly, in this decade of complacency, Martin Luther King appeared. 

One of King’s greatest accomplishments was to be a "public Christian". What I mean is that Dr. King brought the teachings of the Christian faith to bear on public issues, especially the most important issue of the 50s and 60s, full and equal civil rights for African Americans. In doing so, Dr. King gave new credibility to the Christian faith. Many American intellectuals thought of the Christian faith as intellectually bankrupt and as having little or nothing to say about the great issues of the day. Dr. King never spoke simply as a politician; he spoke as a prophet. That is to say, he spoke as one who could see God's hand at work in human history and who gave voice to God's demands upon human life, both individual and corporate. In his very first public statement as leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, he said, "We must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our action." The protestors must not hate their white opponents, but be guided by Christian love while seeking justice… "Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation". (Garrow, p. 24) 

At the same time that Dr. King gave new credibility to the Christian faith to those who regarded it with suspicion and skepticism, he also provided a model for Christians to speak out on the great issues of the day. His example inspired and encouraged any number of other Christians to apply the Christian faith to the great issues of the day, especially the anti-war movement. In other words, Dr. King stood on that blurry line dividing the sacred and the secular, the church and the world. He reminded the world that God is active in its history, whether the world recognizes God's presence or not, and he reminded the church that God created and loves the world and calls us to engagement in the world on behalf of the poor and the powerless. 

Enough of history… the purpose of celebrating Dr. King's life should not be just about praising a great man. Charles Willie, one of Dr. King's classmates at Morehouse College, said, "By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. By exalting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr., into a legendary tale that is annually told, we fail to recognize his humanity - his personal and public struggles-that are similar to yours and mine. By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise". (Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 625) 

I am certain that Dr. King himself would urge us not to dwell on his accomplishments. Ever a Baptist preacher, King would invite us to turn our attention from the messenger to the message and to invite the God whom Dr. King served to work as redemptively and powerfully in our own lives as God did in Dr. King's life. 

What I take away from Dr. King is this: God has a mission for each of us. It will often be a mission that is difficult to bear, but God will give us strength. Dr. King put it better than I could. He said, "I pray that recognizing the necessity of suffering we will make of it a virtue…. To suffer in a righteous cause is to grow to our humanity's full stature. If only to save ourselves, we need the vision to see the ordeals of this generation as the opportunity to transform ourselves and American society…. We have … a responsibility to set out to discover what we are called to do. And after we discover that, we should set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we can muster…. One knows deep down with there is something in the very structure of the cosmos that will ultimately bring about fulfillment and the triumph of that which is right. And this is the only thing that can keep one going in difficult periods." 

Several years ago I read A.N. Wilson's biography of the English writer C.S. Lewis. It was a very controversial biography because it revealed many of Lewis' weaknesses and failings. However, I came away from it with greater respect for Lewis, because I discovered that he struggled with many of the same temptations that plague me. I feel much the same way about Dr. King. Did Dr. King have feet of clay? Of course, he did. Do all of us have feet of clay? Of course we do. But the message of Dr. King's life, as St. Paul reminds us, is that "God's strength is made perfect in weakness." Dr. King accepted the burden, the mission, that God gave him, even though the cost was great, even though it led to death. It was God's power in Dr. King's life that made him great, in spite of his weaknesses. And so it is in our lives. Our weaknesses are the very stuff which God uses to build a new world. 

A Tall Tale - Epiphany 1B - Jan. 11, 2009

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’ “ (Mark 1.9-11)

Several years ago Alabama author Daniel Wallace wrote a novel entitled Big Fish. It's a terrific book and was made into a much better than average movie by the same name. Big Fish is the story of a father and a son that begins and ends at a river.  The father, Edward Bloom, is larger than life.  On the day of his son William’s birth he catches the biggest catfish in Alabama’s Blue River.  The catfish is so big that… well, it’s so big that it furnishes the material for stories that Edward tells for the rest of his life, including the night of William’s engagement party when he makes himself the center of attention rather than his son and his son’s fiancée.  

