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Sunday, February 20, 2011

A Sermon Preached February 20, 2011 Epiphany 7A

by Lee Cheek

One Heart At a Time

“…you should become fools so that you may become wise.” 1 Corinthians 3:18

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

It is so hard to stop fighting. It is so easy to start. Here’s the scene: A room full of toys. A child is playing with one of them. Enter another child looking for a toy. What happens next?

Right. You all know: a fight over the only toy (among many) that the first child has. Punches are thrown. Tears. Screams. Parents enter. Blame ensues: I had it first! She hit me first! But he pulled my hair! She bit me!

This is so common among children AND adults that one might suspect we are hard-wired to ramp up our responses in the heat of conflict. In 2003 researchers in London discovered that, indeed, we are.1

Pairs of volunteers were connected to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other’s fingers. Although they were instructed to take turns applying equal amounts of pressure, the machines recorded that each volunteer typically responded with 40% more force than they had just experienced. Each partner was convinced that he was responding with equal force. A game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate, then hard pokes.

Commenting on this study, Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote that the research teaches us that “our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.”2

In other words, the pain we receive seems to be more painful than the pain we produce.

Frankly, I find this personally sobering. I know from life experience, that conflicts can escalate quickly, but I usually think it is the other person’s fault.

As the study would imply, the truth of this is much easier to see when we are not personally involved. I think this knowledge of tit for tat escalation is what had us on the edge of our seats for 18 days as we watched events unfold in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Who was going to respond with the additional force that would set off an all-against-all conflagration?

It is unclear what is going to happen in the delicate negotiations to restructure Egypt’s government. But we are beginning to learn a little about what has happened so far.

After a failed effort in 2005, leaders of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement began training in non-violent activism which prepared them years in advance for the events in both Tunisia and Egypt.3 Rather foolish in the face of repressive regimes you might say.

But like Gandhi, King, Mandela, and their followers, the democracy activists were whole-heartedly and fearlessly committed to meeting their enemies without returning the harm they perceived they had received. Even if it meant they would lose their lives.

To be sure, not all non-violent action succeeds in ways measured by the world. People die, regimes stay in place. Worse repression or worse tyrants may follow. But, as a Christian, I believe like Mother Teresa that I am not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Faithful to the practice of opening of my heart to all my brothers and sisters, especially those with whom I disagree, and especially those whose actions I must oppose.

In today’s reading from Matthew, the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount, we are asked to respond to provocation not with equal force—which research tells us we cannot do anyway—but with the bravest generosity beyond any requirement of law that we can muster.

Not in order to shame or expose the baseness of the other who has wronged us. But in order to change ourselves that we might live creative lives, uncontaminated by resentment and angry self-righteousness.

The very extravagance of these instructions wisely takes into account our desire for distorted payback that gives our tormentors way too much real estate in our soul.

As Christians, we are given the freedom to judge for ourselves what that might look like for us in any given situation. On some occasions, a smile might be our most generous response, the bravest thing we can do. And who knows. It just might be enough.

Sometimes all we can do is pray. Yet know this: when we take time to pray for our enemies and include them in our circle of concern, we admit them into our hearts and are eventually blessed by the liberating truth that the rain and sun are equally theirs.

So here’s the question Paul is asking us today: Do you want this foolish, extravagant, wholehearted generosity towards others to be the foundation of your life? If so, then relax into the Company of Fools, he says, and it’s all yours. As you build your temple with care on this foundation, you will begin to experience a world beyond tit for tat for ... boom!

Now I can’t end without addressing the troublesome last sentence of the today’s Gospel: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I know many of us have been damaged and emotionally crippled by exhortations to be “perfect.” In fact, according to Dr. BrenĂ© Brown who researches vulnerability at the University of Houston, perfection as it is known today is actually one of the ways that we use to avoid opening our hearts and becoming vulnerable to life’s experiences, including love and connectedness.4

So I’m going to offer up a contemporary paraphrase of what I think Jesus understood as the heavenly Father’s “perfection” that we are to imitate. If you like, gaze at the screen upon the beautiful 6th century icon--which happens to be from Egypt, St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. It is the Christ Pantocrator, “Christ, Ruler of All.” And then, if you like, imagine Jesus speaking these words, taken from an Abbey Lincoln song:

"Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And keep your hand wide open. Let the sun shine through, 'cause you can never lose a thing if it belongs to you ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And the hand's unclenched and open, gifts of life and love it brings, so keep your hand wide open if you're needing anything ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life, each and every day.5

Live foolishly. Live generously. Amen.


