A Sermon Preached December 11, 2011, Advent 3 B

by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, rector

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and John 1:6-8, 19-28

Advent 3 already! It’s the week for JOY and GLADNESS, the week when we have our visitors from Ingersoll, Ontario, the week for the pink candle, and the week for Isaiah and John.

The passage from Isaiah is beautiful and familiar, because it’s what the Gospel of Luke quotes Jesus as reading from the scroll in the temple. This Isaiah passage is from what we call “Third Isaiah”. Third Isaiah was written to address the sad situation and people in the aftermath of the Babylonian Exile. They’d returned to their ruined, yet beloved Zion. The speaker assures the people that God’s Spirit has given him the power to speak a word of hope and salvation to them in their desolate straits:

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God: to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”

In this, Third Isaiah invites God’s returning people to be clothed in salvation and to think about salvation--not so much in terms of “who will be saved and go to heaven” but as a quality of life in the here and now! It’s a quality of life that reflects God’s desire for the human community. In Isaiah 61, salvation means good news, healing, liberty, release, and comfort. It means a “jubilee year”…A year when debts are wiped away, slaves are freed, fields allowed to lie fallow, and land returned to its owners.

In Isaiah, salvation is imagined both as a restored city and as an abundant garden.

It says the other nations will see what God has done for Israel, and they will know,

“That they are people whom the Lord has blessed”. This affirms that God’s mission of deliverance is not just some other-worldly pie-in-the-sky thing. God’s salvation mission is real, tangible and “this-worldly”! In fact, others can actually see it!

As Christians I think we may often think of God’s salvation as being about the life of the world to come, and ultimately it is. However, we must not forget that God’s salvation is also God’s mission. It’s about transforming the world— here and now!

We’re invited to participate in this transformative, missional way of life—even in the midst of a fallen world. I’m suggesting salvation is the reality of our world, as it SHOULD be. The Reign of God NOW! The world God imagines, longs for...For us!

If that is so, then how do we participate in God’s mission? How do we help bring in the Reign of God in our day? Isaiah points us, and by quoting Isaiah, Jesus points us, to our mission…to turning our attention to those he names as recipients of the good news: The oppressed. The brokenhearted. The captives. The prisoners. The mournful. The faint of spirit…These are the lowest and weakest, the ones for whom God and Jesus have special concern.

Notice, this kind of faith and sense of mission has little or nothing to do with many forms of cultural Christianity that would make the Church an end in itself. Perhaps “John the testifier” as we see him in John’s gospel today, was making a similar statement when he took his testimony and baptism out from the city, out from the temple, away from the established religion, and into Bethany. As if to say, “It’s out here in the wilderness where you will ‘come back to life’.”

This is a far cry from making the Church an end in itself that exists solely for a building (if we had one!), or our programs, or the fellowship of like-minded folk

we so enjoy.  It’s not that any of these are wrong in and of themselves…They just can’t be the reason for the Church’s existence.

Instead, we need to exist for the sake of the poor, oppressed, brokenhearted, imprisoned, and mournful…in our community. In other words, we need more and more to join God’s mission, Jesus’ mission. And if we do, then I think the nations of the world, or at least our neighbors, will notice that we live differently: That we are indeed “A people whom the Lord has blessed”. So we would actually fulfill Second Isaiah’s prophecy (Is 49:6) and be, “A light to the nations, that God’s salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  If we could closely align with God’s mission and live as a missional Church, seeking to help bring in the Reign of God, then we would live as people of good news, liberation, justice, and comfort in such a way as people would take note and be drawn to the ways of God. In today’s world Christians often get negatively stereotyped, in spite of how much money we may give to charity or how many missionaries we might send abroad. Many think of Christians as a group of people who are divided and hypocritical, who judge, fight, and exclude. If we really lived into God’s mission, we would stand as a sign of God’s blessing to all around us in this community. We would break those stereotypes.  We might really be that church the wonderful Hispanic woman at Taft Farm described us as being, “The Church Where All the Angels Fly Around”.

There’s a part of us that is that Church. We are “People whom the Lord has blessed”, and others sometimes see it! And I celebrate it!

I hope as we live into these last two weeks of Advent, we will remember not just that Jesus came, but also why Jesus came. His mission, our mission, is to bring in the Reign of God, to testify to the Light, to usher in a jubilee celebration in the here and now, as we await the day of his coming. Amen.

This sermon borrowed heavily from the “Theological Perspective” article on Isaiah of Scott Bader-Saye in Feasting on the Word, Advent 3 B. 

The Subject Comes First

A Sermon Preached by Lee Cheek, Lay Preacher @ St. James & St. George Episcopal Churches @ Crissey Farm, Great Barrington, MA

Advent 2B, December 4, 2011

I have to say that I am refreshed, sobered, and braced by the monumentality of the proclamations from Isaiah and Mark today. Living deeply with them during the past few weeks, I have come to appreciate their beauty, boldness, and confidence about how humankind has slowly been brought into being: how we humans have been led, guided, and ever so patiently and lovingly pulled into a future not completely disclosed to us, yet assuredly will be for us—each one of us without exception.