William comes to believe that his father’s life has just been one big fish story, and when Edward lies dying, William becomes determined to know what his father was “really like.”  But whenever William asks his father a question– about his childhood in tiny Ashland, Alabama; his college days; how he met his wife, William’s mother; how he got his start in business – his father responds with another tall tale.  

In a sense, the gospels are also the story of a father and a son that begins at a river.  The gospels tell us that Jesus went down to the river along with the crowds drawn by the preaching of John the Baptist.  And at the river, something happened.  Something happened that sounds a bit like one of Edward Bloom’s tall tales.  Some say that the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and descended upon Jesus and that a heavenly voice spoke, saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  

The Bible might be regarded as a tall tale, and indeed some scholars look at it that way.  Water into wine?  A handful of loaves and fish multiplied to feed five thousand?  Sight restored to the blind?  The lame leaping and walking?  The dead raised?  Impossible, they say.  The products of naïve, unsophisticated and primitive people, or else willful distortions of the truth.  

Perhaps they are right.  What would we have seen and heard if we had been present at the baptism of Jesus?  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that there was a dove that descended upon Jesus and a heavenly voice that announced that he was God’s Son, the beloved one.  

What if we had been there and had seen and heard nothing?  What if years later someone told us this story of the Spirit taking the form of a dove and God’s voice resounding like thunder?  Would we be like the son in Big Fish?  Would we dismiss the impossible story and say, “No, tell me what REALLY happened?”  Or would we understand that sometimes a tall tale conveys the truth more effectively than the who, what, when, and where of a so-called factual account.  

A scene in the novel Big Fish but not in the movie tells of the day that people heard that Edward Bloom was dying and began to gather in front of his house.  First just a few and then more and more until dozens of people were in the front yard – treading on the shrubbery, trampling on the monkey grass.  Finally, William’s mother tells him to ask them all to leave.  As they leave, one man says to William, “We all have stories, just as you do.  Ways in which he touched us, helped us, gave us jobs, lent us money, sold it to us wholesale.  Lots of stories, big and small.  They all add up.  Over a lifetime it all adds up.  That’s why we’re here, William.  We’re a part of him, of who he is, just as he is a part of us.”  

Like the friends of Edward who gathered on the lawn when he was dying, we, too, have stories to tell about One who helped us.  “Ways in which he touched us… Over a lifetime it all adds up… We’re a part of him, of who he is, just as he is a part of us.”  We have been incorporated into a story that sounds an awful lot like a tall tale.  A father blessed his son and sent him out on a great quest.  He had adventure after adventure along the way:  the angels sang at his birth; mighty kings brought rich gifts to him; a wicked ruler tried to slay him; at his word plain water became rich wine; his touch brought sight to the blind and raised the dead to life again; although he was a simple man the wise and learned marveled at his words.  He undertook great trials and surpassed all expectations.  Finally, a close friend betrayed him; he was given a mock trial and executed.  But then the greatest marvel of all happened.  He outwitted even death itself.  And he returned to the father, having completed the quest, and his father and all his household rejoiced once again over the beloved Son with whom he was well pleased.

In a sense, our stories, too, are about a Father and a Son and they begin at a river, or at least they begin with water.  As children or as adults we were brought to the water, and just as the Spirit descended upon Jesus, so the Spirit descended upon us.  And just as the Father announced that Jesus was his beloved Son with whom he was well pleased, so the Father announced that we were his beloved daughter or son and that he was well-pleased with us, too.  Does that sound like a tall tale to you?  Is it easier to believe that your parents dressed you in a christening gown that had been handed down from great, great, great, great Aunt So-and-so and brought you to church where a doddery old man held you over a stone basin, mumbled a few words, and splashed water on your head?  So be it, but personally, I prefer the Bible’s tall tale and believe that there’s more truth in it than in a “just the facts, ma’am” account of what happened.  