1 Sukhwinder S. Shergill et al. Two Eyes for an Eye: The Neuroscience of Force Escalation.” Science 11 July 2003: 18.

2 Daniel Gilbert .“He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t.” The New York Times July 24, 2006

3 Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution.” The New York Times February 16, 2011.

4 BrenĂ© Brown. “The Price of Invulnerability.” TEDxHouston. YouTube video. 2010

5Abbey Lincoln. “Throw It Away” Track 4 from Golden Lady. InnerCity Records 1117, 1981. Link

Sunday, February 13, 2011

A Sermon Preached February 13, 2011 by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Text: Matthew 5:21-37, Epiphany 6 A

Today’s Gospel kind of makes me wish the disciples hadn’t been listening so carefully that day. Maybe they would have missed some of the incisiveness of this part of the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Seems like Jesus has just gone from preachin’ to meddlin’! Why couldn’t he have just stuck to “religion” instead of getting into all these “little things”, which turn out to be the nitty-gritty of everyday life?

But the Sermon on the Mount turns out to be an amazing teaching in which Jesus instructs us on what it means to be a disciple, in the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives. As his followers, Jesus wants something really BIG for us. He wants us to live our everyday lives to the fullness that is possible. He wants us to have abundant life! And he wants us to choose life!

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus interprets the Law, handed down from Moses, in a new way. Jesus’ way does not negate Moses’ Law. It gets inside it! Jesus’ way takes the Law to a deeper level of compassion. ‘Gets at the real Spirit of the Law, which is Love. 

For example, instead of being just concerned that we don’t externally murder, commit adultery, or swear oaths, Jesus is also concerned with what our inside motives are behind murder, adulterous behavior, and swearing oaths. To follow him means we need concern ourselves with the powerful, God-given, human emotions we all have, because these emotions can lead to our acting out in ways that can be devastating to ourselves and the people around us…our Neighbors.

So, here we are, several weeks before Lent begins, and we’re talking about sin!
In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes, “Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs.
And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted something we didn’t have, or we feared losing something we had.”

What a great “rule of thumb” this is, just to ask ourselves, “What do we want or what are we afraid of losing that somehow has become more important to us than our higher values?” ‘Probably at least as effective as and maybe even faster than, that I-Phone app that came out this week that helps people prepare for Confession. (BTW, I join with the Roman Church in reminding you that app is not instead of going to confession, it’s just a preparation tool!)

 Jesus wants us to go to a deeper level of compassion in our lives. That’s the real Spirit of the Law. He wants us to get inside our powerful feelings to help us avoid acting out uncompassionately and forgetting our higher selves.


So, for example, let’s think about anger. Imagine a wet, hungry toddler who, understandably, flies into a rage. The rage is natural and self-preserving and expressed unselfconsciously. It doesn’t need to be repressed. If we try to suppress it, it can do emotional-spiritual harm to the child. Now big people, even followers of Jesus like us, will get mad, as children do. It’s natural, normal, and not sinful in and of itself because anger is a God-given emotion that helps us know when we are threatened or in danger. However, we are called to feel the anger (as Jesus did in the Temple at the money-changers), express it (if there’s a way to that’s not harmful), then let it go. Give it to God. And then move on…to the highest good
and finest goals. The more we can do this, the more we come to see: We human beings are more alike than different, and then forgiveness really becomes possible. This is the Spirit inside the Law about not committing murder. It’s the antithesis of nursing grudges. It’s not letting “hot” anger turn to “cold” anger, which freezes into hate and takes years of unthawing and healing (and psychotherapy), and sometimes the hate never unthaws. When anger freezes into hate, we’ve missed the inner Spirit of God’s Law, and our lives are not abundant. We are not free. We have chosen Death, instead of Life.

