Thoughts on Diversity & Trinity

Here's a link to a short video (quality not so good) and audio (just fine) that Brian Baker, Dean of Cathedral in Sacramento, sent along:
http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00594  Worth a visit.

SERMON, April 26, 2009 4 Easter

Luke 24:36b-48 Perhaps you know people who doubt the resurrection or flat out disbelieve it. They think of Jesus as a teacher, a moral model perhaps—but the resurrection is just too much. Then, there are lots of people who spiritualize the resurrection or think of it as a metaphor, and maybe it is. Many of us I think have come to believe that the resurrection message is essentially a spiritual one—about the spiritual gift of new life after death. But if you spend any amount of time with the gospel accounts of the resurrection, it’s hard to get around the physicality of them. Their nagging insistence on the resurrection of the body... “Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself.” “Touch me and see.” I have flesh and bones. “He showed them his hands and his feet.” “Is there anything to eat?” “He took it and ate it in their presence.” Touching, seeing, flesh and bones, hands and feet, eating fish. This is about the body—the body of Jesus, different, but nonetheless a body. It’s about Jesus’ body and our bodies.

And it’s no wonder that people today, including some of us on any given day, have their doubts about the resurrection. The disciples themselves are filled with joy AND disbelieving and still wondering as he ate that fish taco. This is beyond comprehension really. And even when some of them in the room had already encountered the risen Jesus, and others had been told all the details of these encounters, when he stood among them they were startled and quite simply terrified. Overjoyed, in deed, but disbelieving and wondering.

And it makes you wonder doesn’t it? The resurrection. We look around us, see what we see in this world of ours: wars and violence, greed and graft, the good dying young, the bad reaping rewards, misunderstanding, miscommunication, poverty and disease, business as usual. . . where’s the resurrection to be found? Our imaginations are so influenced by the images we see, by the stories our culture teaches us, by our post-modern scientific worldview. The dead are dead, and while modern medicine may keep the nearly dead alive for a long time, the truly dead do not get up and walk around. We know that.

And, when you read these gospel accounts you can’t help but wonder—they don’t all agree from one gospel to the next; they tell different stories or the same story differently. We can hardly help but think of people in Jesus’ day as knowing less than we know—as somehow being a bit more primitive, shall we say—a bit more open to non-scientific understandings—naïve perhaps. Or maybe we think they wanted Jesus to be alive so much that they simply imagined the resurrection. Maybe they told these stories to keep his memory alive in the community—to preserve the community through a fantasy. Maybe these stories are about the spiritual truth that for the disciples, Jesus lived on after his death: they encountered him spiritually as you and I might today. Vividly, personally, vibrantly alive—but not in the same way you and I are here today. Maybe the point of these stories is simply to tell us that in God’s world death does not have the final answer. In God’s world there is a letting go, a dying, a relinquishing, and then there is new life. Always new life.

Maybe these accounts are about all of the above. But they are so fleshy, so embodied: the wounds, the invitation to touch, the sharing of a meal, very incarnational—filled with carne—the meat of life, the meat and bones of it. Surely one truth we can affirm from these stories is that in God’s world our bodies are important. This is nothing new really: it’s central to our faith. Jesus’ birth and life affirm that God is with us in the materiality of life. In the body, in the things, in the created order. In fact Jesus echoes the goodness of creation we first heard about in the Genesis account. “It was good. it was very good.” Creation was good in itself, and creation was the place where God has come to dwell. Jesus’ body hallows all of life. We Christians are known to have the most materialistic of all religions. Sometimes that’s said in a derogatory manner, but really it is a compliment I think. The place to look for God is in the here and now, in our bodies, in the reality of created things. Incarnation—God taking on bodily flesh—is all about the goodness of the body. So, Jesus resurrected is resurrected in his body. This great gift of grace—the grace of new life—the triumph of new life after death—happens in his body. Just as the birth is birth in a body, so too is the resurrection birth in a body. The human body is not left to the side in this story at the heart of our faith.

Our culture has such a love hate relationship with the body. At least it seems so to me. Lots of emphasis on the body—in making it fit our stereotypes of how a body should look and perform—diet, dress, exercise, deoderant, toothpaste, Viagra, who knows what else. But bodies that don’t fit the expectations are denigrated, ridiculed: just consider Susan Boyle, the woman in England who sang so beautifully in the talent contest. At first she was ridiculed for her age, her body, and her clothing—she was deemed unacceptable—until she surprised everyone with her magnificent voice. On a flight home from Seattle this week a very large woman took the middle seat next to me, and as she tried to squeeze herself into the tiny space, people all around were smiling those smiles—not of joy and affection, but of quiet derision. Not all bodies are acceptable. Old bodies and dying bodies are shut away, put in homes, death comes to so many in sterile, often distant settings—where not so many eyes can see them.

But under the radar I have been privileged to see people of faith cherishing the bodies of their dying ones, surrounding them with love, with physical acts of deep caring: the cup of water, the linens changed, the bedpan emptied, the feet rubbed. And after death, I have seen how a body can be caressed, washed, anointed, treasured as the place of life. This is real. Life and death in bodies.