It is a future difficult to imagine but the signs of it are already here in the shining moments of grace and reconciliation, glimpsed by us in those moments when we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

I hesitate to even name this Living and Acting Presence—the “Who” that has been with us and for us since before the beginning of time. I could use Isaiah’s “Yahweh” which suggests an activeness, or “I AM” which conveys a sense of something we cannot know everything about.

It is easier to say “God”, though to most people these days “God” often means something more like “Top God”—a god who apparently has needed squads of proud cheerleaders over the ages to shout his name loudly and often and to do some pretty unholy things to prove his power. This mostly ends up having people rightfully reject such a false thing in their lives.

Second or “Deutero” Isaiah, the author of chapters 40-55 of the book of Isaiah, wrote during the 50 odd years following the destruction of Jerusalem by the forces of the Assyrian empire in 597 BC. Leaving a helpless remnant of the tribes of Judah behind in the dust and stones of the flattened city and its wrecked, former home of Yahweh, Isaiah and about 4600 others were deported to Babylon (present day Iraq) into a dazzlingly opulent society with grand temples of their more powerful god Marduk. Into a shiny city complete with hanging gardens.

A few days ago, I was trying to imagine the disorientation and the amazement the deportees might have felt on their arrival in their new surroundings. I happened to see a picture on NPR’s website of the world’s largest casino proposed for construction on Biscayne Bay in Miami at a cost of $3 billion.[1] Apparently Babylon is coming to us!

King Nebuchadnezzar thought that he had gotten rid of Yahweh and thus, put his people in despair and humiliation, stripped of their identity as the sons and daughters of Yahweh-Who-Brought-Them-into-Being-from-Nothing.

To be sure, they were well aware of their part in their defeat, having ignored their prophets’ warnings about being unfaithful to Yahweh’s covenant with them which required living up to the imperatives of a just and merciful society: seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.[2]

But before they were brought too low as new consumers of the Assyrian profit-at-any-cost society, Yahweh as lover and gatherer of the weak speaks the word of radical forgiveness to them:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye, for I still believe in you. I am not in my temple because I am here with you in the wilderness of your suffering and shame, ready to gently lead you to our new home together. Position and power mean nothing to me. It’s my Word to you that will carry you through and remain with you forever.”

We hear echoes of these words in the bracing opening of Mark’s testament some 400 years since the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. As a result of the Roman control of Palestine in 63 BC, an uneasy peace has been brokered—but at the price of heavy taxes, control and corruption of the temple priesthood, and puppet rulers whose appetites for wealth and staying in power corrupt and harm everyone down the food chain.

You could hear their cries: "Where is Yahweh when we need him! Send us a divine leader to deliver us! Your people are desperate! Restore your Promised Land to us!"

Several groups have given up on the corrupt priests of the temple and have scorned their rituals. Holiness renewal movements emerge and Mark introduces us to John the Baptist who is administering a ritual cleansing of sins to anyone who will come to the wilderness—that is, far away from the sacral structures of the temple.

You could hear their hopes: "Yes, if we clean our hearts, Yahweh will answer us, avenge his honor, save us from our enemies, release us from our humiliation at the hands of the Romans and restore our land to us!"

In Matthew’s testimony, we learn what happens to the Baptizer. John enters into a rivalry with the puppet ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas, and outs him as a major sinner for marrying his brother’s wife. This lands him in prison and when he hears that Jesus has begun his ministry, he poignantly sends a message to him:

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Jesus answered him: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Ah! So beautiful! So of the Living and Acting Presence, who patiently and lovingly pulls anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see into an unimagined future, into something new.

I wonder if John’s heart was able to receive this message and let himself be undone by it, letting the plug be pulled out of his story that it is our actions which command God’s response, rather than God’s actions which result in our response?

All of this is to say that the Good News that Mark announced to the world with the authority of an imperial decree is from the future that John did not yet know.

You see, Mark wrote his announcement of this Good News from the perspective of someone who had encountered in his crucified and risen brother The One Who Has Always Been For Us, The One Always Coming Toward Us who cannot be destroyed by anything we humans can do.

But I get ahead of the season at hand. What might these texts be saying to us right now, we anxious and desperate humans who want to do something—to ourselves, to others—so God will arrive and save us from the destructive consequences of our personal and societal addictions to the power and patronage of Babylon?

Perhaps something like this:

Beloved! Be not ignorant of this one thing: that one day is with Me as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. There is time. Exhale. Be quiet and allow Me—your I AM—to act first. In ages past, it has ever happened that way.

So comfort ye! Comfort ye, for I still believe in you. I am not in my temple because I am here with you in the wilderness of your suffering and shame, ready to lead you gently to our new home together. Position and power mean nothing to me. It’s my Word to you that will carry you through and remain with you forever.

AMEN.