I read an amazing story this week about the way one woman dealt with her feelings of anger and fear.  (Story by Joe Slevcove in The Sun, 8-07 as quoted in Synthesis) The story was written by a man about his wife, Beth. In the midst of her anger, I think Beth really got inside the Law and found the Spirit of compassion and love. Beth and her husband had moved from the suburbs to a warehouse loft in a big city. Beth embraced the urban life-style, even the sirens, the parking problems, and the car alarms that went off in the night. The husband admitted the homeless people made him uncomfortable, but Beth always talked with them and learned their names.
The only thing that really bothered Beth in their new neighborhood were the guys who ran the tattoo parlor across the street.

They were noisy, got into fights. harassed women on the sidewalk and intimidated men. They were the reason Beth never walked on that side of the street. For two years Beth glared at them out her window—That row of men who sat in the front of the shop shooting out people’s tires. Well one day Beth called her husband at work and announced she was getting a tattoo. He thought it was a bit odd, since she’d never wanted any body art. When she got home, she called him again and happily reported, “I did it!” When he got home she excitedly showed him the delicately inscribed words on her wrist, “Love thy neighbor”.

She told her husband she had marched across the street and gone in the shop.
She saw walls covered with drawings of skulls, bloody knives, naked women, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Manuel, the owner, was working on someone when she arrived. Beth introduced herself as his neighbor across the street. After awhile she went outside and sat down to wait with the guys in front of the shop. The guy next to her asked what she was getting done. “Love Thy Neighbor.” “Why that?”
She explained, “Well, you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me—you know, with all the loud music and fights that break out over here and all.” He ushered her back into the shop and announced with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We’ve got to stop fighting.”

At first Manuel was defensive until Beth explained she didn’t want to change him, she just wanted to get this tattoo. Manuel showed her a picture in a magazine of  “Love thy neighbor”. It had bloody knives in the background. Beth told him that wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. After they settled on the design, Manuel began to do his art on her wrist. Then he stopped, “How do you spell THY?”
He explained shyly, “I didn’t go to school”. The other tattoo artist piped in, “Dude, it’s not because you didn’t go to school, it’s because you don’t read the Bible!”


After that Beth always waved to the tattoo artists as if they were old pals.
The music from across the street was not so grating to her nerves. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe.

Four months later, Beth took the car in for an oil change and saw Manuel having a friendly chat with the repairman behind the counter. As she started to remind him
who she was, Manuel stepped forward and gave her a warm hug.“Hey,” he said to his friend behind the counter, “This is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”  Amen.

Parts of this sermon were adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 6A, 2011

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A Sermon Preached Sunday, February 6, 2011 Epiphany 5A

by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector
Text: Matthew 5:13 - 20

About 10 years ago my sister-in-law gave me a two-pound bag of pecans.
They were grown in Texas and advertized as being “the world’s best pecans”, and they were! Now, I don’t bake much, so I put the pecans in the freezer and over the years would get some out to add to salads or other recipes. When I moved here 3 years ago, I transported the pecans (about one-half-pound was left) and put them in my new freezer. I thought, “Gosh, those will be nice for when I need some pecans”.

So this past Thanksgiving, I decided I needed some pecans to add to the spinach/orange/pomegranate salad. I got them out of the freezer and discovered they weren’t exactly stale, they just didn’t taste like pecans anymore. In fact, what had truly been “the world’s best pecans” didn’t taste like much of anything anymore.

So when we came to this scripture about our being Salt and Light to the world,
I got to thinking about those pecans because, frankly, I’ve never heard of real salt somehow losing its taste. . .Except in this scripture passage. So the metaphor is always hard for me to relate to.  The pecans help me think about what it means when something doesn’t have the flavor and other properties that God intended for it. The pecans also help me see what happens when we hide our lights under a bushel, or in the freezer. It does no one any good, and eventually the light and the flavor are gone. What a waste!