And, the resurrection affirms new life after death in a body—in bodies. Whatever this mystery means for us, surely it means that our bodies --whatever the shape they are in—are the places where new life, where the deepest most important transformations occur. How else do you meet the divine, know the mystery of God’s grace, except in your body? Where else have you known the shock and surprise of new life in your own life? Where else have you known that you simply must let go and die in order to receive the gift of the new thing God is doing?

I say all this knowing in my own self how hard it is to hold on to. How easy it is to let my own tiny imagination be the guidepost of what new life might look like. I know how often my grasp of possibilities is controlled by my fears rather than my hopes. How often in the midst of joy, I can feel the unsettling doubts. Feel the tenuousness of life and of joy itself. How I can doubt that anything good can come out of my cousin who is an alcoholic, that dead beat dad who hasn’t paid his child support, the nation torn apart by war, the leaders mired in graft, my list goes on and on. Can there be new life for our world today? New life for us as individuals and community? Even in the midst of our Easter joy, perhaps you too have your doubts and your wonderings. So here’s the deal: Jesus tells the disciples who are filled with those same emotions and thoughts: joy, fear, disbelief, belief, wondering, doubting… he tells them that they are the witnesses. They are the ones who have seen and known the truth of the resurrection in the body of Jesus, and in their own selves too. For of course you and I know that one of the “proofs” of the resurrection is the disciples’ own changed lives. They too had died, let go of so much: not only Jesus, but their hopes and dreams, their expectations, along with their way of life. But what they witnessed in the resurrection—whether spiritual, physical, emotional, psychic, intellectual, mythic, fantastic, whatever! changed them forever.

We too are witnesses. In the midst of the very real realities inside of us. In our bodies. In some measure we have known the truth of the resurrection—its power at work in our own lives. We have caught glimpses of it, savored it, dared to trust it. We are witnesses of the resurrection. And of its promise to us and to our world, that in this very world, God’s world, the grace of new life, the possibility of transformation is always at work. Forget the probable, this possibility is way beyond that. Way beyond. It’s enough to fill you with joy, and with doubt and wondering and maybe even fear. None of that matters. This is God’s work, and you are witnesses. Give yourself to your calling.

“Peace be with you.”

SERMON, February 15, 2009

2 Kings 5:1-15; MK 1:40-45

Years ago when I lived in San Diego and I did quite a bit of hospital visiting. I visited people in almost all the hospitals in the city. One day I had occasion to spend sometime in the emergency room at University Hospital. It was filled with all kinds of people—people who were waiting, waiting, waiting. While there were people of all classes there that day, most were poor. At that time that was the hospital that took care of most of the people who had no insurance. I was struck by the fact that almost everyone there waited with patience. The waiting room was packed, the TV was blaring, some folks were reading, but most were just sitting, waiting. I imagine they didn’t have high expectations of speedy service—they just sat there.

The same day I also visited a patient at Scripps Hospital I think it was—at any rate it was new and very nice. Beautifully appointed you might say. This was the hospital in those days where the people went who had great insurance or who didn’t need insurance. As I passed the welcome center I overheard a woman complaining loudly that things were not the way she expected, wanted or deserved. She had the understanding that when her husband came in for his surgery she would be able to be with him the whole time up to the moment of his surgery. And yet she had been asked to leave while he was being prepped for surgery. She was irate and she had no problem letting everyone know. This was a definitely a person entitled to the best. Only the best. And she knew it. These were two different worlds—these two hospitals. Two different worlds.

This wonderful story from the second book of Kings brings these two worlds together—and reminds of the ways of God in those worlds, and in our world for that matter. The story begins in the world of Scripps Hospital where the wealthy and well-insured can be found. It begins with a man of power, a military hero. He’s from Aram--Syria which already lets us know he’s in a position of power compared to Israel. Syria was sworn enemy of Israel and definitely a great power to be reckoned with. Naaman wasn’t just any general, but a victorious one who had special favor with his king. There was only one problem: he had leprosy. This was a big problem, because leprosy would not only cause him physical suffering, but it would result in Naaman’s being isolated and left on the outskirts of his own society. We can only imagine his grief and perhaps frantic effort to find someone who could heal him. Money and connections were no problem: this is a man in the center of power, with plenty of financial resources. The problem was to find someone at Scripps who could actually heal a leper.

The first word of hope in the story comes from an unlikely source: a young woman, not named at all—and Israelite who was a servant to Naaman’s wife. Not just any servant, she’d been captured in the war and taken as booty. Young, female, captive—no one really that you would notice. But she has a memory—that’s of critical importance and she dares to speak out. Imagine that! Her memory gives her hope—she has hope for the man who captured her. What an amazing thing. “If only,” she says. . . if only… that’s a key phrase in the story I think. Because it’s the phrase that brings with it the unimaginable possibility. “If only my lord were with the prophet in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.”