The Bible’s tall tale is our story.  You are the Father’s beloved daughter or son; he loves you and is well-pleased with you.  And he has sent you out to have marvelous adventures and accomplish great tasks:  to love your enemies, to return good for evil, to bring wholeness to the sick, to stand up and speak out for those ignored and despised by others – the poor, hungry, and homeless.  And at the end of the quest you will have such stories to tell.  “You’re not going to believe this, but let me tell you about the time…”

The Gifts We Bring to the Manger - Christmas Eve 08

For better or worse, giving gifts is a part of Christmas.  We can protest all we like about the commercialization of Christmas, but gift-giving has been a part of Christmas since the magi brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Christ Child.

 

Our carols celebrate the giving of gifts.  The little drummer boy brought his drum – pah rum pa pum pum.  And compared to the gifts listed in the “Twelve Days of Christmas”, most of our Christmas gift lists look fairly modest. Can you get "seven lords a-leaping" at Target? Can I put "eight maids a-milking" on layway?

 

But probably the best reflection on gift-giving is Christina Rosetti's "In the bleak midwinter", poem which concludes,

 

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb

If I were a wise man

I would do my part

What I have I give him

Give my heart.

 

The Bible tells us of two groups that came to see the child in the manger ‑‑ the shepherds and the magi.  Although we know only of the gifts of the magi, I believe that both groups brought gifts.

 

From the East, probably the kingdom of Persia, came magi.  We say there were three of them and they were kings, but this is mere speculation.  There were three gifts, so we assume there were three magi, and the gifts were rare and costly, so we assume the magi were of royal blood. 

 

The other group, the first to worship God made flesh, were shepherds.  Though poor, they, too, brought something.  They had been surprised and overcome with the heavenly host singing God's praises.  They rushed to see "this thing that has happened that the Lord has made known to us".  And the text tells us that they left the stable "glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard".

 

What the shepherds brought to the manger and took away from the manger were hearts full of joy and wonder.

 

So, St. Luke and St. Matthew's Christmas stories tell us that the wise and simple, the wealthy and the poor, came to the manger, and each brought something precious:  The magi their riches ‑‑ the shepherds their wondering hearts. 

 

Like the magi and the shepherds we are invited to the manger.  We are invited to join the circle around the manger, with Mary and Joseph and wise men from Persia and poor shepherds from nearby fields.

 

What will you bring to the manger?

 

Some of us will bring rich gifts.  This church is a great gift that the people of this community have built and maintained through the years that bears permanent witness to God's truth and love.  The generosity we have shown to the poor in our own community and throughout the world through our contributions to the diocese and national church are even more important gifts.  God accepts such gifts and blesses them.

 

Others, I hope most of us, bring such hearts as the shepherds had, full of joy and wonder.  Perhaps children's hearts are more likely to be like the shepherds.  Those of us who have grown up (at least, those of us who are supposed to have grown up) have so many things on our minds and hearts, that sadly there is less room for joy and wonder than there once was.  Yet, it is often said that at this season all of us in some way become children once again.  God certainly accepts and blesses those who bring joy and wonder to the manger.

 

But maybe there are those who have neither rich gifts nor hearts full of joy and wonder to bring to the manger.  Or could there be something you and I bring to the manger along with our riches and joy and wonder?

 

The author Brian Ragen relates how his father would tell him of how he grew up in bitter poverty.  Ragen's father would tell his son that his family was so poor that the only toy he had to play with was a broken Matchbox car.  His family was Roman Catholic and Christmas Eve in their parish church was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony.  It was the custom in Ragen's father's church for the people of the parish to bring gifts for the Christ child and place them at the creche in the back of the church.  People would bring beautiful chalices for the altar; clothes for the poor; and envelopes full of money.  Ragen wrote, "On Christmas morning it seemed as though the baby Jesus had been visited by many caravans of wise men, and [my father] wanted very much to give the Christchild a present".