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[1] http://www.npr.org/2011/12/01/142864058/in-miami-plans-for-mega-casinos-bring-hope-and-ire

[2] Isaiah 1:17

In preparing this sermon, the preacher gratefully acknowledges being significantly influenced by the following sources: James Alison’s recorded talks at the 2010 John Main Seminar in Canterbury, UK, The Shape of God’s Affection, available at http://www.contemplative-life.org/ and Fleming Rutledge’s new collection of her Old Testament sermons, And God Spoke to Abraham (Eerdmans, 2011). Thank you, my friends!

A Sermon preached November 27, 2011, Advent 1 B

By the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

It’s Advent I, and so we begin again a New Year in the Christian Church calendar.

Four years ago today, on Advent I, 2007, you and I worshiped together for the very first time. We were in the building at Main & Taconic when we began our life together as parish and priest. 

Three years ago today, we were here at Crissey Farm. ‘Glad to be “in out of the cold”.  ‘Sort of huddled together and basically in shock with what had befallen us.

Two years ago, again at Crissey Farm, we were stressed out by insurance company deadlines. We were also feeling the stress of being a congregation in transition. We’d been hurled into a journey we hadn’t asked for. It was a journey from where we’d been to where God was leading us—and we didn’t know the way! We were starting to discern what the best for our parish was, and there were many differing ideas!

By last Advent I, we had sold the building, and we were welcoming the people of St. George Lee to worship with us here. The people of St. George were in their own kind of transition. They’d said goodbye to their beloved rector, and were in the process of selling their property.

A lot has happened to us in the past four years, hasn’t it? (!)

Each new liturgical year has brought its own joys and challenges for us as communities of God’s people. Yet for last year and this year, as in every year on Advent I, the themes for the day are perfect: HOPE and LIGHT and KEEPING ALERT.

In our first reading from Isaiah, the people have just returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. Life is chaotic. Nothing like it was before: Their beloved city is desolate. Their temple is destroyed. Life in Jerusalem, as they knew it before the exile, is simply gone. And, having been in exile, the people are different as well. So the people of God call for God to come to them, to INTERVENE,“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

They complain and blame when God is angry with them or hiding from them, and then their faith weakens, and they fall away, “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

They remind God that God has made them and molded them, “We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand…we are all your people.” They are begging God to come to them, to shed light on their darkness, and to make God’s self known. The Psalmist puts it this way, “show the light of your countenance”.

Although they are desperate, there also seems to be a lot of HOPE in their plea: They know God is their God. they are God’s people, and they are hopeful that God will, in fact, respond. And God does respond to God’s people…over and over again. And, over and over, the people are strengthened…for a while, but then they fall away. (BTW that’s pretty much a brief summary of the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, if not God’s relationship with God’s people in general!)

As we think of what those newly returned exiles asked for in Isaiah: For God to intervene in their plight, for God to forgive them and show up in their lives, we as Christians can see the coming of Jesus as a new kind of intervention. In fact, it’s God’s ultimate intervention: God becomes flesh and dwells among us as a human being. It is through this Human Being, who is also God, we see the light of God’s countenance. We are fully forgiven and given relationship with the One who made us and forms us—the potter of our clay.

At this time when our world and lives are dark on many fronts…With war and tumult, greed and scapegoating, crumbling economies, inequity, injustice, bankrupt and addicted nations and people, a government apparently unable to value the Common Good over partisan politics, and so many natural disasters that leave unspeakable and overwhelming destruction…We are seeing these things take place RIGHT NOW! As those before us have seen these things.

In the Gospel Jesus says, when we see these signs, we can know that Jesus is near…Just as when we see a plant putting on new shoots, we know that summer is near. It’s a natural part of God’s plan. Now this nearness of Jesus is not just referring to some cosmic End Time, it is also talking about right now…in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of the many signs we do indeed see taking place today. And so as we see the signs, as those before us saw signs, we can live in faithful HOPE: Jesus is near, and God will bring the LIGHT NOW…In this time in-between Jesus’ coming to earth as a child and when he comes again in the End Time. It’s a natural part of God’s plan… So we must KEEP ALERT right now, because in the midst of the darkness of our world, a light will shine. God will try to intervene again—Right now, today/tonight/tomorrow. Jesus said to those closest to him, “What I say to you, I say to all, “Keep alert”.

We must realize that we are part of the “all” Jesus is talking about. So it’s our job to WATCH, WAIT, and KEEP ALERT, because the LIGHT, which is  Jesus’ nearness, may very well surface in the most unexpected ways and times, and we don’t want to miss it! Instead, we want to BE READY to recognize just how God intervenes in our darkness…and to name it for ourselves and others.

As we begin our 5^th year together, remember God’s nearness will probably come in the most unexpected ways…                

Like a child’s innocent question, a grace that may come in the midst of pain and loss, a new path that opens when another is blocked, deep values that galvanize when finances get really tight, or perhaps recognizing we’re not alone after all, but part of a community that’s become a holy family for us.