The word of hope, of impossible possibility, from the least powerful person—the most alien, the most un-noteworthy of persons: the young woman slave. And it’s hard to imagine this word of hope. It’s like telling some big wig from Washington DC that he’ll be cured by a shaman in the Amazon basin somewhere.I don’t know: and I don’t mean to put anyone down from the Amazon basin—but I’m trying to get at the shocking nature of this possibility from Naaman’s point of view. The fact that he listens at all gives us some indication of how desperate he was. How hopeless he had become perhaps with conventional medicine in his own country.

He goes to the King—to whom else would he turn? He’s a man of power, he turns to power. And, to whom does the King go? Another King of course—the king of Israel. The powerful ruler of Samaria. This is so business as usual—this series of transactions. The powerful deal with the powerful. And they take money and gifts because this is bound to cost something, right? It’s about an economic transaction.

The King of Israel most likely judges this whole thing to be a trick. Some new way the King of Syria has devised to do him in. Asked him to do something he knows he can’t do—to have an excuse to march in and take over his land. Something like that—that’s how kings’ think. What a great line though, ”Am I God?” he cries out, “to give life or death?” Of course if truth be known—most kings know that they can give death for sure. They specialize in that kind of power. death-dealing. But healing a leper?The King knows he’s out of his league. No wonder he tears his clothes to shreds. He’s very anxious this guy.

Enter our hero: Elisha. From the wings I might add. From the edges, the outskirts. Not from Walter Reed Medical Center-- this one. He’s way out there somewhere—like maybe Monte Rio or some such place. He affirms the King in his wisdom, and chastises him from destroying his clothes. “Send him to me,” he says, “so he will know there is a prophet in Israel.”

And Naaman pulls up in Monte Rio with all his chariots and his loads of money and gifts, and Elisha doesn’t even go to the door to see him. He just sends Naaman his instructions via a clerk perhaps. “Go wash 7 times in the Jordan.” Anyone who has ever seen the Jordan will tell you it’s hard to imagine immersing yourself in it. It’s not that big or deep; it’s kind of a nothing river, from what I’ve heard. Naaman is a man whose afraid, he’s desperate, but he’s also got his expectations, and his pride. He’s got his sense of entitlement—which has already no doubt been a bit eroded just in the journey to this nowhere place and being sent on further into nothingness by a second rate king. This drives him nuts. He’s like the woman at Scripps hospital. He objects. “Do you know who I am?” he’s thinking.

Once again the word of hope comes from an unexpected source. His servants. He’s in a rage, but they dare to approach him and remind him that if the prophet had asked something challenging of him, he would have done it. This is easy—try it.

Just imagine this. The big name general in a rage, his medals no doubt flapping in the breezes as he swings around and heads toward the Jordan. Try to picture him, stripping down to his skivvies, and going under the water not once or twice but seven times. Obedient, humiliated, powerless to heal himself, taking suggestions from servants and slaves: he rises up from the water and his flesh is restored like that of a young boy! In the Hebrew you can’t help but notice that in his healing he’s become just like the young girl. He’s a young boy. He is clean. He is ready to be restored to his community. He shouts out, perhaps to his own surprise: ”Now I know there is no God on all the earth except in Israel.”

Like all the healing stories in the gospels, this one too points beyond itself to God. Always to God.

Whatever else this great story is about, it’s about the way that faith is tied up with a stripping bare—with a humbling. With a loss of pride. With the coming up against the limits of our own capacity to take care of everything. Naaman finally knows that he cannot heal himself. He cannot even dictate the terms of his healing. He becomes maybe like a child even before he rises up from the waters of the Jordan. He does what he is told. Stripped of his power, his sense of entitlement, his desserts: he is opened to the radical healing power of God. And that power is not in the control of the powers-that-be. It is not something that can be bought and sold. Elisha refused all his offers of payment. It is not even necessarily found in the center of things. Rather it comes from the edges.

And thanks be to those who remember, like the young woman. Who remember the ways of God. Who carry the gospel you might say and dare to proclaim it. Who know that God’s mercy is even for the enemy—her captor. “If only.” May she remind us all of our own call to remember, remember and speak the “if onlys” so longed for in our day.

We are the people of the God of “if only”—the impossible possibility, found so often in the unlikeliest of places. Surprising. Boundaryless. Ridiculous even. The God of new life when all the entitlement and all the efforts of the powers-that-be come to nothing. When our efforts to make it happen our way come to their end there is always the God whose power is all about healing and restoration and hope. Always.

SERMON, February 8, 2009

Isaiah 41:21-31; I Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

I live in a co-housing community. We are a group of people, adults, children, and teens in 29 households who live in condominiums built around a central courtyard. We make all our decisions as a community by consensus—which sometimes takes a very long time. And we’re committed to trying to live together in ways that support one another and that offer us opportunities to work together, share stuff (like tools and chores) and in general build healthy relationships with one another. We share some meals together every week and usually once a year we have a weekend long workshop with a focus that is designed to improve our skills for living together. Just a few weeks ago I participated in one of those trainings—this one was a version of a program run by the Alternatives to Violence Project in prisons around the country. It consisted of all kinds of experiences that helped us think about how we communicate with one another. In one of the exercises we met in twosomes, and one partner talked about something in their own life that represented a cutting edge—something that was challenging my usual ways of living, something that had me wondering or even uncomfortable—something new that was stirring in my life—something I wouldn’t ordinarily talk about with others. The other person’s main job was simple: listen. Just listen. Just be present, pay attention, focus on the person talking and listen. You could ask questions to clarify, you could seek deeper understanding, but there was to be no advice given, no solutions offered. The job was to listen. To give our time to one another—our devoted attention you might say.