 

But he was poor, so what could he give Jesus?  Then, he realized what he must give Jesus:  his broken Matchbox car.  On Christmas Eve he went to church with his family, genuflected before the altar, and placed his broken Matchbox car amid the treasures around the Christchild's manger.

 

An usher took a final look at the creche before the mass began, noticed the car, and said, "Who would leave a piece of trash like this at Our Lord's crib?"  The usher picked up the car and threw it across the church.  Then, Ragen's father would tell his son, the baby Jesus came to life and crawled across the floor of the church to the corner where the car lay, tucked it under his arm, and crawled back to his creche where his arms were folded tightly around the broken toy car. 

 

The story, of course, was a charming fable that Brian Ragen's father made up to entertain and instruct his son.  The reality of his father's life was much darker and more violent.

 

Ragen went on to say that his father was abusive.  He was an alcoholic, and when sober was "a mean, foul‑mouthed terror".  He would often go with his father to confession on Saturday, and says that he "hated the idea that the ogre who darkened my life would be forgiven ‑‑ and so easily, too".

 

Then, years later, Ragen figured out the meaning of his father's Christmas story. 

 

"I realize that I cast him in the wrong role.  My father was, indeed, not the good little boy who gave his last plaything to the Christchild.  My father was the smashed Matchbox car with a couple of wheels missing.  He had failed in his public life... his family considered him an enemy....  He was a wreck.  But despite ‑‑ or because of ‑‑ all this, he longed to be cradled in his Savior's arms, to have him still seek him after he had been rejected by everybody else.  And in the end, perhaps he was like the good little boy after all:  he kept dragging himself to church and laying that sorry offering to his God, trusting that it would not be refused."  (Brian Ragen, "The Baby Jesus and the Angel of Light", The Christian Century, Dec. 13, 1995.)

 

The circle around the manger is wide, indeed, it is infinite.  So, come with the wise men and shepherds to the manger; bring your riches, bring your glad, full, and joyous hearts.  But also bring your brokenness, your sadness, your failures and let Jesus hold them in his hands next to his heart full of love where what is missing or broken in our lives and hearts may be mended and healed.  In the circle around the manger sins are forgiven, and life can start all over again.  

The Kingdom of Love - Christ the King, Year A - Nov. 23, 2008

“Christ is the King, O friends upraise anthems of joy and holy praise…” Thus begins a wonderful hymn by Bishop G.K.A. Bell of Chichester, England. “King” is a favorite title of Christ employed in many Christian hymns. We sing, “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne” or “The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now”. And on the last Sunday in Pentecost we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, when in addition to singing about Christ the King, we have to start thinking about what it really means to say that Jesus of Nazareth is king, and that can give us pause.

After the American Revolution there were many who wanted Washington to be declared king, a movement that fortunately failed. But Washington’s vice president, John Adams, suggested that the president be addressed as “his Majesty”; Washington preferred “Mr. President” which has stuck with us to this day. When the portly Adams himself was elected president, they referred to him behind his back as “His Rotundity”.

Kings and queens have mostly disappeared from modern, western countries. Oh sure, we hear a great deal about the “woes of the Windsors”, the British royal family, and it often makes for entertaining reading. But where there are kings and queens, they are usually figureheads, useful for making inspiring remarks and opening shopping centers, but having little real power. We are more comfortable, or at least familiar, with presidents and prime ministers.

However, there remains a fascination with kingship. I share it myself and that’s why I stood for hours on the street in London in 1986 and watched the wedding procession for Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson go from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey and back again. However my most vivid memory from that experience was the day before the wedding, when the Marxists were out on the streets of Oxford selling copies of their newspaper, the headline of which read, “Parasite marries scrounger.”