No matter where we are physically or spiritually, Advent is the time to live in HOPE and EXPECTATION….WATCH! WAIT! BE ALERT for all those times when Jesus is near, when he shows us the light of his countenance, when God intervenes and brings the LIGHT. Amen. 

Sermon, Sunday November 20

The Rev. Dr. Audrey Scanlan

Canon for Mission Collaboration

The Episcopal Diocese of CT

Christ the King 2011, Great Barrington, MA

Grace and Peace in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in the Episcopal Diocese of CT… and especially from our bishops, Ian, Jim and Laura.  It is an honor to be with you this morning and I am humbled to be invited to share in this day of celebration and thanksgiving and deep listening.  Thank you.

I knew this place many years ago… when my mother would load me and my several siblings into the Chevy station wagon on a summer afternoon and come over to Jennifer House… to buy a gift for someone: a calico apron, a big woven basket, or some kitchen goods.  Children that we were, we would hang around the penny candy section or go out and toss pebbles in the courtyard.  This was in the days before malls… and the idea of shopping on a “campus” was exciting-  I think that my mother used these trips to re-gain her sanity after spending day after day with us playing “war canoe” or re-stringing fishing poles that had tangled lines… and cooking dinner for our family of 11 every night at Twin Lakes…  Jennifer House.  Now Crissey Farms. And today- and for the past couple (three?) years on Sunday mornings- home to the worshipping communities of St. James, Great Barrington and St. George’s, Lee.

Today in our liturgical year, we have reached the end of the line. This day- the Feast day of Christ the King- is the final Sunday in our church calendar… and next week, we will begin again, the annual cycle of feasts and fasts as we enter into the season of Advent.  Endings and beginnings.  I’d like to look at both of those ideas- endings and beginnings- in that order.

The gospel lesson this morning talks about a big ending:  the coming of Christ in Glory and the Final Judgment.  Students of the New Testament know that this is the only place in the Gospels where the Final Judgment is described… and so, as a central idea in our theology, it is good to pay attention to this passage!  Jesus- the Son of Man- comes again and divides the sheep from the goats. The goats are gathered up and told that they did not measure up … and so they are cast off into an eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…   The sheep are gathered at the right hand of God and are praised for their righteous ways… and they are sent to  inherit the Kingdom. There is a distinct separation where the righteous are rewarded and the others are damned.  But… it’s really not that easy.  It’s muddier than that- because in the Last Judgment… in this ending… at the end of this line… it is not clear- even for the rewarded ones- how they came to  inherit the Kingdom.  They are surprised.  And Jesus tells them: “I was hungry… you gave me food… I was thirsty… you gave me something to drink… I was naked… you gave me clothing.”   The righteous have failed to see- even in their good works- the unity- the Oneness- of the Kingdom:  Christ is  present not only in shining robes seated on the throne of glory… but Christ is  also present in the hungry, the sick , the poor and the dirty: there is no dividing line in the Kingdom.  And so, while this story describes separation and ending- the Final Judgment- it also holds up another idea- one of Unity and Oneness and Wholeness in God’s Kingdom… and the call for us to be ever vigiliant of that.  It is a call to seek out Christ and to see that in Him, we are One. 

As the communities of St. George’s and St. James, you have had your own experiences of endings.  I was amazed to learn about the history of St. Georges’ in which the church building suffered two different fires...in the year 1861 (when it was just 3 years old)  and again, 18 years later, in 1879, and, through the hard work of the people and the grace of God… you came to re-build and re-claim that space as your worshipping home.  Those fires were events that were out of your control and which for many communities could have served as the real- final- ending.  St James’ has a similar story in an uncontrolled event that could have pointed to an ending:  the sudden falling of the sanctuary wall three years ago which demanded sudden and certain evacuation from your worship space.  And, still, there is another ending to name:  the ending of St. George’s as owners of land in Lee- this time, a controlled ending, in which the parish chose in 2010 for the property to be sold.

These endings- both the controlled one and the sudden ones- have challenged both of your communities to find creative responses as the people of God and  they have called you to consider, together, now,  the next steps in your lives as followers of Jesus and his Way.

Beginnings. 

In his Convention Address, your bishop Gordon Scruton talked about the new beginnings for the Church and said: “God is looking for clergy and lay leaders in Western Massachusetts who will be willing to let God birth fresh expressions of Christian living and mission outside the walls and current patterns of their congregations.”    I’d say he had you in mind when he wrote that line.  He also said that there is a cost to doing this work:  in forging new beginnings there is an element of risk taking. It is hard work.  Not everyone is ready to come along.  And yet, the payoff is amazing.  Gordon writes of a “deeper, more holistic life  of discipleship with Jesus” as a result of risking a new beginning.

I think he’s right.  While new beginnings ask us to step out of our comfort zones- you have known that in the last year or more- there are also the benefits of a deeper formation and a richer relationship with each other- and, in each other, in Christ.