It was a challenge to talk with someone I didn’t know very well at all about something unsettled in my own life. To share that honestly required vulnerability that is not typically offered to folks we don’t know. To be listened to though was an enormous gift—as I struggled even to find the words to describe my cutting edge—I was listened to. I was honored with the gift of another’s attention.

In another exercise we were paired face to face with another person and while the leader read a meditation about the infinite worth of the person in front of me (and all people)—the infinite worth of each of us as human persons, we were asked just to look at the face of the other person who sat in front of us. We gave our full attention to the other person simply with our eyes. Minutes passed.

These experiences which ran so counter to our multi-tasking culture—to our hurried everyday living—to our inattention—our tendencies to interrupt one another, to solve everything, to give advice—were reminders to me about relationship, and what it means to be in relationship.

I thought about them as I pondered today’s gospel story and the snippet of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Jesus has exorcised the demons from the man in the synagogue, reached out to lift Simon’s mother-in-law up from her fever, and healed the many who came to the door as evening fell on the first full day of his ministry. He gets up before dawn the next morning to have some time to pray, but Simon and his friends hunt him down and urge him to come back and get on with the work—“Everyone is searching for you!” they say. Everyone in Capernaum that is. The word is out about this man who astounds the crowds with his integrity and authority, who challenges the powers that be by restoring the sick to community. The people want to find him. The word translated as hunt here is a strong rather aggressive word—It implies that Simon is out to get Jesus back on track.

But in effect, Jesus says, ”No.” Let’s go out to the other towns so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do. I haven’t come to establish a healing center here in your home town. We’re not meant to be staying put—I’m called out to others beyond home, beyond synagogue, beyond the boundaries of comfort—I’m meant to proclaim the good news of God’s gracious reign to others.

This little text and the one we heard last week are filled with hints of the grace and the struggle to come. Jesus lifts Simon’s mother-in-law up, just as he himself will be lifted up on the cross, and lifted up to new life in the resurrection. The demons who recognize him are silenced, but we sense they will return. Jesus goes out in the dark to a deserted place—reminiscent of the wilderness to which he was driven just after his baptism. Simon and his friends think they know what’s right, but clearly Jesus has other ideas—this will be a continuing theme in their lives—as it so often is in ours. Just when we think we get it, we find out we haven’t quite. Just when we think we can put a boundary—a zone of comfort around the gospel—we learn that the good news is boundaryless—we are always being called out to a new horizon or perhaps to a deeper place or to people with whom we differ.

And Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians talks about how he is constrained to preach the gospel. Like Jesus, he can’t seem to help himself—the joy of the good news is just too much—it demands a sharing. And maybe you have known this joy yourself and felt a compulsion to share it. The joy of knowing that you are loved, that God’s grace is at work in your life, a healing, longed for but unexpected has come, someone isolated and rejected has been restored to the family, forgiveness has transformed your life. . . any of these can be joys that demand sharing. And, in fact, joy is one of those gifts that just seems to demand sharing. Even joys like winning the lottery, getting an A on the exam, finding a new job, paying off your car loan… it’s hard to keep good news to yourself. Sharing it just seems to be a part of it.

Paul says that he has to share the news about God’s gracious reign, God’s love, God’s creative energy at work in life, God’s invitation in Jesus to the fullness of life. He has to share it with all kinds of people—not just those in the circle of faith. Although he has been set free by the gospel, he exercises restraint. He chooses to meet people where they are—he chooses to honor them and their truth. The Good News itself forms him into a person who does this.

He becomes as a Jew to Jews, as one under the law to those who let the law be their guide, to the weak, he is weak. . . he has become all things to all people for the sake of the gospel, so that he may share its blessings. So, those who don’t even know about the law he meets in their ignorance of the law, those who live their lives subject to the letter of the law, he meets in their lawfulness. He meets them where they are.

Now, perhaps because Paul uses the word win more than once in this passage, I’ve heard people say that the whole thing reminds them of certain politicians and how they act when they are running for office. They talk with a Texas accent in Texas, like Harvard grads in the East, and they promise no taxes to the rich and wealth to the poor. It’s about pretending to be something you aren’t. “All things to all people,” a devious plot just to get elected.

But there is another way to understand what Paul is saying. Because in the deepest sense Paul is not tricking people, not just pretending he is something he isn’t to make people comfortable. He listens to them and shares with them in ways they can understand. To do this he must get to know their reality first. Their truth. And, only then does he share the good news. But, of course, the fact is that merely by entering their truth, listening deeply, honoring their reality he has already proclaimed the good news of God’s love for each person. The good news of God come among us in solidarity with us. He has already shared the good news, indeed. He has shared the most precious truth of his life by turning to his neighbors in love and respect before he ever opens his mouth.