British journalist Katharine Whitehorn attributes our fascination with kings to the popularity of fairy tales. “Whoever heard,” she asked, “of someone kissing a frog and it turning into a handsome senator?” President Jesus" just doesn't have the same ring as "King Jesus". A trendy, leftist minister once referred to Jesus as "Chairman Jesus", but that won't quite do either. Like it or not, we are stuck with King Jesus. So, on this Christ the King Sunday we are given the salutary reminder that we are subjects of a leader for whom we did not cast a vote; rather we are the subjects an absolute monarch whom we did not choose. Scary? The words “absolute monarch” bring to mind images of dungeons and royal thugs. But keep this in mind: Although we did not choose this King, he chose us. There is one law in this Kingdom and one banner waves in its skies: the law and the banner of love.

But more disturbing than the idea of kingship is the way King Jesus exercises his rule in the parable of the sheep and goats. “The king will say to those at his right hand… ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’… [but] he will say to those at his left hand, …’I was hungry and you gave me no food…’” The righteous sheep are told that they will “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”, but the “accursed” goats are told to “depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.

Applied literally and unimaginatively, this parable would seem to say that we are to give food, drink, and hospitality to everyone who asks. To deny to serve the needs of even one hungry and homeless person would seem to be justification for being sent into eternal torment.

However, note the way the king speaks and the way the sheep and the goats answer him. The king says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” And both the righteous sheep and the “accursed” goats reply, “When was it that we saw you hungry?” The king asks in the singular, but both the sheep and the goats reply in the plural.

We are not expected to do the work of feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the imprisoned, or healing the sick alone. We are expected to belong to communities that will exercise compassion and mercy. Does this excuse us from individual responsibility? Not necessarily; the community acts through its members, as well as corporately. Unfortunately, not only have all of us, time and time again, passed by the hungry and homeless on the streets, our churches are usually more concerned with maintenance than with mission.

Our budgets and check books are good barometers of our spiritual lives. What percentage of our money do we spend on ourselves and our family and what percentage do we give to the hungry and homeless? We need to examine our your church budgets, too. The great majority of churches that I know anything about give a small fraction of their money to the poor. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” what will he have to say to us and to our churches? Christ the King Sunday is an invitation to us individually and corporately to let Christ reign in our hearts and lives by serving him in the person of the poor.

An Alabama Episcopalian who lived out the spirit of the parable of the sheep and the goats as well as anyone I’ve ever heard of was Augusta Bening Martin. In the 1920 and 30s Martin ran a mission to the poor whites on Sand Mountain that was sponsored by the Episcopal Church. She wrote regular reports of her ministry to the diocesan newspaper. In one report she reported finding a family of five – a mother and four children - in unspeakable conditions: “…the family had lived for weeks on ears of corn and a few fish and squirrels. The children slept on piles of grass, covered with sacks and rags. . . . All were emaciated. The children had never tasted cow’s milk, had never been to school, had never seen the American flag, had never heard of Christ, and knew God’s name only as part of an oath. . . ." The court committed the family to Martin, who provided them with housing, food, clothing, medicine, and other necessities. The children had their first bath and said their first prayer the evening they were committed Martin.

We think of power and glory in terms of self-aggrandizement, but the parable of the sheep and the goats reverses our expectations. The king who separates the sheep and the goats lifts up those who choose service over self.

In the dark days of Stalin’s rule, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge worked for the British newspaper, the Guardian, as a correspondent. Muggeridge went to Moscow fascinated by and greatly enamored with the young Soviet Union, but soon found himself deeply disillusioned. One day while walking in the woods outside of Moscow he came across a small church and noted that someone had given the church a fresh coat of bright, blue paint. Muggeridge writes that he felt that he ”belonged to the little disused church [the painter] had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. 1, The Green Stick (1972), pp. 226-227.)

We, too, are invited to live in the “kingdom of love”, to give to the hungry and homeless, not in order that we might sit among the sheep when the Son of Man comes in glory, but because the King (who is also the Good Shepherd) sought and found us when we were hurt and hungry and lost and alone.