Now I wonder if, to some degree our Faith isn’t like this. We have it but maybe we don’t “use” it much, and so it goes flat. Maybe sometimes we even hide it away so no one can see it. So it does no one any good and finally becomes worthless.

I don’t know about you, but I think that the particular “flavor” of Christianity that we are blessed with as Episcopalians is something the world desperately needs. We have a way of being faithful that’s different from many other Christians. The Episcopal way of being followers of Jesus is inviting and inclusive. Thoughtful. Biblically based. It focuses on a loving God, who is here to set us free and give us life!  Yes it’s “rank” with authority but structured with significant checks and balances and some real autonomy built in as well. And it always encourages people to use their God-given minds: We know life’s often more gray than black and white, so we learn to live faithfully in the tension of that. It’s steeped in 2000 years of tradition, yet flexible enough to be open to the ways God’s Spirit is moving in our world now. And it is spiritually deep and broad, grounded in common prayer and the sacraments, but concerned as well that believers find the best ways to pray as individuals and families.

Now this is NOT the image of Christianity that the media often portrays, but it IS what the unchurched see, and it’s what people see who maybe left the church when they were young adults. Is THAT what we want all those children of God to think about what it means to follow Jesus? It’s no wonder so many remain unchurched!

Meanwhile we’re over here with this great treasure: A religion of great saltiness and flavor. We should be a light to the nations, but for some reason we Episcopalians don’t seem to know very well how to shine our light and serve up the flavorful word. Now I wish I had a clear plan that would get our light and flavor out there, but I don’t. As Episcopalians who hold this great treasure, I hope we will all be thinking about this. Maybe it would help just to think about what our religion means to us personally so we can articulate it when we have the opportunity. I do know we already have the spiritual qualities we need to get out the word. We have SALT and LIGHT.   

 (The following section is adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 5, 2011, H. K Oehmig)
We’ve been “salted” with God’s Holy Spirit…Not to be shaken over popcorn, added to soups, or spread on icy roads. Instead we’ve been “salted” for godliness and Holy Spirit-uality, so we are the ones called to bring Jesus’ flavor to this world. ‘Question is, how do we use this salt we’re given?

Someone (Cardinal Suhard, quoted in Oehmig’s article) suggested a fresh way of being salt
without resorting to dogmatism or moralism:
“To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, not even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.

So we live in ways that make people ask questions about our lives. We live in ways that make people scratch their heads and somehow turn to God for the answers. Being salt is not being a magician or flashy showman. After all, salt is an inconspicuous and ordinary substance. It is minute and is usually mixed with common things. It’s earthy and does its work in unobvious ways. It flavors, preserves, heals, or sharpens SILENTLY. I’ve noticed it does no good at all to my French fries, if it stays in the shaker. It’s effective only when used.
         
When salt can be tasted, touched and sprinkled—Like in our willingness to speak out and do something to eradicate violence and injustice and to attend to our own day-to-day relationships, at home, school, church, and work. By grace, in these places, we can become really alive, warmed and lit by the Holy Spirit, and we can shine and refract the light of God to others.
(End of section adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 5, 2011, H. K Oehmig)

This is our calling: Not to hide the light but to put it up high for all to see.
Remember we are God’s salt and light. As Episcopalians, we have something really wonderful that the world desperately needs. Let’s figure out how to share it…Lest we become like that half-pound of “the world’s best pecans”, which, by the way, ended up in the trash.    

Monday, February 7, 2011

Evangelism, the Episcopal way

I have been thinking a lot lately about the general decline of main line protestantism and especially the Episcopal Church which I happen to love very much. Francie spoke about this last Sunday. Christianity has a big image problem in this "Post Christian" age. It is not normal or necessary any more for people to belong to and attend a church. And many see our faith and our God as mean, judgmental and just downright unnecessary and irrelevant. How can we change our image? How can we show the face of Christ, the real Christ to the world? In the summer of 2009 at General Convention in Anaheim I was very moved by a sermon given by Ray Suarez at our daily Eucharist that really gets to the heart of who we are and where we need to go as a church. I invite you to read it here . Please read digest and comment if you like.

John Cheek