The little exercises I did with my co-housing community were a taste of this kind of kingdom living really. They weren’t couched as such, but they were. To listen deeply to another person as they struggle to share their story. To honor one another with our full attention. To look in love at another human being for more than a few seconds—these are gospel gifts. This is proclaiming the good news of God’s gracious reign come among us. This is a share in the ministry of Jesus himself. For our deepest understanding of Jesus is as the One who has come among us as one of us—to share our flesh—to listen—to attend—to stand with—to touch—to lift up—to heal—to restore where there is brokenness. All of this begins with meeting us where we are. All of us—those here this evening, those outside, in neighboring towns, those who are under the law, those who’ve never heard of the law, the strong, the weak—all.

To remember who Jesus is, is to know God, and to know who we are. And, it is joy -- a joy that simply has to be shared. The sharing of our joy begins not with words, but with being fully present to each other, and, as Jesus reminded his friends, to those outside this place. That is the Good News for all people.

SERMON, JANUARY 18, 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139; John 1:43-51

I wonder if you know any skeptics. My world seems to be full of them—especially I know a lot of people who are skeptical about Christianity and organized religion. They have their doubts about the claims that Christians make for Jesus; or maybe they aren’t sure there is a God at all. Actually when it comes to the institution of the church they don’t have doubts—they flat out reject it.

And God knows if you are a thinking person you have to have your own set of doubts—your own skepticism about the church as institution. It isn’t hard to come up with a litany of reasons to stay away from it. Just consider the history. Just consider our current state of disagreements and disaffections. We live in a time when the underside of institutions—churchly and otherwise—has been exposed—and the unquestioned loyalties of the 1950s are long gone. We live in an age of institutional skepticism.

Just this week I got a long email from a young man I haven’t seen in years. He is my godson, now in his in early forties. He has just returned to church after many years of absence. He told me that the hardest part of worship is saying the creed. He just doesn’t believe it all. He has his doubts about it. Maybe he even knows some of the not too pretty history of political machinations that lie behind its adoption. Maybe. In any case he can’t get his brain around it all—he doesn’t really give what I would call intellectual assent to all the affirmations of the creed.

He isn’t the only one. Our churches are filled with people who find the creed to be a strange, foreign document. They aren’t sure they believe every line of it—or think that whatever it meant originally is not how they personally would interpret the words. They have their doubts. Some are skeptical. I would say that this is the case in most congregations—at least it has been so in those I’ve served.

Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister and wonderful writer once said this about doubt: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (1)

Samuel and Nathanael have their doubts in our stories this morning. Samuel, the boy given to the priest Eli by his mother, and dedicated to serve in the temple, hears the voice of God calling him by name. But even though he is where he is (the temple) and even though he’s been serving God day and night, he doesn’t recognize the voice he hears. He is caught off-guard by the voice of God in the place where we might expect that voice. The God he has been serving he just doesn’t know. His wonderings send him to Eli to see if he is the one calling. After all that makes the most sense, doesn’t it? Finally, Eli, blind as he is, realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to listen.

Nathanael’s doubts spring from his assumptions. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks. He’s made his judgments about that little nothing place and its people. He judges Jesus, without knowing him. He judges him on the basis of his judgments about where he comes from. This kind of thinking is rampant in our own day—we know about this, don’t we. Judging folks on the basis of where they come from—on their origins. The whole gospel of John really is an inquiry into this very question. People who reject Jesus are those who judge him on his appearances, on what they know of his origins. They reject him because he has no stature in the religious world—he’s a nobody from no where acting like he’s a somebody from somewhere. The truth is that the folks doing the judging don’t know half the story. Jesus’ origins are not what they think, and they’ve forgotten that God is one known for picking the surprising, no-account person for God’s work.

The thing about Nathanael’s skepticism is that it moves him to investigate—to inquire. The invitation from Philip is simple and direct: ”Come and see.” And rather than draw back, go the other way, Nathanael decides to go and see for himself. This is where Fred Buechner’s words about doubt hit home: the ants in the pants that keep you awake and moving. I know some skeptics who ignore that discomfort—who think by drawing back—by simple rejection they are honoring their skepticism. They get stuck. It’s easy to do.

I’ve done it myself. Made judgments about people based on their look, their origins, their language—whatever. Then I draw back and my skepticism, my judgments remain in place. Unexamined really. I’m stuck. It’s the daring to draw near that can open me to new life. It’s the acceptance of the invitation, ”Come and see,” that can lead to new insight. I think of many years ago when for the first time I entered a prison to visit a man there—a man I didn’t know. His mother had invited me to go and see him. My judgments and fears filled me almost to my eyeballs. But by the time I’d finished my visit, I knew that I shared a lot in common with the man I’d visited. Oh, we had our differences, but we had much in common. I’d found some much needed humility, as well as new life and relationship where I’d expected none. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You’d be surprised.

Our passages this morning have much to tell us about God and God’s call: in both stories there are doubts, wonderings, skepticism; in both someone else helps the person understand who is calling—someone else invites the person to “come and see” to “come and listen.” You and I live in a time when just about everybody has a cell phone or a blue tooth in their ear. I get calls from robots who speak my name. We’re overwhelmed by calls—how to distinguish among the voices? How to keep from getting immune to all? It certainly helps to be in community—to ask our spiritual friends and elders for their input—to worship together, sing and pray together, attune our ears, open our hearts to God and God’s ways. All of these help.