Holy Bible, Book Divine - Proper 28A - Nov. 16, 2008

Holy Bible, Book divine,
Precious treasure, thou art mine:
Mine to tell me whence I came;
Mine to teach me what I am.

So we sang in Vacation Bible School right after the pledge to the Bible.

Today’s collect praises God "who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning" and asks for grace that we may "so ... hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them" to the end "that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life..."

However, what use can men and women at the beginning of the twentieth century make of a book that is between 1900 and 2500 years old? In what sense can we say that the Bible is true?

The Bible is a product of an age that believed that the earth was flat disk and that the sun orbited the earth. The writers of the Bible knew nothing of electricity or nuclear power, of penicillin or heart transplants, of air and space travel.

For some, the meaning and authority of the Bible were forever destroyed by Darwin's theory of evolution, and the controversy between creationists and evolutionists still rages. The state of Alabama's science textbooks contain an insert saying that evolution is just a theory.

Episcopalians still believe that the Bible is the word of God. When I was ordained deacon and priest I had to affirm that I believed "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation", and I had to sign a declaration to that effect.

I do believe that, and I encourage you to believe the same. Yet, I am a person of my age. I believe that the world was created over a period of millions of years, not in six days. Psalm 19 tells us that God "has set a pavilion for the sun; it comes forth... like a champion to run its course", but I know that the sun does not revolve around the earth but the earth around the sun.

Even more problematically, I know that the Bible was used very effectively to justify slavery. The Bible urges slaves to obey their masters (Eph. 6.5). Women are sometimes urged to remain in abusive relationships because Paul wrote, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord." (Eph. 5.21)

Furthermore, the Bible does not speak with a single voice about divorce. The Bible reports two conflicting statements of Jesus regarding divorce. In Mark Jesus forbids divorce and remarriage completely; in Matthew he permits divorce in cases of adultery.

So, what sense can we make of the Prayer Book's claim that the Bible is God's word and contains "all things necessary to salvation"?

I want to make three points about the Bible:

First, there are different kinds of truth. There are mathematical truths such as two plus two equals four. These are very useful truths and seem to be universal. But there are also truths that are equally true and universal but can only be communicated symbolically and metaphorically. They cannot be verified in the same way that a mathematical equation can be verified.

There are works of fiction that accurately mirror human life, event though they are not "true" in the same way that a mathematical equation is true. For example, Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist presents a true picture of the horrors of early industrialization and urbanization in England, even though there was no such boy as Oliver Twist in "real life".

When Jesus said, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead", we need not suppose that Jesus is telling us of a real man whom he knew. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us something that is true about human life.

Similarly, the Books of Job and Jonah are more than likely extended parables, different from the parables of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan only in their length. Yet, Job and Jonah present a picture of human life that rings true.

The opening chapters of Genesis are more problematic. In my opinion, they are myth. The events of Genesis 1-11 tell us of events that no human being could have witnessed: the creation of the sun and moon, the forming of the earth, the origin of all plants and animals and human beings. Yet, the stories of Genesis are profoundly true. They tell us of God's care and love and that God's judgment on creation and on human life is that it is very good indeed. Indeed, the stories of Genesis tell us something that can only be communicated in story, parable, and myth. Some truths can only be communicated in poetry; prose will not do.

On the other hand, the account of the reigns of David and Solomon in Jerusalem plainly rely upon accounts of eyewitnesses. I would also argue that the gospels, too, must rely upon eyewitness accounts. Although an historian reading 1 and 2 Kings and the gospels might question the accuracy of some details, no responsible historian would say that David or Jesus never existed.

Secondly, there are existential truths. These are truths that we cannot know until we engage with them. Sometimes we have to stake our lives on them to find out if they are true. A simple example of existential truth is when a man says to his wife, "You are the light of my life". She cannot know whether or not he is telling the truth without entering into a relationship with him.