The writer of the letter to the Ephesians knew that, too. The letter to the Ephesians that we heard this morning is thought to be a circular letter… a letter written- probably by a student of Paul- and delivered to several  struggling congregations (in a circle) as a means of encouragement.  The part that we heard today is a prayer:  the prayer of the writer for these congregations:  that in their new beginnings that they will be given the spirit of “wisdom and revelation.. so that the eyes of their hearts will be enlightened and that they will know the Hope to which God has called them.”

Right now, as the communities of St. James’ and St. George’s, you are living in an in-between time. You have moved beyond your various endings… and are just starting to discern what shape your new beginning will take.  The work that we will do today will be offered in the spirit of Thanksgiving for all that you have enjoyed together as One Body in Christ, here on Sunday mornings.  And the work of the day is to listen.

I think of St. Paul and his companions as they traveled to new congregations across Asia Minor… I suspect that they did a lot of listening.  The letters that they wrote as a result of their visits showed that they did. There is great benefit in hearing another’s story.  And, I suspect, that if the sheep in Matthew’s gospel lesson had slowed down enough to listen to and look at the hungry that they were feeding.. and the naked whom they were clothing… that they might have seen that in their good works, they were serving Christ himself.

Today is a gift… it is an opportunity to stand in this place between endings and beginnings and to listen.

Every morning when I wake, I make my way out to the river trail in my hometown of Collinsville.  I get out there while it is still dark and return in the light of day.  And, in the middle, there is the dawning of the new day.  I stand at the river’s edge and watch as the grey clouds break open and the new day is born. I look and listen for God and give thanks.

This is the dawning of a new day.  Let us stop, look, and listen for God and give thanks.

Amen.

A Pink Shirt World

A Sermon Preached by Lee Cheek, Lay Preacher, October 9, 2011

St. James & St. George Episcopal Churches @ Crissey Farm, Great Barrington, MA

17 Pentecost, Proper 23A

“For many are called, but few are chosen” –Matthew 22:14

Good Morning! Francie asked me to preach this morning and when Pennie Curry found out, she told me that a whole bunch of young people from Gideon’s Garden[i] and Taft Farms and out of town were going to be here this morning. And she also said, please preach them some Good News and some Hope.

Well, I thought that that would be a great thing to do. And that this would be the perfect Sunday to do that. You know why? Because of the Bible passage that Father Ted just read.

I mean really, did you listen to it? It is about a party, a wedding banquet that really turned bad. In fact, quite horrible. But I thought it was a very good story to preach on today because it is a story about bullies and I KNOW a lot of you know something about bullies.

In fact, the Bible is full of stories about bullies because it is a history of how people came to understand that if you’re beating up on someone or making them feel bad about who they are, you can’t blame it on God. In fact, God is right there with the person who is getting beat up, trying to give everyone courage to find their own special way of joining in that will turn the situation around—and—here’s the hard part: not beat up on the bully.

But here’s the other thing I know about you young people. Not only do you know about bullies, you know about how to deal with them in creative ways that don’t beat up on them. There’s a story that some of you may already know. It’s the story of the PINK SHIRTS.

In 2007 in Nova Scotia a 9^th grade boy showed up for his first day in high school wearing a pink polo shirt. Bullies harassed him, called him a homosexual, and threatened to beat him up. Two 12^th grade students heard about this and after school that day, they went to discount store and bought all the pink shirts they could. That night they emailed their classmates about their plan.

The next morning when that 9^th grade boy arrived at school he was greeted by hundreds of students wearing pink, some head to toe. Now can you imagine how that young man felt walking into a sea of pink and having that big weight lifted off his shoulders?[ii]

I think Jesus would have loved that story because he spent the last three years of his life going around saying that God is not a bully. That God just wanted us to stop blaming and hurting people who looked different from us or had different customs from us or had made some small mistakes. Jesus kept saying that the best way to settle our differences was to see everyone as someone to love and not as an enemy to defeat or take advantage of.

In other words Jesus kept talking about how someday, way in the future, there would be a time and place where human beings would have no enemies and no strangers. Let’s go back to the story about the party gone bad.

First of all, Jesus compares—not necessarily “likens”—this Kingdom of God very unfavorably to a new king who wants everyone to suck up to him and give him the power he thinks he deserves because he has his own personal army.[iii]

At first he tries to get this by being real nice and inviting the best people to his son’s wedding. Well some people just blow him off and some get so mad about this power play that they kill his slaves. This gets the BIG DEAL KING so furious that he sets the city on fire and sends out his troops to round up everyone else. He doesn’t care about them at all, he just wants everyone there, even if it’s by threat, because he cannot stand to be rejected. Can you imagine how enraged he was?

Now we have this room full of shocked and very frightened people. It’s a very unstable situation until the BULLY KING fastens his eyes on the one person who is not dressed right for a wedding and asks him about it. The fellow is speechless.

Not one person dares to keep this fellow company, or speak up for him. The BULLY, BIG-DEAL KING gives orders to “bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

That sounds pretty horrible. It’s probably a place from which you might never return, which is of course, what the Big-Deal King wants.