But the most important part of the story of Nathanael is that Jesus calls him in his skepticism, in his judgment, and invites him into relationship. We tend to think that Nathanael became a follower of Jesus because of what he saw in Jesus. And this may be so. But we can also attend to what Jesus saw in Nathanael. How Jesus first saw Nathanael. First saw and first loved him—doubts and all.

Psalm 139 sings of how God has known us since before we were made, knit us together in our mother’s womb, it says. This isn’t about predestination. This is a song of love responding to the deepest truth of all that we are known and loved by God first. Our response of love is just that: a response. Nathanael saw Jesus as the Son of God because Jesus had seen Nathanael and loved him first. This is what we most deeply desire and long for—to be fully known and loved. It is also perhaps the scariest of our desires. We so often draw back in fear that being fully known we will NOT be loved. But that is NOT how divine love works.

The Creed, the hymns, the prayer, the words of our communion service are all kind of fumbling efforts on our part to express that incredible love that God has for us. None of those words do it justice. None of our words can capture this mystery. The Gospel of John is filled with these words about Jesus: son of God, Lamb of God, King of Israel—on and on they spill out. These may be words that make our brains spin, words we cannot give our intellectual assent to. Words we doubt, we wonder about.

But faith really is not just about intellectual assent—its about who we give our hearts to. With whom will we throw in our lot? With whom do we want to relate? Being in the company of? Travel with? Nathanael lets his doubt lead him to come and see. He thinks he’s seen the fullness of who Jesus is in Jesus’ knowing him from an impossible distance. Jesus tells him he ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This love will transfigure both of them. And us, as well. _______________ (1) Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper & Row, 1973.

SERMON, January 4, 2009 THE EPIPHANY

Today we are celebrating the Epiphany: The season of the revealing of Christ to the whole world. We’re a couple of days early, but the season begins with the arrival of the 3 Kings. Here in church these Kings have been journeying all these past weeks to make it to their destination. You can see them there now. And maybe that’s been the case in your homes as well—if you have a crèche. Often people set up their family crèches with all the figures right from the start. Some families though wait to bring out the Kings until now. In most families whatever the timing, we take out the figures—so well known—and arrange them, and use that time to re-tell the story. And if you have or had children in the family often they play with the figures, move them around and re-tell the story. Many years ago, in a home of someone very well known to me the crèche would be set-up and as the days went by strange and sometimes shocking additions were made. Oh, the holy family was still there, and the shepherds and the magi—but there might be Batman suddenly in the midst of it all—or Spidey—once even Darth Vader. I’ve heard that My Little Pony can appear alongside the sheep. In some homes maybe Barbie & Ken show up—or Kung Fu panda. You never know who might show up at the crèche. It's very disturbing really. Spoils the symmetry of the arrangement. Adds an unsettling quality to the story.

In truth the way Matthew tells the story the magi themselves were as unsettling as the arrival of Darth Vader or Barbie. We tend to forget that I think. The birth itself and the folks who visit have become so much a part of the pageantry of the season (the bathrobes, the Burger King crowns, the capes, the empty boxes elegantly wrapped) that we’re more likely to find them cute than to be shocked by them. We’ve domesticated the story.

The first words spoken by any human in Matthew’s gospel are these: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” They’re spoken by the most outside of outsiders—extreme Gentiles—you might say: magi. And the words are spoken in the center of power: Jerusalem. And you’d kind of expect these foreigners—non-believers—pagans to go where the power is—where else would you go to find a king but there? As our passage from Isaiah reminds us the riches and camels will come from afar to Jerusalem—a Jerusalem restored and prosperous.

And we know the rest of the story goes—really there is hardly any reason to read it on a Sunday morning—. Herod is afraid—he doesn’t react nicely to the news that there is another king in HIS kingdom. He calls in his advisors—and asks them to refresh his memory: Just where was the Messiah to be born? Perhaps with some fear and trepidation they glom on to a text from Micah (not the one from Isaiah we just heard). In the Micah passage they recall that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem—the least of the least—just nine miles from Jerusalem but it might as well have been a thousand miles away—to compare them Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Kind of like maybe Washington DC and Graton—something like that.

In any case Herod sends the magi on their way to Bethlehem and asks them to report back on their findings. And off they go these outrageously different foreigners—off they go to find the newborn king in Bethlehem. And there indeed he is. They leave their outrageously fine gifts, fall down on their knees in homage. They go home by another route—deciding that discretion would be the better part of valor when it came to reporting back to Herod. And that’s it. How sweet it is.