Similarly, if we just read the Bible as a story or textbook, we will not fully appreciate its truth, but if we engage with it, if we risk our lives upon its truth, then we will find it to be a solid foundation upon which to live our lives. If we take up our cross and follow Christ, we will find that he is the Lord and Savior of the world. If we deny ourselves, and give sacrificially, then we will find that God abundantly meets our needs. If we read the Bible carefully and faithfully do what the Bible tells us to do, then we will find that it mirrors the real world, even when we are reading Genesis or Job or Jonah or the parables of Jesus. If we are faithful to the Bible and the God revealed in the Bible then our lives will make sense and our lives will make much more sense than if we tried to live our lives without the Bible's guidance.

And that is the kind of truth we can only know by experience. It is a kind of truth that we cannot know just intellectually or abstractly. It requires personal engagement, risk.

Third, the Bible is a living document because through it the voice of the living God speaks. This last point is the most difficult to convey. To say that the Bible is a living document seems to suggest that it says one thing today and another thing tomorrow. That is not quite what I mean. The Bible does not change; God does not change, but we do. And because our situation changes, we need different messages from the Bible. Our view of what the Bible says about women and slavery has changed completely, and yet the underlying message of the Bible is the same.

Harry Emerson Fosdick put it well: “Astronomies change but the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No theology can be a final formulatin of spiritual truth."

So is the Bible true? Is it true that if we "hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the Bible that we will have "the blessed hope of everlasting life"? Yes, absolutely, without question.

Finally, I would say that if we are reading the Bible faithfully, then it will not only comfort us, sometimes it will also disturb us. Mark Twain said, "I'm not bothered by the things I don't understand in the Bible; its the things I do understand that bother me."

For the Bible says not only, "Come unto me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you"; it also says, "Depart from me, you cursed... for I was hungry and you gave me no food..."

Father of mercies, in Thy word
What endless glory shines!
For ever be Thy name adored
For these celestial lines,

Here may the blind and hungry come,
And light and food receive;
Here shall the lowliest guest have room,
And taste and see and live,

...

Here the Redeemer's welcome voice
Spreads heavenly peace around;
And life and everlasting joys
Attend the blissful sound,

...

Divine instructor, gracious Lord,
Be Thou for ever near;
Teach me to love Thy sacred word,
And view my Saviour there.

Anne Steele, 1717-78.

The View from Mount Nebo

J. Barry Vaughn. St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Birmingham, AL. Oct. 26, 2008. Text: Deut. 34.1-12.

One of the stock situations in the Peanuts comic strip was Lucy’s offer to hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick. He was always reluctant to accept the offer because she invariably pulled it away just as his foot was about to connect with the ball, and he always landed on his backside. However, somehow she always persuaded him that this time she really meant it, but he always ended up flat on his back.

We might almost think that God is a little like Lucy. God promised Abraham and Sarah a land to call their own and children as numerous as the stars in the night sky. They waited for years and finally one child was born to them. But just as soon as Isaac born, God demanded that he be offered as a sacrifice. Then when Abraham and Sarah died, the only land they owned was their burial place. “C’mon, Charlie Brown. Kick the ball. I’ll hold it for you.”

When Abraham’s descendants found themselves enslaved in Egypt, God brought them out with signs and wonders, but they wondered if God had just brought them out into the wilderness to let them starve there. So God let them wander and wander and wander… ten years… twenty years… thirty years… The generation that left Egypt died still wondering if God was going to keep his promise of bringing them into a land of milk and honey.. “I really mean it this time, Charlie Brown. Kick the ball.”

And in today’s reading God brings Moses to the top of Mt. Nebo overlooking the promised land. “….the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, ²all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea,³the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. ⁴The Lord said to him, ‘This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, “I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes…”’” At last, the promise was going to be fulfilled. Moses was as close to the Promised Land as Sarah Palin was to Russia; he could see it with his own eyes. Then – bang! – God pulled the football away and Moses ended up flat on his back just like Charlie Brown. “…you shall not cross over there.”