At the end of telling this parable Jesus tells his listeners that “Many are called, but few are chosen.” In other words, when someone is making a big power play, they will round up and scare a lot of people, but they will only choose a few to get rid of.

This is a pretty extreme story. But I think Jesus wants us to remember the figure of the speechless, silent man. Because there are a lot of people who are not able to speak up for themselves. Maybe they are afraid. Maybe they are ashamed of being different. Maybe they are getting beat up at home and just learned to be silent all their lives. Maybe they don’t speak English very well.

But when you open your ears, and your eyes and your hearts, you can hear them. And you did. In December 2008 a group of you—Caroline, Diana, Jackson, Garrett, Doree—were making Christmas wreaths at Taft Farms with Pennie Curry.

You heard the voices of people who could not speak for themselves say, “We are hungry”. You said, “Let’s feed them. Let’s grow healthy food for them.” And after Pennie heard you speak for those hungry people she went to farmer Danny Tawczynski and said, “I want you to hear these children.” Not only did he hear the children, but his heart, too, had been listening for a long time to the silence of hungry people.

Together you all helped us to hear the voices of people who were suffering in silence. You made Gideon’s Garden into a place where there are no strangers and no enemies. You reminded us how to live the Gospel of Jesus by living in solidarity with others.

Our lives take on REAL meaning when we understand that we are always looking at a far horizon, the horizon of history that reaches way past the end of my life, and way past the end of your life. And way, way out there, there is a time and place where Love—all the Love that is inside you and all around you—where all that Love has been able to survive every bad thing that humans can think of to do to each other.

And if we can let ourselves be pulled and urged toward this future by a huge, gentle, ever-present force that is always there, the direction of our lives becomes clear and beautiful and vibrant and shimmering. This is the ONLY reason Church exists: to come together to remember this and leave feeling ten feet tall and happy to be a part of history.

And so my young friends, for God’s sake, I hope you will have great fun living in solidarity with others. You have what it takes to do this in ways that are funny, bold and hip, sassy and artsy. Use any talent you have and surprise the world with your ideas. There are a lot of people in this congregation who want to help you do this. Because we all want move into that future where no more people are going to be called, rounded up and frightened, and no one person will ever be chosen to be a scapegoat again.

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[i] Gideon’s Garden is a free-access, 1 acre garden managed by three teen supervisors and co-sponsored by St. James Episcopal Church and Taft Farms, a non-profit family run produce farm in Great Barrington. The Garden celebrated its 3d annual harvest despite devastating flooding this fall from recent tropical storms. During the spring and summer vegetables are distributed to a local food pantry, a local weekly community dinner, The Women, Infant and Children’s Program, a multicultural children’s program (BRIDGE) and families who come to the garden in need of extra help putting nutritious food on the table.

[ii] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2007/09/18/pink-tshirts-students.html

[iii] http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/proper23a.htm. ELCA pastor Paul Neuchterlein’s notes for this passage. The preacher is additionally grateful for further insight on this parable through conversation with theologian Michael Hardin and his wife Lorri September 30, 2011. See Michael’s website http://www.preachingpeace.org

A sermon preached September 18, 2011 at Crissey Farm

By the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16

What astonishing scriptures these are! They seem to fly in the face of some of our most cherished economic assumptions, like saving. We value saving, being able to have and “put away” more than enough/more than what we need for today. Even better is having MUCH more than enough. Enough to last us months or years or even a good, long retirement.

But then there’s this story about God providing quail and “bread from heaven”, manna. The Israelites had been wandering in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt. They’re hungry and cranky. They’re complaining and blaming Moses for taking them away from the slave-food they had in Egypt. They might have been slave-driven and oppressed, but at least they knew when they’d have their next meal.  So they’re free, but hungry and cranky. Then God tells them there will be meat at night and bread in the morning, Here’s the thing though, they can only take what they need for just one day…JUST ENOUGH.  God promises them God will supply what they need each day. God wants the people to learn to TRUST God in all things. To reinforce this, if they try to store up quail or manna—more than ENOUGH—then it always spoils overnight. So the people must learn to TRUST God one day at a time.

Jesus certainly echoes this when he teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”. ‘Such a familiar prayer, but do we think about what it really means?

We’re admitting we ultimately cannot supply what we need, and we’re asking God to give us what we need each day. In the asking, we’re acknowledging that God can supply our need. AND GOD WILL!

In the Gospel today, Jesus takes this much further, and again it flies in the face of some of our most cherished economic assumptions. Jesus gives us this parable about how the laborers who worked only one hour were paid the same as those who worked all day. Now what was paid to each was in fact, “a day’s wage”, which meant it was enough, just enough, to supply that day’s basic needs. Well, of course the ones who worked hard all day were furious…It wasn’t “fair”! Yet we must remember, in God’s economy, in God’s Kingdom, what’s “fair” is also what’s “just”. Perhaps for God the “minimum wage” (so to speak) is “a day’s pay”, like the quail and manna in the wilderness.