The month of January is named after Janus—the Roman god of the gates, who looked both backwards and forwards. It’s a month when we tend to do that too. We think back to the past year and forward in anticipation to the new year. In church communities of course we look back to the stories of Christmas and Epiphany—to the stories of Jesus’ birth and life and from those stories we imagine our future. But, in the throes of Christmas gatherings, gift giving, pageants, and carols I have a tendency to skip over parts of the story that are essential. I forget how bizarre it is that the first words spoken in the Matthew’s gospel are words of the magi: very weird foreigners. And, I forget how the magi have to leave Jerusalem and go to Graton to find the Christ child. I forget how Matthew’s story is all about how there is no room for this new king in “The Way Things Are.” The powers that be don’t like the idea of God-with-us in Bethlehem. I forget that the story is one of how God works in the midst of no room to create a space for the light. How God’s grace refuses to be shut out—no matter what.

So from the beginning of Matthew’s gospel we learn that this Jesus is part of something bigger. Something God is doing that begins with transgression of boundaries and continues always breaking down barriers and opening up to the stranger, the outsider, the least, the lost, and the unimaginable. Always this catches me off-guard—even though this behavior of God’s runs clear throughout Scripture—beginning to end. The magi—these unknown astrologers, experts in the occult, interpreters of dreams—from the East (good grief maybe even from Iran) ignorant of the Law, foreigners in the extreme—these magi manage to act on what knowledge or intuition they do have to seek and find and pay homage to Jesus. An infant. They are the first to acknowledge Jesus as king. How amazing is that?

Matthew writes with words used in his day and Jesus’ day to describe the respect paid to the Roman emperor. He uses them about this baby. The way he uses the words you can’t help but wonder at the contrast between the two rulers. The emperor and his kinglets, and Jesus and his followers. It starts you thinking already this early. It starts you thinking.

And the first question the magi ask is where? where? is the child born king of the Jews? The where is important. It makes a difference. Because the promise of the birth in Bethlehem is all connected to the promise of a king who will care about the people—the folk, the people of the land, the little people. It’s the little promise of a ruler who will turn rulership upside down. Come out of nowhere to care for the forgotten. That’s who’s born in Bethlehem. There’s no room for this kind of king in Rome or Jerusalem. No possible role for such a one who is just not compatible with the ways of the state, the ways of power, the ways of the economy. The fact that Jesus is born in Graton is of critical importance.

And finally the great good news of this story is all about how God acts to deliver even when the sign in the window says NO DELIVERIES ACCEPTED. God brings light into the darkness, into the shutness, the rejection. God slithers into Bethlehem when the powers that be are gathered in Jerusalem making their plans and strategizing—when they are gathering their armies, their wealth, and their power to ensure their own success. The powers that be no matter where they are—are all about control and doing it on their own.

Lest you think this kind of thing has nothing to do with us: I can only say that I am often with them in that. I too, seek control and spend lots of energy doing life on my own—as though it all depends on me. I often keep a tight lid on my own heart—I look at the world around me and let disillusionment close me up and shut me down. I am enmeshed in the systems of “The Way Things Are”: in myself, my family, my community, the world. I tend to look for God in all the wrong places. It’s hard to let go and open yourself; it’s hard to turn away from Jerusalem.

The folks who turn to Bethlehem turn to a different promise—a smaller one perhaps—one that runs under the radar. God with us. The magi remind us to expect to find Batman and Barbie in the crèche—to listen deeply to the truth they have to offer—to dare to journey to the edges to seek the One who comes. The powers that be will do their best to destroy the light—but to no avail. There is no containing the grace of God; it will cross every boundary you set, defeat every rejection. There is no stopping that grace. It will slither into Graton—no matter what. Go there, you will see for yourself.

SERMON, December 28, 2008

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 148; Luke 2:22-40

Sometime ago, in November I think it was, I was driving into San Francisco at 5:30 in the morning. It was dark. When I left Santa Rosa as far as I could tell it was very dark. I drove over the Golden Gate and took the very first right turn after the bridge and followed my nose along the road that runs along the coast. It was still dark, but when I came down the hill along the coast suddenly the sky was filled by the soft light of the moon—an absolutely enormous moon—a harvest moon. A moon so full that it took my breath away. It was going down over the ocean, and you could just make out the waves in the pale light of this enormous moon. People were stopping their cars all along the beach there. Young people were leaping out with their cell phones to take pictures. Others simply sat and took it all in. It was a holy time—an occasion of praise—of heaven and nature singing. Then the sun finally began to bring its pinkish light to the city, and the moon gradually shrank and faded out of sight. Many of us sat in our cars in silence as the light spread over us. A holy time.

When I got to my meeting later at the Mercy Center in Burlingame—a meeting which really was not about the sun or the moon, I couldn’t help telling everyone about how nature had sung its praises to God that morning. I felt my spirit lifted. I couldn’t keep it to myself. And it turned out one other person there had also been awake and in awe of the beauty of the moment.

Our Psalm this morning is full of praise. Psalm 148 is one of those psalms near the end of the collection, and it just can’t contain it’s praise of God. “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise God from the heights!” By the time it is over, everyone and everything joins in the chorus: from the angels and heavenly hosts, the sun and moon, the shining stars, the waters above the earth, the earth itself, the sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and frost, even the stormy wind, mountains, hills, all the cedars and other trees. The wild animals and cattle, creeping things and flying birds. Even kings and princes and all peoples, old and young, praise God.