Everyone of us has a Promised Land, a goal, something we have sought and longed and worked for. Sometimes it’s marriage; sometimes it’s a job or a career; sometimes it’s something as basic as physical health. Sometimes we achieve it; sometimes all we can do is look longingly at it as Moses looked at Canaan from the top of Mt. Nebo.

The story from Deuteronomy tells me two things: First, it tells me that no matter how hard we work, the achievement of our goals is God’s gift. Now, make no mistake: we have to show up, do the work, and put in the hours. But we all know deserving people who have worked every day of their life to get to the Promised Land and haven’t made it. They are good people; they should have been successful but things just didn’t work out.

And that’s the second thing I take away from the text: sometimes no matter how hard we try, we just won’t get to the Promised Land. Sometimes all we can do is enjoy the view from Mt. Nebo.

Two distinguished, honorable, intelligent, and capable men are seeking to become President of the United States, and in a week one of them will be elected and the other will not. Someone once said that there are no second acts in American public life. That’s not quite true, but more than likely the loser will not get a second chance to try for the Oval Office. All he will be able to do is to watch as the other takes the oath office and becomes the most powerful man in the world. The view from Mt. Nebo is beautiful but it can also be tormenting.

There’s a further lesson that I take away from the Old Testament reading: There’s always a Promised Land further down the road, a goal we will not achieve. In every life there is incomplete and unfinished business. No one looks back over his or her life and says, “I achieved everything I set out to do. I have everything I wanted.”

So how do we live with the tension between promise and fulfillment? What can we do if we know that we can enjoy the view from Mt. Nebo but will never make to the Promised Land?

First, we can resolve every day of our life to enjoy the journey. We do not know exactly where the journey will take us, nor do we know how long the journey will take. But we will find if we are attentive that every step of the way can be meaningful. At every moment there are opportunities to serve. And if all we are doing is looking for the vista from Mt. Nebo, then we will miss the less spectacular but equally beautiful sights along the way.

We can also appreciate the people who are making the journey with us. We can remember that they, too, have goals that they will not realize, that they, too, may only get to enjoy the view from Mt. Nebo, that they need us and we need them.

We can also remember that our goals may not be God’s goals, that our purpose may not be to get to the Promised Land but to enable someone else to get there. Today’s Old Testament reading also tells us that Moses laid hands on Joshua, that is, he transferred his power and authority to Joshua who then leads the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Perhaps the most famous use of this story about Moses on Mt. Nebo was in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s very last sermon. “I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” That was on April 3, 1968; the next day Dr. King was murdered.

King lived long enough to see the view from Mt. Nebo, to look over into the Promised Land. But perhaps God’s purpose for him was like God’s purpose for Moses and for many of us; God used King as he used Moses: to enable others to make it to the Promised Land.  Perhaps even Dr. King did not know all the ways that God would use his work.

During the coup by hardline Communists in the waning days of the Soviet Union, Moscow’s mayor, Boris Yeltsin, literally faced down tanks in the street in front of the parliament building. Someone asked Yeltsin what gave him the courage to face the tanks, and he said he had been inspired by Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement in Poland. When Walesa was asked what gave him the strength to organize Solidarity and defy the Soviets, he said that he had been inspired by Dr. King. And when Dr. King was asked what inspired his leadership of the civil rights’ movement, he said that he had been inspired by Rosa Parks’ defiance of segregation on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Could it be that the Soviet Union fell (at least in part) because a black seamstress refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery?

So, learn to appreciate the journey, cherish the people who are making the journey with you, accept the fact that you do not fully control your destiny, do not despair when you realize you will never achieve all that you seek to accomplish. And if you can do those things, then you may find that the Promised Land is not on the other side of Mt. Nebo but is right here and now. All we need to do is to open our eyes and look around.

 

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.