It’s important to remember here that Jesus always uses parables to give us images of what the Kingdom of God is like. In the Kingdom, God’s economy reigns. Giving all not only what’s fair, but also what’s just. And even more…God generously lavishing on us more than we can ask for or imagine, as the landowner choose to do for the laborer who worked only one hour. In God’s economy, in God’s Kingdom, there’s nothing for the all-day laborer to resent. He got what he needed and what he’d expected to be paid. Justice was done.

Now if the Kingdom of God is when God amazes us with God’s generosity, then, as children of this God, made in God’s likeness and image, I believe we are called to help bring in that generous Kingdom, “On earth as it is in heaven”. I believe we are called to amaze others with our generosity. I believe this congregation does from time to time amaze others with generosity. And I want to tell you a couple of stories about that…

As you may know, last weekend I was at the Bishop Search and Transition Committee’s Organizing Retreat with members of the Standing Committee and with our Consultant for the process. I sat at the lunch table Saturday with our Consultant, our Chaplain, and with Taylor Albright, member of the Search Committee and the rector of the church at Southwick. You may remember that the Southwick Church was planted just a few years ago. Until last year, when it became self-sustaining, it was the major recipient of the Diocesan Alleluia Fund. At lunch we talked about how the oldest and newest churches in the diocese were represented at our table. (With apologies to the newly formed “All Saints” in North Adams/Adams, which really is the newest church.)

Anyway, Taylor started telling the Consultant about how a couple of years ago

St. James, which was recently homeless and trying to discern what to do about our building and about our future, had actually sent a generous check to the Alleluia Fund to help the Southwick Church get firmly established. To us at the time, this just seemed like a good use of our Outreach money, but it turns out we actually amazed others with our generosity…Giving them a glimpse of God’s economy, God’s Kingdom.

You will hear more about this later, but on Thursday night, your Vestry agreed to do what we can to help our friend, neighbor, and partner in mission, Taft Farms. As you know they have been extravagantly generous to us with Gideon’s Garden, in helping to nurture youth and feed hungry people. But now the recent flooding has nearly pulled them under, and we have offered to help. Some at Taft Farms have told me personally that they are amazed by our generosity.

I know as your rector for nearly 4 years, you never cease to amaze me with your generosity! I think this is truly one of the Spiritual Gifts of this parish, and I hope we will continue to act out of this spirit of generosity even in these times when we might be tempted to try to store up more than enough for ourselves.  No doubt as we move forward into the future we will continue to be called upon to reflect God’s generous heart, to show the world God’s Kingdom, to use our gifts, and to amaze others with our generosity. I pray we are always up to this call. Amen.

Parts of this sermon were inspired by a sermon written by the Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek, co-rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott Mills, Elicott City, MD. 

All the Way to Heaven

A Sermon Preached by Lee Cheek, Lay Preacher

September 11, 2011

St. James & St. George Episcopal Churches @ Crissey Farm, Great Barrington, MA

13 Pentecost, Proper 19A

Someone wrote this week: “We don’t have to forget, but we should be careful about how we remember.”[i]

September 11, 2001 is a day that is saturated with memory for us. So saturated with memory that the layers of meaning for us will be developed for years to come. For the past ten years, as a nation and as individuals, we have tracked the movements in our souls and hearts in response to our memories of that day.

I was especially grateful this week for the public television rebroadcast of Helen Whitney’s 2002 documentary Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. There was an interview I remembered but had not meant much to me at the time.[ii]

The photographer who captured many of the images of the stranded people who jumped from the Twin Towers was trying to imagine what was happening to them to enable them to fly down together from a high ledge. “Did they see a beautiful garden with rivers and lakes? Was heaven already there before they jumped? Something must have been going on because a lot of them jumped.”

Well, this was his remembrance, and maybe since then it has changed for him. But it was fresh to him then, and I was able to catch something about how his imaginings at the time were led by his compassionate identification with the jumpers. He sensed that for them a horizon extended out, out, out, and it included everything so that there was nothing to fear and it opened all the way into the freedom that “death need no longer be the end of possibility.”[iii] Whoosh!

What the photographer was describing, this horizon of heaven that he hoped they were jumping into, was what a Loving God of Creation has called us to since the foundation of the world.

When we hear the story of Jesus instructing Peter and the other disciples to forgive seventy times seven times, we are being invited to freely jump into this heaven, leaving behind a world that ends with us and our self-concern and arriving in a larger world that includes compassion for the other.

The hyperbole of the number stresses that it is more important to be kind than it is to exact payment in kind. I will repeat this. It is more important to be kind than it is to exact payment in kind.

Furthermore, Jesus follows with a parable which is a clear warning that if we remain unconcerned about the suffering of others however much we think they owe us, then we will end up tortured and stuck in the world of our own un-kindness, our own hard-heartedness, our own violence.