Perhaps you too have known the heavens and nature to sing God’s praises. Maybe in the flight of the blue heron, the running of a dog, the leaping of the deer, the slithering of a snake. Perhaps in the beauty of the sunset over the ocean, or it’s rise in the mountains. Perhaps you have heard the praises sung by the wind that blows across the lake, or the warmth of the summer sun on your back. Watching the hawks along the coast I have often thought of their nearly silent chorus of praise as they circle and swoop over the hills and water.

The praises you and I offer are just a part of this larger chorus of praise. Sometimes we forget this I think. Perhaps our current ecological woes stem in part from our forgetfulness about this. This link we have with the rest of God’s creation.

Both Isaiah and Luke are filled with praise too—on this Sunday after Christmas—the time after: when the presents have all been unwrapped, the company on their way home, the lights beginning to dim, and in some homes the trees already coming down. It’s a time of darkness isn’t it? Not long after the winter solstice. You know Christmas—the birth of Christ—wasn’t celebrated in the early church. And when the church did fix a date to the birth—it was fixed in the mid-winter darkness. A time when nature helps us understand the impact of light coming into our darkness. The customs we have of decorating a tree, bringing in garlands, are about bringing nature indoors. Connecting ourselves to the praise perhaps of the trees. At just that time of year when darkness seems to most take over, our tradition celebrates the in-breaking of the light. Small, tiny you might say, but light nevertheless, light that is not overcome by the darkness.

In the face of darkness we proclaim God’s act of love. In the face of darkness Isaiah rejoiced in the Lord God who promises always to bring new life, to clothe us in salvation, and cover us with righteousness. The Lord God says Isaiah will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations. The prophet himself cannot keep silent. Kind of like me that early morning in November. The work and the promises of God are just too much to keep silent about. We simply burst into praise.

On Christmas Eve I filled in as celebrant at the pageant service at my old parish Incarnation in Santa Rosa. It was my first time back after over a year, and what a wonderful way to return—to the singing of Christmas carols, and to the children acting out the well-known story as only they do. Those Christmas carols are all songs of praise. They bring us together as almost nothing else can do. They are part of the fabric of our community. When we go caroling we reach out to those who cannot be with us, and bring them back through song.

Praise is not about buttering up God you know. It’s not about stroking God’s ego. It isn’t about making God feel good about God wonderful self. Nor is it about laying the groundwork for a request that will be made next. Think about it. Praise is a way for us to testify to who God is and what God has done. It’s a way to respond to the gift of grace. It’s a way to express our awe, our amazement, at times our almost stupefied wonder. It’s a way to say who God is and who we are. It acknowledges that it’s God’s world, not our world, not my world. I’m not in charge. It flows out of our thanksgiving. It’s about relationship for sure—ours with God and God’s with us. But it’s not that God needs our praise—its that God’s self, God’s actions, God’s promises, God’s creative energy at work—these simply cause praise to spring up! And, not just from us, remember, but from all the created world. Praise maybe is one of the deepest expressions of who we are. When we give praise we open ourselves to God. We claim the truth of who God is.

You hear echoes of this in the way praise works in our families, at the workplace, all through our daily lives. Real praise, praise that springs up, when we let ourselves utter it—that kind of praise is a gift. It opens us to the other person. To praise someone for who they are, for their kindness, or their accomplishment, for their listening, for their being opens the ways between us. If accepted it opens the other to become more deeply who they can be, and it opens us in the same way. Some of us were raised in families where there was little or no praise. We are uncomfortable giving it and accepting it—letting it sink into our hearts. We have to fight off the early training we got about needing to earn everything—including God’s love. In church as we sing and worship together we practice the art of praise. But perhaps some of you were raised in a families filled with praise and thanksgiving. If so you know in your bones what a gift it is to be reminded that you are worthy—you are a child of God—no matter what. And, if you are a person who praises others easily you know how offering praise opens you to the beauty—the pure gift of others. Praise brings us together.

Simeon and Anna praise God too—for the birth of Jesus. And Simeon’s song of praise is really a song announcing his death. A song of praise at death. Again that darkness and light interwoven. The light shining on the death and through it. His praise of God and God’s actions now releasing him to death. Not that strange really is it? Perhaps you have known someone who died just after Christmas. Who seemed to hang on to life until Christmas and then let go. I’ve seen that more than once in my years of ministry. And Christmastime is often a time of absences-felt. Empty places at the table, loved ones dead, no longer with us. The season can be one of grief and loneliness as well as joy and companionship. That’s how it is.

The people of God devote themselves to praise in just this season of darkness. And we do so in many ways. Singing the carols that tell the story. Christmas pageants, worship, prayers, cards sent, phone calls made, gifts given and received, connections renewed. Letting goes and deaths even: all encompassed in the grace of God come among us in the flesh. To recognize that our praises join together with the praises of all of God’s creation in heaven and on earth is a great gift—it opens us to God, and to each other, including the creatures and the sun and moon and stars. Look for those praises and let your own praises ring out this season. There are still eight more days of Christmas to give praise to God. It’s a spiritual practice vital to our lives all the days of the year.