When Moses tried to call attention to the suffering of his people upon which Egyptian society depended, this caused such disturbances in Egypt that they are recalled and remembered as plagues. The pharaoh finally relents and lets them go, but upon further reflection about the benefits of slaves who can be whipped on a whim, goes off in greedy pursuit.

This time, self-induced fate of the hard-hearted Egyptians is represented by the sea waters, which in many ancient stories represent a crisis of violence that threatens to drown a society: the leakage and seeping of resentments, grudges and fears born greed and envy.

Rescue from the undertow of violence, as victim or perpetrator or both, is surely a miracle. Unimaginable faith in the ultimate power of love is needed to disengage and leave it all behind.

Whoosh! The waters of violence are parted and the Israelites walk through with dry feet, away from the world of hard-heartedness. The challenge for them will be to not only remember God’s loving gift of the miracle of their deliverance from the danger of their oppressors, but to remember—and understand—their deliverance from becoming hard-hearted themselves—which is exactly what will enable them to become a blessing to others.

But make no mistake: the kind of remembering without rancor that makes us a blessing to others is a long, slow, laborious journey for humans. The conversion to a precarious and vulnerable life of faith, hope and love—faith that we are loved more than we can love, hope for liberation from what keeps us enslaved to our own violence, and love that doesn’t end at home—this conversion does not happen by strict adherence to any known system of ethics or law. But, rather, it happens by the excess of love spilling into our lives in nearly inexpressible ways.

So I would like share a story about how love spilled into to one man’s life and transformed the horizons of it. I heard this story first-person in Jerusalem in 2007 on the last night of a diocesan sponsored trip to Israel.

Rami Elchanan, a graphic designer and 7^th generation Jewish Jerusalemite, and Aziz Abu Sarah a Palestinian journalist arrived together to speak to us from an organization called the Parents Circle-Family Forum. This is Rami’s story.

He told us that he had served as a soldier in the 1973 Yom Kippur war and had come away from it embittered, cynical and furious after losing so many of his friends. But he went on to marry and have children and a career. In 1997, his only daughter, 14 year old Smadar, was killed by two Palestinian suicide bombers. For seven days he and his family sat Shiva and were consoled by thousands of people. After that he was consumed with how to react to the murder of his daughter.

One day he met Ytzchak Frankenthal who told him about how his son was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas a few years before and that he established this organization of people who had lost children in the conflict but nevertheless wanted peace.[iv] Rami recognized him as one the people who had come into his home during Shiva and was initially outraged. But Ytzchak calmly proceeded and asked him to come to a meeting of this crazy group of people.

Rami agreed and at the meeting he saw many famous Israelis, all grieving parents. But then he saw “an amazing spectacle”—Arabs, bereaved Palestinian families getting off the buses, coming toward him, greeting him with peace, hugging him, crying with him.

He later wrote of this experience: “I am not religious—quite the opposite—and so I am at a loss to explain the change I underwent at that moment. But one thing became as clear to me as the sun at noon: from that day on … I got a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Since that day I have dedicated my life to one thing only: to go from ear to ear and from person to person and to shout in a loud voice, to all who are prepared to listen, and also to those whose ears are blocked: This is not our destiny! … We can and once and for all must stop this crazy vicious circle of violence, murder and retaliation, revenge, and punishment.”[v]

Love spilled in and opened horizons that were previously inconceivable. Whoosh! And Rami’s way of remembering—stepping out of the damp, dank mire of rancor—becomes a blessing to those who meet him and hear his story.

Finally, let me tell you that 200 families who lost loved ones on September 11^th 2001 have become blessings to the world, too, by following their desire that no one else feel the same pain they have felt. As the September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows[vi] they are reaching out to families in Afghanistan who have lost family members. Love has spilled into their lives, too, so that the horizons of their compassion do not end here … or here … but stretch way, way out to there …

May such love spill into our lives, so that our concerns do not end so close to home and each morning we get up out of bed to become blessings to the world.[vii]

Amen.

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[i] The Rev. Bill Carroll, Episcopal Café Lead, in comments to “Using This Sunday’s Gospel on September 11, 2011” http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/peace/using_this_sundays_gospel_on_s_1.html

[ii] Photographer Luca Babini. Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero can be currently view at http://video.pbs.org/video/2120639608#

[iii] Davies, Oliver. A Theology of Compassion, p. 34 (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 2003; UK, SCM Press: 2001)

[iv] Parents Circle - Families Forum (PCFF) is a grassroots organization of bereaved Palestinians and Israelis. http://www.theparentscircle.com/ The PCFF promotes reconciliation as an alternative to hatred and revenge. For Aziz’s story and blog see http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com/about/

[v] http://www.internationalnetworkforpeace.org/spip.php?article43

[vi] http://peacefultomorrows.org/index.php

For a televised interview with David Portorti about remembering 9/11: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/security/video-david-potorti-on-waging-peace-after-911/11420/

[vii] The preacher gratefully acknowledges her indebtedness to Anthony Kelly’sThe Resurrection Effect (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008).